An Obituary for the CD

I've having a moderate bout of insomnia. This happens occasionally. I'm just glad this time it happened on a night when I don't have to get up for work in the morning.
So I recently got married, and before that, I did not have cable, broadband, satellite or any other high-speed link to the outside world. I just watched Jeff Passolt on the Channel 9 News at 9, and listened to Power 96, Faribault's home of rock. I used to have satellite, but I rarely watched it except for the channel Fuse, a Canadian music channel that features a heavy metal program called Uranium. Uranium rocks!
Well, my husband set up the digital TV we received as a very generous wedding gift, and then signed up for broadband. Now I have unprecedented access to the metal I love. There is a digital Metal music station that plays on the TV, and with the broadband, I can download all my favorite episodes of Uranium to watch on my iPoo. Right now I'm watching the metal station on TV, and they're playing Obituary. My very first CD was Obituary, "The End Complete". I bought it used at the Summer of Love store in Eagan, which was owned and staffed by a guy I'd suspect was an original hippy. He owned an obese cat that liked to perch on the CD bins and watch people entering the store. I didn't even know who Obituary was. I just liked the cover art by Andreas Marschall.
My Obituary CD is downstairs, carefully filed alphabetically amongst the 200+ CDs I've purchased since then. I'm on the fence about whether I should purchase CDs anymore. I can listen to MP3s in my Echo (I bought this fancy $88 stereo that is enclosed in the trunk a couple of years ago). Plus my new cell phone and the iPoo play MP3s. I think some of the DVD players around the house play them too (since merging households, there are around seven DVD players at my house. I gave one to Grandma. The others are just hanging out.)
The only drawback to moving away from CDs is that when I paid for and downloaded a digital format song from the Walmart site, I discovered it is not an MP3. Instead it is in some special format that only plays on the computer that you downloaded it to. The speakers on the Pillowtop are not that great for listening to music. This seems like a goofy system. If I go to the actual store, I can buy the CD and listen to it on any player. If I download the contents of the CD, I can only listen to them on the Pillowtop and the cost is almost as much as buying the physical CD. Doesn't this system just encourage music piracy? People can go out, buy the CD for eleven dollars, convert it to MP3 and post it on their website to illegally distribute it to the entire world. But I can't legally pay for the MP3. If you have some knowledge about the MP3 distribution system, please send me an email or post a comment here.

A Few of my Favorite Things

My New Year's resolution is to go through my house and pick out some nice things to give to charity. I've started thinking about what I might be able to give to Goodwill, and as I was wandering around the house, I realized how lucky I am to have so much nice stuff. So many people have given me things they didn't need anymore, and I'm really grateful to them. A lot of my favorite things were something someone else no longer needed. I hope the items I give to Goodwill are great shopping finds for others.

Martha Stewart always writes about her favorite things in her "Is Martha Stewart Living" magazine. I find a bit of hubris in this practice, but I'm going to go ahead and adopt it just for the sake of this blog entry. So here are a few of my favorite things . . .

• Ricoh Copier
  A local church gave it to me because they received a nice new copier and this one was broken. The door on the side of the copier was missing a magnet to hold it shut, and for some reason, this caused a paper jam every time a user attempted to make a copy. I fixed the door. Now I'm using the copier for various volunteer activities and making copies of my newspaper column for my grandma.
  
  
• Zenith Console TV
  I found it by the side of the road, with a free sign and the original instruction booklet taped to it. I painted it black to match my pleather couch. I like watching the channel 9 news with Jeff Passolt on my awesome TV.
  
  
• Toshiba Laptop
  My friend gave it to me in exchange for helping her fix a newer computer that was broken. I use the laptop (also known as the Pillowtop) for writing my column for the Farmington Independent.
  
  
• Palm Pilot IIIc
  Another nice gift from someone who thought my paper planner that I bought on clearance on K-Mart was pitiful. One of my co-workers saw my Palm Pilot and decided it was such an unusual antique that he took a digital picture of it for his website.
  
  
• Really Big Monitor
  I won a really big monitor when my employer raffled off their old equipment to employees. Since I like the Pillowtop better than the desktop, I passed the really big monitor along to the nice couple who bought my desktop computer. They were great. They even took the old computer desk off of my hands. Now I use an ergonomically adjustable tray table for the laptop. The tray table was featured in my column today in the Farmington Independent.
  
  
• Honeywell Thermostat
  This electronic thermostat is the Cadillac of thermostats. I won it from Dakota Electric when I entered a contest at the Dakota County Fair.
  
  
• Pocket PC
  I won it from Microsoft at a Microsoft Project seminar. Since I already had my paper planner from K-Mart, I sold the Pocket PC to my dad. He uses it to play Bejeweled and read e-books while my mom is shopping at the fabric store.
  
  
• Beige Sectional Couch
  A wonderful gift from a pal who couldn't fit the huge sectional couch and an upright piano in her living room at the same time. The piano won out and the couch came to live with me for a couple of years. Eventually I found a black pleather couch at the Goodwill with two matching chairs for $75. I passed the sectional along to a really nice lawyer who works for almost nothing representing battered women in her county. County employees rule!
  
  
• '86 Dodge Omni
  This was actually not quite free. I paid $50 for my Omni. It was a great car. I fixed the leaking roof and painted it black, with white pinstriping and scroll work. Wow, was it beautiful. My grandma was really impressed with my paint job. A really nice computer scientist sold me this car. What a lesson in frugality! Here is a guy who has a great job, and he buys a car brand-new for cash, then drives it for 200,000 miles and still gets $50 for it.
  
  
• Weber Grill
  I found it next to the neighbor's trash when I was out for a walk. I wheeled it home several blocks. I like the Weber's round shape. It grills veggie burgers evenly.
  
  
• 1983 Sears "Portable" Television
  I found this electronic artifact on the curb during last spring's Farmington Clean-Up Day. This little TV scrubbed up nicely and gives my kitchen retro touch.
  

Eggs, Milk, Laptop

I'm a huge fan of Aldi. I remember my first trip there as if it were yesterday. The helpful Manager explained how to unlock a cart and Aldi's concept of reusable, enviornmentally friendly grocery bags. Buying a 4-pack of red and green Bell peppers for 99 cents is still amazing to me.
Although ALDI is reputed to be the object of derision for status conscious young people in the U.K. , no one here seems to know what it is. The only time I'ue been ribbed about shopping at Aldi it was by a person from the U.K., and that was a pretty mild teasing.
From what I've gathered by informally polling people who've visited a grocery store in the U.K., Aldi faces much stiffer competition there than they do in Rosemount, Minnesota. U.K. grocery stores have clean floors and produce free from mold, unlike the warehouse chain in Rosemount. Amazing!
What I love about the Rosemount Aldi is the cleanliness. There are never pallets or crumb-ridden sample carts blocking the aisle. Plus, the line is short and the manager is very nice.
Best of all, on Sundays they roll out the special purchase items. They are fun stuff, like cordless drills and closet organizers. Last weekend I bought a rice cooker/vegetable steamer for $19! And I learned an inside tip.
Remember, you heard it here first. On October 29th, the special purchase items will be laptops.
Aldi only sells computers once or twice a year. In 1987, Aldi featured Commodore 64 computers as a special purchase item. They sold out within hours.
The full specs for the Oct. 29th special purchase laptops are available at Aldi's website. The manufacturer is the German-based company Medion, which manufactures HP computers for the European market. I researched the last special purchase laptops sold in the U.K., and discovered they were fast and filled with extras for £400. The buzz is Medion is trying to break into the North American market, so the U.S. laptops are priced a bit cheaper, only $599. They feature a 2 gHz AMD Turion processor and 1 GB of RAM.
So now I'm faced with a dilemma. Should I snub both of my Pillowtops for an ALDI laptop? The idea of owning a super-speedy DVD/CD burning 'top from ALDI is irresistable. I feel so greedy. There are people all over the world who would be proud to own a single hand-cranked laptop, and here I want to own three with rechargeable batteries. I have a Pillowtop obsession.

The hand-cranked laptop was developed at MIT for the "One Laptop Per Child" program, which provides laptops to children in areas without stable electricity.

Pillowtops Forever!

Some of you might know that I use a Toshiba Satellite 325CDS laptop to write my blog and my newspaper column. This laptop is so thick that one of my former co-workers called it a "Pillowtop". Although I love my Pillowtop dearly, I know that a nine year old computer might not last forever. To quote the classic rock group Kansas, "All we are is dust in the wind", and that goes for computers as well. So like a person who has an elderly dog and buys a puppy to ease the pain of the eventual loss, I bought a new Pillowtop.
Using the internet, I located a computer recycler/refurbisher called 5R-Processors in Wisconsin. This place is so cool. The owner started the company to keep old computers from going into landfills. Now I'm adopting a Pillowtop that they rescued. This Pillowtop, while nearly identical in model and style to my current 'Top, has over twice the horsepower. The first time I take this baby over to the Ugly Mug for free wireless internet access, I'm going to get a speeding ticket on the Information Highway! As soon as my new Pillowtop arrives, I promise I'll post a picture. It might be a while, since I'll be busy over the next few weeks, but I'll make sure you get a chance to see the latest addition to my computer family. Pillowtops forever!


A Toshiba Satellite 325CDS - also known as a Pillowtop!

A Busy Week

I'm sure you've all been dying to hear about my Ozzfest adventures. This past week I had a column deadline and I worked overtime, so I couldn't get to the Pillowtop to post. I also had four little mouths to feed, and a lot of hair and scales to sweep up. All of the pets are shedding from the hot weather, even Whippy!
But I have a special announcement along with my Ozzfest wrap-up coming soon, so stay tuned!

Prom 2006

I just got my pictures back from prom. I know you guys were dying to hear about the big night, but I was waiting to blog about it until I could post the pictures.
I didn't get asked to the dance. Instead, I did the asking. But I managed to get a date, anyway, which is the important part. To go to the Geek Prom without a date, would have been, well, really geeky.
For the girls out there, I have to tell you all about my outfit. I tried on a dozen dresses at Goodwill. Finally, the thirteeenth dress was the ONE. It was a perfect out-of-style white Jessica McClintock A-Line with giant white flowers printed on it. It's difficult to describe the white-on-white effect, but the fabric is textured so you can see and feel the floral print.
I picked out the perfect pair of platform sandals at Payless. They're made out of cork, and have iridescent sequins stuck to them. While they didn't exactly match my dress perfectly, I've always wanted to own a pair of cork shoes. As fashion unconscious as I am, I'll probably get lots of use out of them, pairing them with all kinds of dresses that they don't match. I already wore them out to go bar-hopping in Rosemount. (The Rosemount bar scene is a little bit hipper than the Farmington one. If I'm going out on the town in Farmington, I'm more apt to wear my Skechers sneakers than a pair of platforms.)
I accessorized my prom outfit with a black velvet purse with giant rhinestones and a tiara with purple, yellow and pink flowers glued to it. Of course, I had a beautiful corsage, with white and purple silk flowers.
My date, Joey, wore yellow rimless glasses, a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and a Tator Tots T-shirt from the movie Napolean Dynamite. (That's a nifty movie for and about geeks.)
We didn't even consider renting a limo, since Joey owns a sporty '94 Ford Probe SE. He picked me up in the Probe, and whisked us away to Cosetta's Italian deli for a lovely cafeteria-style dinner of cheese pizza slices and Miller Lite, served on brown plastic trays. I noticed a few of the other diners admiring my dress, espcially a little girl who thought my outfit was a princess costume. Her dad told her not to stare.
We were, in truly geeky fashion, the first ones to arrive at prom. The prom was held at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The musuem atrium was decorated beautifully with purple balloons, inflatable palm trees and a rainbow of colored candles flickering on the tables. The band, who was the aptly named "The Band Geeks", was setting up for the dance. Joey and I picked up our numbers for the King and Queen of the Prom contest. I was number eight and he was number nine.
Then we headed over to the judges, who interviewed us throughly and scored us on how geeky we are. Joey scored much higher than I did. I told the judge that I was a software engineer. He frowned and said, "So, what's geeky about that?" One of the other judges gave me some points for owning a functioning C64 computer, but I could tell they were clearly not impressed. I should have worn my glasses with the Transitions lenses. Those would have earned me a few points. The judges scored Joey really high on his abilities to re-wire LED lights and read electronic schematics. They appreciated his Tator Tots T-Shirt.
The evening was truly magical. The musuem was open only for prom attendees, so we had a chance to get close to all of the exhibits. We learned about the science of mixing drinks, held a tyrannasaurus Rex tooth, and popped our heads into an auditorium where geeks were playing video games on a giant movie screen. Joey bought us tickets to the Omni Theater. I sucessfully navigated the steep steps to our seats in my cork platforms. We watched a movie about the cosmos that explained sub-atomic particles. On the way out the door, I overheard one of the other geeks say disparagingly, "That was a little elementary." I knew then that I was amongst my peers. Only a geek would find sub-atmoic particles elementary!
I'm guessing the highlight of the evening for Joey was playing with diodes and LEDs at the electricity exhibit. For me, the highlight was learning how the monitor on my Pillowtop laptop works. They have an exhibit that actually uses a Toshiba Satellite 325 CDS to demonstrate the inner workings of a laptop screen. I am so proud that my laptop is special enough to be displayed at the Science Museum.
Before leaving, we watched the crowning of the prom royalty. As the new King and Quuen of the Geek Prom beamed proudly, the band broke into a raucous punk song. Then about a half-dozen nude male geeks streaked through the crowd. I couldn't help but stare, as if I was rubber necking a car accident or seeing a train wreck. They must have had too much of the spiked punch.
After one last slow dance, it was time for the evening to end. It went by so quickly we didn't even have time to participate in the dissection of the cow's eye. This was the best prom ever. I hope next year I get asked to the Geek Prom. I'm already thinking about what to wear. If you have any suggestions for geek chic dresses, please shoot me an email or comment on this post.

Joey and Mary - Prom 2006
In Front of T-Rex Skull

Working from Home

I've been doing a little reading lately. I'm working on Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis. I've been thinking about work too much. That's the curse of IT. When I'm there, I think of nothing else and when I'm off, the work hangs around in the background, shading everything else I do with thoughts of the office. It's both a curse and a blessing to do something for a living that used to be a hobby.
When I was a kid, I liked to type in the programs in the back of BYTE magazine in Basic on the Commodore 64. My stalwart Commodore still sits in my basement. Not the original, but an amazing replacement that I found at a garage sale in Apple Valley for $2. The lady selling it warned me that it was really old, and that I probably wouldn't be able to use it. Strangely, I also had a lady at another sale warn me that her 386 computer was probably useless. At yet another garage sale, the gal hosting told me that I shouldn't buy her Pentium 100 MHz chip to replace my 75 MHz. She said it was difficult to install. And for her, to be fair, that was probably true. The chip was in the original box from Best Buy, still wrapped in its birthday suit of shrink-wrap. After I bought that chip, I couldn't wait to get home, dig out my tiny screwdriver and open the case. That was the computer for which I traded my Camaro. But that's a story for another time.
So here I am, imprisoned at the computer by my own liking instead of by cubicle walls. The Pillowtop is one of the best computers I've ever owned. It's twice as fast as my overclocked Pentium 100 MHz processor with its giant heat sink. Perro the pup is sitting at my feet, anxiously licking his paw pads as I write instead of petting him. His entire world revolves around getting petted and getting under blankets. But he has no use for work. He never thinks about the number of defects in a piece of software or watching the clock.
For a while my life was guided by 2-week software iterations, where every other Friday I would purposely not make plans so I would have extra time to finish up at work. Perro's life is only guided by the rhythm of mine. He wakes when I do, eats when I serve dinner, and takes a walk outside when I'm ready to go to the mailbox, or even better, The Ugly Mug. All the while he is loyal and attentive. I can't say he never buts into a conversation, as he routinely tries to distract my friends while they're visiting, but for the most part he is more polite than anyone I've ever met.
So I've been using my Stephen King book to drown out work while I'm at home. Once I start in on a Stephen King book, I'm oblivious, somewhat like Perro. I'm immersed in my own thoughts and ready to crawl under a blanket whenever I get tired. It's so nice sometimes to just forget, forget your obligations during the short time that you can. Perro doesn't understand this, as he has no obligations. But I understand it well.

Where's the crank?

The first working prototype of the $100 laptop has been unveiled!
Only where is the crank used to power it?

See more photos of the laptop

Getting Down in Downtown Duluth

I'm on the road again. This time I took the van up to Hinckley to see the KQRS Morning Show game night at Grand Casino. Last night I was schmoozing with the Morning Show crew and I had a chance to say hello to Mike Gelfand again. The game show was wild. One of the questions was "Name 5 Things that Parents Give to Newlyweds." When it was Terry's turn, she said her parents gave her a crib for a wedding gift.
So tonight I'm getting down in downtown Duluth. I was just over at Angie's Cantina, where the server offered a $375 margarita. I asked her for the cheapest one. $375?!? That's almost 1/2 of a Festiva Unit.
I brought Pillowtop along for this trip so I could take advantage of the free wireless internet access. I've already located two hotspots in downtown Duluth. Tomorrow I'll bring Pillowtop along for lunch so I can search for coffee shops with wireless access.
I'll link to the KQ Game Show night pics as soon as Noah has them up on the KQRS website.

Peril at the Park and Ride

Please note: This post was originally written on the morning of March 14, the day after the big snowstorm. I was on the bus, so I had no Internet connection to upload this post.

I just got onto the bus. I came so close to disaster this morning that I still feel shaky. I left early this morning in case the roads were still slick from yesterday's snowstorm. I pulled into the park and ride early. As I'm rolling down the aisle, looking for a spot, a huge, ancient Buick swings around the corner from the other direction, almost sliding into the Echo. The driver was staring right at me, and the lady had an angry, well-made up, middle-aged face. I'm terrified of angry baby boomers, so with my heart in my throat, I crept forward, trying to squeeze past her.
Then I noticed SUVs were double-parked along the aisles, so there was no way for her to squeeze this big boat around the corner. I looked into the rearview mirror to back up, and saw a line of cars behind me. Unbeknownst to me, half of the lot was blocked off with orange cones, so bus passengers had double-parked down every aisle, and the only exit was the blocked entrance I had just come in through.
I managed to creep around the corner, narrowly missing a frighteningly expensive Infiniti. Then I came none-to-nose with a Dodge Grand Caravan that stuck out into the aisle. There was a 4x4 to my left. I pulled off my gloves to get a better grip on the steering wheel. My throat was dry. My front wheels were stuck in snow, but I cranked them as far to the left as I could. If you've ever driven a manual steering car, you might know that it's difficult to turn the wheels when you aren't moving, especially when they're jammed into a mound of snow. Carrying my Pillowtop laptop to work every day has helped me build upper body strength, and I used all of it this morning to turn my wheels.
I managed to creep forward, with only an inch on either side. As I began to move, an angry scream rose behind me.
My heart pounding, I looked in the rearview mirror. A gigantic, black SUV was behind me, the driver hanging out of the open window, screaming at me at the top of his lungs. I can't repeat what was said here or I risk indecency. The copper taste of fear filled my mouth. I tried to control the wheel with my shaking hands. Finally I squeezed past, and managed to get up a clear aisle. The Echo and I hid in a corner of the park and ride lot until everyone left through the exit/entrance.
Then I drove to Burnsville, my stomach churning, a horrible taste in my mouth. I managed to safely park on the roof of the ramp at the Burnsville park and ride. I turned off the engine and took a deep breath, steadying myself. My gloves fell beneath the seat during the parking lot melee, and I dug them out, and pulled them back on with dignity.
As I climbed down the stairs of the ramp, I thought, that guy in the SUV was a bully. What kind of man screams those kind of things at a woman? (Yes, they were gender-specific epithets.) It seems being ensconced in our vehicles gives us a sense of protection and entitlement. I can't imagine a man screaming at me that way because I'm blocking his cart at Econofoods. It was disgusting. If he threatens the little Echo again with his giant SUV at the park and ride, I'm going to tell him to go pick on a vehicle his own size.

A Cranky Bill Gates Attacks a Cranky Laptop

When I saw this article on CNN about Bill Gates mocking a laptop, I thought it was a joke. It sounds too much like an Onion article to be serious. A group at MIT called "One Laptop Per Child" is developing a $100 laptop to used by students in developing nations. The great part is the picture of laptop. It has a crank sticking out of the side, so it can be hand-cranked to recharge the battery. Hilarious! Bill Gates apparently doesn't like the design. He said, ". . . geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type." He sounds pretty cranky about the crank. I wonder if only people in developing nations will be allowed to buy these laptops. I'd love to have one. It has about twice the processor speed of the Pillowtop.


Wow! This laptop is even cooler than my Pillowtop!

Goodwill Goes High-Tech

I just discovered that my favorite store is on-line. I'm so excited. I can't wait to search the virtual treasure trove of Goodwill items. (You know the saying - one Farmington Resident's trash is another Farmington Resident's treasure.) I've been looking at eBay here and there, but I have a hard time working myself up to actually bidding on things. I can't tell if I'll really win the item, and even if I do, how do I really know that the person will actually send it to me? I'm pretty sure that Goodwill won't cheat and not send me the item. Even if they didn't send it, or it wasn't quite what I wanted, who cares? All the money goes to a good cause, so I can view it as a donation.
I'm not sure if you've had to hear (or read, as it may be) my Goodwill spiel before. I try to reduce, reuse and recycle. I have a big green City of Farmington recycling bin that I fill up with empty garbanzo bean cans and bags of shredded credit card offers. But even recycling this stuff and making it into something new takes energy. I envision donating and shopping at Goodwill as taking recycling a step further. Since the stuff stays in its original form, it avoids the landfill, and it provides use for a longer period of time, my Goodwill shopping strategy saves even more energy than recycling.
That's it for my Goodwill spiel. Now it's time for me to do a little on-line shopping. Who knows what I might find? Maybe a portable printer for the Pillowtop laptop, or a spare antenna for the console TV.

Laptop Pride and Envy

As much as I love the Pillowtop (my Toshiba Satellite 325cds), I discovered a laptop on eBay that's even cooler. I didn't even know that it existed until today, or I would have been craving one for the past 20 years. That's the evil of eBay. I can suddenly buy anything I want, like a garage sale or Goodwill that stretches off into infinity.

Here's the laptop I'm coveting:














This is a Commodore 64 SX - a special portable C64. Unlike my current C64 (see picture below) the whole computer is contained in a stylish briefcase. I wonder how many admiring glances I'd get when I popped open this baby on the commuter bus and started word processing away.

Here's a promotional photo of my current model, the Commodore 64, circa 1984:

Here's a photo of a Toshiba Satellite 325cds:

Mine pretty much looks like this, but it has a snazzy red glowing mouse instead of a plain white one. Notice the nifty grey case. There is no lame mouse pad in the middle of the wrist rest like on the Dell laptops. I can't type on the Dell without bumping the mousepad and screwing up what I'm typing. All of a sudden the cursor is flying across the screen, and I don't even have fat wrists. All of this is prevented by the superior case design of the Satellite. I love my Pillowtop!

The Pillowtop Goes Wireless

I finally got the wireless card for my Toshiba 325CDS laptop working. One of my co-workers saw me using this laptop at an Oracle class, and dubbed it the "Pillowtop". I guess since it's a little thicker than the new ones it has a kind of unique, classic, pillow-like style. So here I am, posting my first wireless blog entry, thanks to the Pillowtop and my friend Kristina, who generously gave me the Pillowtop when she aqcuired a snazzy new skinny little laptop.