dust bunnies and full height hard drives - Thursday December 30 1999
Today I focused more on better organizing the space in the Shaque, throwing out lots of old equipment and making room for two computer workstations. I've decided to keep the old Macintosh in operation so my mother can play games or surf the web while my Dad does his typing on the new machine.
Making this room meant making some compromises with my packrat nature. I surveyed my stuff and realized I'd never be using the vast majority of it. It was worthless junk. What good could full height ten megabyte hard drives serve me? Did it even matter that they were perfectly functional? The most valuable thing about them was their lowest tech parts, the big stepper motors that might be useful in robotics projects. I put them with the other things to be thrown away in a pile outside the Shaque.
I realized something interesting while I was cleaning up: the lower the technology, the better something preserves its value over time. An analogue VU meter, for example, will always be useful and will always cost about $7 at Radio Shack. A standard composite RCA monochrome monitor is less useful than it used to be, but it still makes for valuable test equipment when working with video signals. A 286 PC motherboard, on the other hand, is completely worthless. The most useful things on such a board are actually the little black plastic jumpers. 256 Kilobit DRAMs are a joke these days, even if they are socketed. I threw out all my 8088 equipment except for one extensively-customized hobby machine on which I'd learned everything I know about PC interfacing. I just couldn't bring myself to throw away such a trusty old friend.
Towards the end of the afternoon, I had a huge pile of condemned electronics outside the Shaque and a new place to set up the Macintosh inside. The weather was pleasant enough to leave the doors open and circulate some fresh air.
Kim and I took Sophie and Fred across the road to Pileated Peak and walked all the way up to the top. Somewhere along the ridge Fred found a funky old rotten fungus and began rolling in it. When he was done, Sophie did the same. The perfume was a heavy, musty funk, the kind that sets off my histamines. Evidently dogs like that smell; how else can you explain both of them rolling enthusiastically in it?
My old Temple of Laepohm, what remains of it. I built it in 1982.
Kim on Pileated Peak
Sophie on Pileated Peak
Fred on Pileated Peak
Me among the white pines of Horizon Field, which I planted in the Spring of 1985.