Dilithium Crystalworks

Toilet Art?!?

I realize that living in a rural area like I do, you tend to see a wide assortment of things in people's yards. This can range from farm implements to old cars & pickups. Sometimes you might even see various artsy decorative things as well.

The one thing I didn't expect was a bunch of toilets. I don't just mean one or two old ones that have been replaced either. I'm talking about over twenty of the things. ranging from several new looking Toto toilets to some 75 & 100 year old monsters that had seen better days fifty years ago.

Somebody had actually gone to considerable trouble to collect as many toilets as they could possibly find and then arranged them in a pattern on their lawn. There was only one really major problem with it.

That whole block smells like soembody's using all of them. Without benefit of a water or sewer connection.

Technorati Tags: bizarre art, weird art, yard art, art

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Some People Just Don't Get It

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... No matter what "it" is. Take my neighbor the n00b (please take him... Far away!) for example. Not long ago he came to me offering to "help" with a laptop problem I've got. He'd heard me talking to someone about the problems it's having and how one of the things I needed to do was test the memory by replacing what's in there with known good chips and seeing if that made a difference. He also "overheard" how I didn't have any to use for testing.

So he waltzes into my office the next day and presents me with some RAM chips that he said I could use for my testing. It took me half an hour to explain to him that they were the wrong type. I couldn't possibly use 72pin SIMMS in a a slot made for the small laptop sized DDR chips.

Well. I eventually at least convinced him that they weren't going to work and after a while he left. I knew then that he'd be back because he had this "thoughtful" look on his face. He came back alright. This time he had an SD card. He presented it to me saying that surely this was small enough to fit and that now I could do my test.

After another, longer, conversation which this time included several demonstrations about how there are different types and sizes of memory. And that while I'm sure that it would be possible to build a computer that uses SD cards for memory, I don't believe that anyone has done so to date.

I think he finally accepted my explanation and won't be offering me any more memory chips without at least asking what kind I need. However I could tell by the glazed look in his eyes, reminiscent of a deer caught in the headlights, that he understood almost none of what I said.

Technorati Tags: neighbor, computer, memory test, laptop, wrong way wilson, memory

Posted in Computers, Electronics, Hardware, Misc | No Comments »

Printer Shopping

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I actually don't like shopping for printers but I'm finding that it's a royal pain in the rear to not have at least one working printer around. I hadn't really even given it much though until last summer one printer died and then a few months later the other one became a paperweight because I refuse to spend $35 for ink cartridges that will only last for a couple hundred pages at most.

At first I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, I could find another Cannon BJC-4300 on sale somewhere and that way I could make use of the 6 ink cartridges that I've still got for it but alas, I think there's probably no more of 'em left. I shouldn't be surprised since I got the one I have for $5.00 second hand about 6 or 7 years ago. All it needed then was a new print head and some ink. Great deals like that don't come along very often though.

After a bunch of looking around and not a little bit of sticker shock, I'm beginning to think that this Cannon Bubblejet might just be the way to go.

It's got all the features I need, and more besides because I rarely print anything that needs color, and compared to the other printers I've looked at so far, it's very economical both to buy and to keep supplied with ink.

Technorati Tags: economy, ink, printer, features, cost

Posted in Hardware, Misc | No Comments »

Federal Budget Out Of Control

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I guess it's gone out of vogue to be concerned about the Federal government balancing the budget but I guess I'm old fashioned that way. I think that ANY government, federal or state, needs to balance their budget and that deficit spending is a massive mistake.

All it's doing is mortgaging our future to pay for today. There's something fundamentally wrong with that.

Technorati Tags: president, budget, national debt, spendthrift, government, balanced budget, responsibility, irresponsible, federal, financial

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