The PC that Spork built

Well this is the fastest I have ever had a good idea debunked. I just learned today that YouTube is deleting all of the AMVs December 1st. For listening pleasure, people keep recommending Pandora, and I may have to try that. For devotees of amateur music videos, this is an outrage.

I know, they are combining copyrighted music with copyrighted video, but they are certainly not doing it for profit, and where illegal downloading has the potential to remove profit from the content owners, I see the AMVs as free advertising. People find songs they don’t know, they find movies they are not familiar with, and interest is generated. It’s just really disappointing and seems totally shortsighted.

YouTube is working with various music labels to license the music, so the regular band videos should still be available, but it will be a poorer environment with the loss of AMV input, and it’s a shame for the makers. They can still make the videos of course, but there will not be another outlet like this for sharing. Well, maybe something new and underground will spring up, or already has. I usually come to things a little late.

That is actually a good segue into my tech history. I was actually afraid of computers for a long time. When I was in third grade they brought in an early Mac to the school and showed us, and the main thing that was impressed upon me was how easy this expensive item was to break. The disk can’t be in the drive when you start up or shut down or it will grind that away. If you turn on the monitor before the computer, the power surge will kill it, or vice versa. I just remember I was reluctant to touch it, and I never got into computers despite having a lot of nerds in my acquaintance.

When I got back from my mission, I just wanted to leave retail behind, and so I took this telemarketing job that basically involved a phone, a pen, and a call list, but it was 8-5 on weekdays and it was totally something I could accomplish. What I did not know is that this job (calling people who had expressed interest in a Medicare Supplement) was just the testing ground for new employees, and if you stuck that out they moved you into the next room, onto a PC. Soon I was running DOS reports.

Honestly, I did not love it, but I lost some of my fears, and the next few jobs I ended up taking were always progressively more technical. What I had not known was that computers had become much more durable over the last thirteen years, and you could do things without breaking them or destroying all data by one missed keystroke.

Soon I realized that I needed one for school, so I went to Circuit City and picked out the cheapest one I could find, which was a Packard Bell 486. It was about two generations behind, which meant I could afford it. Honestly, it worked out pretty well, because college was mainly about the word processing, and I also started doing my genealogy on the computer, but I was not doing anything fancy. We did not even have internet in the dorms yet.

Time went on and I graduated and took more jobs in the tech sector, and PCs also got cooler in terms of how much they could do, and then I had an opportunity to get a good deal on a processor, motherboard, and operating system. I thought, yeah this could be cool. I felt confident that I could build my own system, and I should have been right, but an unlucky thing happened.

Before I really started accumulating the parts, I read an article on PC modding and it made me overly ambitious. Now, real modding takes some real ability, and I wasn’t going to do that, but I did see an acrylic case available, and thought, yes, I will make a transparent PC, so I started picking pretty blue parts. I had a blue aluminum power supply, blue round IDE cables, UV blue fans, and a blue case light. (The optical drive was just beige.) I was all set.

It was very important to me that I do this on my own. This is because one coworker told me to bring the parts in when I was ready so they could help me, and this particular coworker was an idiot. The condescending “you’re a girl” attitude would have rankled from anyone, but seriously, I’ve heard some of the technical questions he’s asked other people. He’s not touching anything I value. But I had also bitten off more than I could chew.

Putting the case together was easy enough, and even putting in the board and chip was fine, but I was stymied on how to attach the hard drive and CD drive. The spaces were too wide. The only instruction with the case was a single page of paper with a diagram showing all the parts. It was not helpful.

So I gave in and called a coworker, but a smart one whom I respected and liked. That ended up being a really fun day, and we made a lot of progress. They key was that you needed to screw multiple standoffs together until you got the right length. However, we hit another snag, in that the power supply did not fit into the case opening. Neither of them were exactly standard parts, so that shouldn’t have been too surprising, but now I was going to have to sand down that area to make it large enough.

Much time passed. I bought a tool I could do this with, but I still didn’t get to it. Finally, when the idiot chauvinist was on vacation I did take everything into the office and I let my smart coworkers help me, and we had the system built. It felt good, and this was also when I moved up to a flat screen monitor, but there was a problem. So much time had passed that my technology was no longer very forward, and I had gotten another chip/board/OS combo as a gift.

Also, it did not take me long to get sick of the acrylic case. Our previous system (an HP that Little Sister J got through her job) had one latch to open the side, and another latch to release cards. Anything you needed to change on this one was a major ordeal. In addition, although it had never occurred to me to install a floppy drive, burning CDs is not always practical. I started looking at USB keys, but with the USB ports in the back it was not very practical.

I started lusting after an Antec. People would talk about how everything was built to standard specifications, meaning it would never require buffing or welding, it cools quietly, and best of all, front panel USB is standard. I started acquiring parts again.
By this time I had ended up with yet another free processor and board, so I sold the previous two, paying for my case, and built the current system.

There are things that were embarrassing. I bought RAM and a DVDR drive and forgot, so I bought more RAM later. I probably don’t need 4 Gigs of RAM, but I’ve got it. I did still let coworkers help, because I have found that I am just not that into it. I think I am not a real geek. When Richard and Jerry encountered the standoff issue or the power supply issue, they got glints in their eyes and rubbed their hands together, and it was cool to have a problem to solve. I just feel picked on. I do like puzzles and challenges sometimes, but I don’t think I am into technology enough.

I do nonetheless have some recommendations and preferences that are very strong:

LCD monitors: You can get rock-bottom prices on CRT monitors, but they are such a pain to move, and they just don’t look as cool.

Antec cases: It makes such a difference.

Round IDE cables: In my heart, I know my hatred of the ribbon cables is not logical, but it’s there.

Logitech mice: When I had the first PC, it held out pretty well but the mouse died in a month. I called support and they sent me this remote control that did not work at all, and rather than deal with the hassle I just went and bought a mouse. Knowing nothing, I just bought the second cheapest, which was a Logitech, and twelve years later I am still using it and it still works. I have bought other mice, and then I can’t bear to let this one go because I am so amazed by its tenacity. And it’s not even an optical mouse; it has a track ball. (I don’t think optical mice even existed in 1995.) Their keyboards and speakers are fine, but I would never buy a mouse from anywhere else.

Mozilla Firefox: I am not a Microsoft hater. I use Windows, and Office, and I even use Internet Explorer at work, but at home, I can’t stand all the stupid ad-ware/spy-ware/pop-ups. Using Firefox helps a lot, and I have not run into any site conflicts with it so far, and you can with some of the more obscure browsers.

Front-panel USB: There are so many USB peripherals, and I love my key drive so much, that this is just a must. If you don’t have it and can’t get it soon, PCH Cables has this items that plugs into the USB port and on the other end is a USB port. I guess it would qualify as an extension cable. It looks like half a golf ball. I don’t know what they call it.

Iguana Micro (www.iguanamicro.com): Nestled in the heart of geek central, this store is convenient, reasonably priced on most items, and the staff is knowledgeable. My first time in I was pleasantly surprised the find that the owner was someone I had known in grade school. He is pretty much always in the back now, but it is still one local business I am happy to support.

True to form, while building this one, I was thinking about the next one. I was also thinking about turning the acrylic one into a Digital Video Recorder, because I had read an article on how, and reading puts ideas in my head. However, about the time I was transferring files it stopped, never to start again. It seems to have been the power supply, and that is replaceable but then you are dealing with taking things in and out of the stupid case again so I just scavenged it for parts and saved one acrylic cube for the memories.

My other thought was how now there are workstation boards where you can put two processors, and if you quad core, you would have eight cores and that is power, and sure I don’t need it for word processing and internet, but if I did want to start editing video as I get more into film, well, it would be cool. But I have learned my lesson and I did not go out and buy processors, because by the time I would actually be ready to build the system, octo-core will be out, or something like that.

And all of this may make it sound like I am actually a geek, but I don’t have the chops for it. I’m medium geek at best.