Assorted stuff

Hazy morning, but already nearly +40 F and might just hit +60 F today - and the weekend is supposed to get warmer still. Nice, to have fair temperatures. Of course the downside is that Summer is coming. Summer, the season of obnoxiously miserable hot weather.

Did the treadmill thing an hour earlier last night and watched New Detectives, which wasn't bad. But I can see getting tired of that in not too much time. A check of TV Guide (on the web, of course) shows that I should probably set a VCR to record an hour at 1 PM. I have a choice of Tiny Toons, Acme Hour, and Perry Mason then. Maybe I'll set that this noon. It's been some years since I saw Perry Mason (I'm hoping it's the old black and white show).

A couple nights ago Storm Stories was interesting. It was about the blizzard of January 1997 and how it affected an eastern state. What was interesting was that I can remember that one, before it went that far east. It was enough here that the town pretty much closed down, the two open 24 hour grocery stores closed, and there were warnings that said something like "If you try to leave town, we will NOT come out to rescue you. Stay home." The snow itself wasn't too bad, but there quite a bit of it - and with high winds it made for poor visibility and large drifts.

jmaynard has been watching Ranma quite a bit. Thankfully, with headphones if I'm around. I find the voices grating. Perhaps I shouldn't put it that way. The voices are okkay, the dialog is grating. I'm amazed he can stand it, myself.

Human misbehavior

A day or two ago there was a radio interview with an author who had risen out of poverty by his effort and writing. This was not what struck me. Effort will accomplish that sort of thing. What struck me was when he described his early affinity for reading he said something about stealing books from a library. I know it happens, but it has has always puzzled me a bit. There might be some market value (especially for rare books) but this was just to read. A strange mindset, that. The whole purpose of a library is allow the reading of books. Almost all of the libraries I've encountered are "free libraries." That is, you go in, and with not much hassle, get a card and can borrow stuff. The card itself tends to be free. The borrowing is free. All you have to do is promise to bring an item back on or before a certain day. What's more, if you bring a borrowed item back on or before the specified day, you can often renew the withdrawal and borrow that item for another week or two! The only time there is a charge is if the borrowed item is not returned, not returned on time, or damaged. And often, the late fee is even waived if it has been only a day or two.

Stealing books from a library makes no sense to me. What other place allows you, nay, encourages you to borrow what it has and asks only that you bring it back by a certain day? It could be said that libraries are the one great communistic or socialistic institution in this country. Public funds and private philanthropy keep libraries going, for the benefit of anyone who cares to use them. About the only limit might be one of location, and interlibrary loaning goes quite a way to eliminate even that barrier. And yet people steal books from libraries. Not just occasionally, but often enough to make it worth the money to install anti-theft devices. Ponder that. Money that could have been spent on the collection, on heating or cooling, on lighting, on the librarians themselves - but instead goes to buy and run an anti-theft system for a place that will freely lend what it has.

Need proof that communism would never work? Or anarchy, or any system utterly and completely dependent on all people being decent would fail? Here it is: library theft.

The 20th came early...

A few days ago the hard drive ordered arrived. Today, the box it goes in arrived. Yep, the one that Wal-Mart said was scheduled to be delivered on the 20th.

Not bad. Decent case. MSI motherboard, VIA chipset, CPU & fansink installed, cables there. Pretty much everything is onboard, with provision for having cards do it instead. 1 AGP, 3 PCI, 1 CNR (for what that's worth - not much) and two slots for 184 pin PC2100 DIMMs. Each up to 1 GB. Despite the Wal-MArt listing, it can take 2 GB, not just 1 GB. There is a modem but it's a PCI WinModem. Fortunately I don't need it with the network here.

Floppy is there, if it's needed. I'm a bit leery of how far inside the molding it is, but evidently that's not a problem. Also it isn't likely to see much use. I'll find out later how the CDRW is. At least then I can make use of a Christmas present. (My folks gave me a short spindle of CDRW disks which I haven't used at all. Then, I still have a good stack of blank CDR disks...)

There are a couple CDs but they seem to be Windows programs. One looks to be a version of Nero, which would be useful, though on another machine. Another is "the worst Windows communications software"... BitWare. From that place jmaynard has plenty of unkind words about, Computer Assholes. Oh, there is a drivers and utilities CD, which just might be useful beyond Windows, but that remains to be seen. I didn't order an OS (no hdd anyway) so there are no OS disks.

To Do:

* Order memory (1 GB in two 512 MB DIMMs - affordable that way).
* Confirm what jumper/switch settings there are, are set right.
* Remove (useless) modem card.
* Install hard drive and fan(s).
* Install memory when it arrives.
* Install OS (Mandrake 9.0, most likely)

Something to do this weekend. Well, I can get a good start on it this weekend, anyway.