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the weight of hardware
Saturday, June 23 2001
I spent most of today going through the things in my room, sorting out what to keep and what to throw away. I have boxes of dumpster-dived electronic junk, most of it obsolete. I have an unusual interest in mechanisms and develop emotional attachments to complex gizmos, even when it's clear I'll never find a use for them. Today, though, I was ruthless. No longer is it enough for a hard drive to work; it has to be an 3.5 inch IDE hard drive. Over time I've noticed that my minimum requirements, the line dictating what I keep and what I throw away, is in a constant state of movement. In the summer of 1998, I kept any motherboard that was at least a 386. Now my criterion is more related to standards. I'll throw away a Pentium motherboard if it's a nonstandard design, but I'll keep a 33 MHz 486 if it's standard.
I piled a bunch of obsolete electronics out in front of the house, including an old low-speed ethernet hub, a working 14 inch SVGA monitor and a gutted full-sized standard AT-style tower case (no one who moves frequently should ever have a full-tower computer). Some dude came along and asked John if he could take that stuff and John said sure. So the guy took it all, saving me a few sneaky dumpster errands.
A long time ago I was into building custom hardware for computers, making it so my computer could do things that no other computer could do. But much as I love to "program in solder," I'm gradually coming to see the value in doing everything in software, taking advantage of the versatile capabilities present in all modern computers. This way I can make something interesting that will work on all machines. The power and flexibility of modern computers has allowed nearly all of human-mediated computer creativity to migrate outside of the realm of hardware design and into packages that weigh nothing and can travel over the internet. The weight of hardware is something that gains extra significance when you're contemplating a move.
John loves it when I work on my car, so today he helped me as I set the valve clearances on the Punch Buggy Rust. But when I was all done the thing ran like shit. I followed the instructions in the Idiot's Guide perfectly, but still I must have done something wrong. It was terribly demoralizing.
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John's older brother Joe flew in from Philadelphia tonight and John picked him up at the airport. If you remember the first time I met John, you'll remember he was with his brother Joe as he checked out my condo. At the time Joe did most of the talking and I was rather struck by his darkly wry sense of humor. Tonight his wryness was all still there, but he was a little stage-shy. John has been telling me for months about Joe's hilarious Altoona comedy act, but every time John asked Joe to perform it, he declined, saying he wasn't in the right mood.
We walked down to McLean's Irish pub in hopes of playing some pool, but the pool table was already spoken for by a group of schteveish couples. So we sat at the bar and drank one beer each. John and I had Redhook and Joe had Bud Lite. "I hate Redhook!" said Joe, "You can taste the hangover in there!"
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