Friday, March 16, 2007

The Entire (Team) Strikes Back

I can honestly say that my evening was better than my day. I was pretty darned stressed out so I lief 30 minutes early to head down to my wife's office. Her boss had inherited a ton of stuff from the estate of his brother in law and did not know what to do with all of it. He asked me to go through the electric stuff and see what was worth anything. The BIL was a recluse and a pack rat. Everything was caked with dust, dirt, and grime and smelled, so I was pretty liberal on what I told him to throw away (98% of it actually). There were a total of 4 computers (one Pentium 100, a Pentium 366, a Celeron 1.7 ghz, and a Pentium 2.8 ghz) a USB scanner, an odd mass storage device that did not have any media for it, a couple of packages of Zip 100 disks and more cables, monitors, mice, keyboards, power strips, headphones, etc than one person could ever use. That was just the electronics. There were 10 boxes of misc junk that I did not even go through.

Her boss gave me permission to look through and take what I wanted, but since he was not there I called him and told him what I had found. He told me to go ahead and take the computer equipment that I could salvage for parts, so I took the 2.8 ghz and the 1.7 ghz machines home and will begin checking them out. I know the 2.8 ghz machine will not power on every now and then and the 1.7 gnz machine will power up but not boot....I think there is a CMOS/BIOS issue or the mobo is toast. I was hoping to give that one to a family at church who really could use one (theirs is very old running Win98 SE...no more than a 500 mhz box) but with the one unstable and the other one not being able to power on, I may not get one working box out of it...but I will try.

I told him to junk the rest of the stuff...it smelled and cleaning it would be useless. He told me that if he puts it our by the dumpster, a group of guys will come by and pick out what they want, saving him from hauling it all away. What they do with it is none of my business.

My wife and I went home to let the dogs out and collect the mail, then we ran to Wendy's for a quick supper. I know we have eaten out many times this week, but at least all but one has been cheap. I am glad I take vitamins.

Once we got back home I unloaded all the stuff from the van and I did my bill paying/receipt entering duties. I noticed that Duke was playing so I switched on CBS to watch a little NCAA action. The second half of the Duke-VCU game was exciting, but Duke lost to a feisty VCU Colonels team that was not impressed by the four letter word, "DUKE". I cannot blame them :)

After Duke got nuked, I walked little man and waited for the Tarheel game to air. The time rolled around, but another game was being shown instead. How could a number one seed NOT get airtime? Bigots. Undaunted, I fired up my PC and thanks to CBS on demand video, I saw the UNC-EKU game on my PC...the stream was better this year than last (I think they had not worked all the bugs out yet) and I was rather pleased by the broadcast.

The game started out as a blowout with UNC up by 20+ point in the first 10 minutes. However, VCU was unfazed and began a comeback that was nothing short of amazing. near the half UNC was only up by 4...but that is as close as it got as the 'Heels struck back and won the game. So my bad day was vindicated by three things:

* Free PC parts
* Duke losing to a lower seeded team
* UNC moving on to the second round of the tourney.

After the game, I was very sleepy, so off to bed I went. I figured a long day was ahead of me...I know this weekend will be busy.

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