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camwynToday I had off from work. Yes, I work for the Red Cross, and no, bad things don't stop happening on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but I had off. (I'm a computer weenie, not a Disaster Services paid employee. They were on duty.) I got paid on Friday, and I"ve paid my rent, so I had a little money. My monitor's been on the blink lately - literally. If I touched the brightness knob on the Gateway monitor I'd been using, the screen stood an equal chance of brightening, darkening, blinking at me, or going all white or all black for a few seconds. !good. Especially not with prices the way they are.
Fortunately, I get a lot of computer related mail. I'm quite serious about being a computer weenie. Most of my junk mail is related to computers - as opposed to most of my junk email, which is related to the size of body parts I do not actually have. One of the most recent pieces of mail was from a company called MarketPro. There was a computer show scheduled for today only, at an exhibition centre about half an hour's drive from my house. And I had the day off.
So... roughly an hour's drive, including one stop at Burger King and quite a lot of below-speed-limit driving (it snowed today!) later, I made it to the centre, paid my $6 for admission, and went looking for my monitor. Have you ever been to one of these things? If you have, you know what to expect. If you haven't, here's a basic description.
1. Empty out a big-ass chunk of floor space in a hotel or other large building. For best results, it should be a space strongly reminiscent of an airplane hangar, but a room capable of seating around 400 people should do instead.
2. Get in a great many fold-out tables and the occasional wire rack capable of holding large heavy objects, and arrange these in a grid in the open space. Leave enough room for three or four people to walk next to each other as aisles.
3. Stack these tables with boxes of software, computer cards, the occasional celphone-related item, computer accessories, different types of computer paper, DVDs, audio equipment, monitors, printers, cables, weird electronic things you never saw before, sticks of memory, palmtop organizer stuff, and one area for fancy massage chairs.
4. Call in the vendors. In this part of the country, 80 to 90 percent of the vendors at these shows are Asian - Chinese, I think, but I couldn't say for certain. There's usually a few Indian or Pakistani people, too, plus one or two token Caucasians; usually the Caucasians are selling computer memory and maybe computer books. I think it's the same people every time.
5. Fire up all the electronica. Set about half the printers - the photo quality ones - to constantly print the same image over and over, to show what they're capable of. Stick violent video games into at least two of the displays, and a DVD of some hot-selling movie into at least one more. Make sure the volume is on.
6. Now unleash every person in the state who's looking for a computer bargain.
These places are crowded. They're chaotic. It wouldn't be the least bit surprising to turn a corner and find someone selling livestock - well, actually it would, but only because livestock hairs interfere with the demonstration of how chilly the new cooling fans can keep an Athlon processor and the livestock would be upset at the noise coming from the new amazing computer speakers. There's lights flashing everywhere, usually because the celphone exhibits include people selling little light-up antenna hoodahs that flash brilliant colours when your phone rings. Occasionally there's a guy selling random dental implements and other sharp objects - God only knows why, but he's there. He also sells screwdrivers and repair kits, so I guess that's why they put up with him selling Little Pointy Things For The Scraping Of Teeth. Creepy as hell, but what the hey. It's free-market capitalism running rampant and it's an opportunity to ask total strangers, "D'you know anything about DVD drives?", and it's a chance to spend too much money at one go, and I absolutely love 'em. (As long as the folks selling porn at least make the effort to put the porn in a separate bin so I don't look for Troubleshooting the Windows Registry and get an eyeful of Hot Buttered Elves or something similar.)
I got myself a new monitor. It is a 17-inch monitor. It is refurbished, but I do not care; I've always had good luck with refurbs. It works. It is Shiny. It is Bright. It goes up to resolutions I've never had any cause to use. It does not do weird things when I adjust the brightness. I am using it now. I am quite happy. One day I will be able to buy a DVD drive and use it with this monitor and not have pain - I say 'one day' because I have to upgrade my processor to watch DVDs properly. And to upgrade my processor I have to upgrade my motherboard. And to do that, I spent more money than I should've today, and wound up with not enough money to buy a DVD drive. Oh well. I'll be tinkering with the motherboard tonight, and the new Duron 800 processor I bought, and the extra memory I got, and hopefully after dinner I'll have it all up and running. (Current system is based on an AMD K6-2 350MHz chip. Stop laughing at me.) This should be fun, I just need to find a screwdriver...
I TOLD you I was a computer weenie.
Fortunately, I get a lot of computer related mail. I'm quite serious about being a computer weenie. Most of my junk mail is related to computers - as opposed to most of my junk email, which is related to the size of body parts I do not actually have. One of the most recent pieces of mail was from a company called MarketPro. There was a computer show scheduled for today only, at an exhibition centre about half an hour's drive from my house. And I had the day off.
So... roughly an hour's drive, including one stop at Burger King and quite a lot of below-speed-limit driving (it snowed today!) later, I made it to the centre, paid my $6 for admission, and went looking for my monitor. Have you ever been to one of these things? If you have, you know what to expect. If you haven't, here's a basic description.
1. Empty out a big-ass chunk of floor space in a hotel or other large building. For best results, it should be a space strongly reminiscent of an airplane hangar, but a room capable of seating around 400 people should do instead.
2. Get in a great many fold-out tables and the occasional wire rack capable of holding large heavy objects, and arrange these in a grid in the open space. Leave enough room for three or four people to walk next to each other as aisles.
3. Stack these tables with boxes of software, computer cards, the occasional celphone-related item, computer accessories, different types of computer paper, DVDs, audio equipment, monitors, printers, cables, weird electronic things you never saw before, sticks of memory, palmtop organizer stuff, and one area for fancy massage chairs.
4. Call in the vendors. In this part of the country, 80 to 90 percent of the vendors at these shows are Asian - Chinese, I think, but I couldn't say for certain. There's usually a few Indian or Pakistani people, too, plus one or two token Caucasians; usually the Caucasians are selling computer memory and maybe computer books. I think it's the same people every time.
5. Fire up all the electronica. Set about half the printers - the photo quality ones - to constantly print the same image over and over, to show what they're capable of. Stick violent video games into at least two of the displays, and a DVD of some hot-selling movie into at least one more. Make sure the volume is on.
6. Now unleash every person in the state who's looking for a computer bargain.
These places are crowded. They're chaotic. It wouldn't be the least bit surprising to turn a corner and find someone selling livestock - well, actually it would, but only because livestock hairs interfere with the demonstration of how chilly the new cooling fans can keep an Athlon processor and the livestock would be upset at the noise coming from the new amazing computer speakers. There's lights flashing everywhere, usually because the celphone exhibits include people selling little light-up antenna hoodahs that flash brilliant colours when your phone rings. Occasionally there's a guy selling random dental implements and other sharp objects - God only knows why, but he's there. He also sells screwdrivers and repair kits, so I guess that's why they put up with him selling Little Pointy Things For The Scraping Of Teeth. Creepy as hell, but what the hey. It's free-market capitalism running rampant and it's an opportunity to ask total strangers, "D'you know anything about DVD drives?", and it's a chance to spend too much money at one go, and I absolutely love 'em. (As long as the folks selling porn at least make the effort to put the porn in a separate bin so I don't look for Troubleshooting the Windows Registry and get an eyeful of Hot Buttered Elves or something similar.)
I got myself a new monitor. It is a 17-inch monitor. It is refurbished, but I do not care; I've always had good luck with refurbs. It works. It is Shiny. It is Bright. It goes up to resolutions I've never had any cause to use. It does not do weird things when I adjust the brightness. I am using it now. I am quite happy. One day I will be able to buy a DVD drive and use it with this monitor and not have pain - I say 'one day' because I have to upgrade my processor to watch DVDs properly. And to upgrade my processor I have to upgrade my motherboard. And to do that, I spent more money than I should've today, and wound up with not enough money to buy a DVD drive. Oh well. I'll be tinkering with the motherboard tonight, and the new Duron 800 processor I bought, and the extra memory I got, and hopefully after dinner I'll have it all up and running. (Current system is based on an AMD K6-2 350MHz chip. Stop laughing at me.) This should be fun, I just need to find a screwdriver...
I TOLD you I was a computer weenie.
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no subject
Date: 2002-01-21 03:02 pm (UTC)See Jenn COVET your monitor, tho.....
Good show!
Re:
Date: 2002-01-21 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-01-21 06:09 pm (UTC)Now... now I've got SpacemanSpiff. Spiff has an AMD 1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 megs of DDR RAM, and a number of other wonderful features. Spiff is good. I built Spiff myself, making him even better. Upgrades are good.
Ooh.
Date: 2002-01-22 06:34 am (UTC)