Bwuh

[altivo]

Went to work today. Not perhaps the wisest move, but since there were only three work days left in the week (Friday being a holiday) I wanted to make sure my desk didn't end up buried. No untoward demands were made but by 4 pm I was done for and left early. Tomorrow afternoon there's a consortial meeting I must attend, as I'm on the agenda, and it's that W day again, so I'm going to at least try to get some actual sleep tonight without waking up every hour afraid of suffocating.

Needed a couple of very specific disk drives and a power supply for some machines at work. Aftermarket resellers wanted two hooves and an ear for them, so I went to Ebay where I found plenty to choose from and ordered tested pull-outs for less than a quarter of what the aftermarketeers were asking. This equipment is not "mission critical" to our "business." It's just convenient to keep it running as is for a while rather than buying whole replacements for it.

Off to bed with me... flop!

Comments

[hgryphon.livejournal.com]

*makes you some hot apple cider* (or whatever plush horses drink?)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Cooking again? Twice in one week?

Apple cider is always good. Thanks.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

how about hot blackcurrant juice? :)

*offers you some*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. *sips quietly*

[soanos.livejournal.com]

*scritches behind ears*

Bedtime for me now, too. *lays down by th bed and guards your rest*

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

it's that W day again

I hate Wednesdays as well. It's so non-descript. Of course it does not help that I have to go to a site I dislike today as well. :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's just the evening hours that really get to me. I'm very much a morning critter, like all horses. The sun goes down and so do I. ;p

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Well, I am unusual for a zebra then... :o

I awaken in the evening time.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough most computer stuff on ebay here is cheaper at the local computer mart :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sometimes that's true, but in this case not. The requirements were very specific.

Replacing a power supply with a generic version works electronically but can be very inconvenient if the unit doesn't slide right into the original cabinet. I don't want to mess with "adapting" anything. Fixing computers really isn't my job. So I want an exact OEM replacement or at least a clone. Those were $50 to $100 on the marketplace, but only $19 to $25 on Ebay. With shipping it came to $28 and it was shipped same day.

The other requirement was even more specific. These are hot-pluggable drives to go in a specific older disk tower made by Compaq (actually a DEC design but rebranded to Compaq when they took over I think.) If I had old carriers then I could probably insert a drive of the appropriate type, but you need the very specific slide in carrier for the drive and I don't have it. HP no longer sells replacements. The aftermarket prices were absurd, as high as $350 for an 18.2 GB drive in carrier. Best I could find was $55. Got two on Ebay for $18 each, guaranteed working.

The library is paying for the power supply, but the disk tower is essentially my personal item now so those were my dollars. Not about to pay the prices that commercial buyers pay without even questioning it. ;p

[saythename.livejournal.com]

We may have real problems about how we look at politics.

But your work ethic...no one can deny it.

Next time stay home though.

I'll spot you my Conservative Work Ethic.

XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure we have real problems with politics either. We do see things from different angles, but we are seeing the same thing most of the time. It's like that old story about the blind men and the elephant, I'm sure. I strive all the time for breadth of vision, but I'm sure I miss it at times. Politicians (the real ones, of whatever party or color) miss it almost all the time.

[thedeere.livejournal.com]

I love Ebay, it's a real life-saver for finding oddball bits and pieces. :)

I got an RC airplane the other day at an estate auction for 10 bucks. It's got 3 spares of every part, but no transmitter or receiver to steer it with! So dreading 'em being 300 bucks, I hit up Ebay. Sure enough, they ARE a few hundred, except a used one I found... That's alot better than I need, and was only 30 bucks! YES! Anxiously awaiting delivery. :)

Glad to hear you found the right bits!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The expensive part of flying RC airplanes is the liability insurance you probably should have. ;p

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Hey, and I am hoping to be able to buy a RC helicopter soon... Think about spinning blades of DEATH in the hands of a mad zebra... :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The thing about zebras is you can never be sure whether they are mad as in angry or mad as in crazy. Or maybe both. ;p

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Usually it is the latter, sometimes both.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. Tired horsie. *brings a hot water bottle*

eBay has saved me some money with laptop spares too. It is silly how cheaply you can get some bits there.

Also, it is good for retro gamer fart like me. The problem is to not buy too much stuff... :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is retro stuff too, now that they don't make Alphas any more. Amusing, really. They released a new version of the native operating system last year, but you can only buy used hardware to run it on. The used stuff goes for high prices too. I was lucky to inherit mine from the library consortium. They didn't want it, even when I offered to turn it into a web server for them. I'd wanted my own RISC machine ever since back in the early 90s when I managed IBM RS6000 boxes with AIX UNIX on them, so I shut up and took the stuff.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

IBM RS6000 with AIX? Well, that is that my partner used to work with
back when he was working as an IT consultant.

He is currently out of job tho... :(

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep. I've worked with a lot of different computing environments over the years, but my three favorites, more or less in order, seem to be VAX and VMS, RS6000 and AIX, and the Amiga and its brilliantly eccentric AmigaDOS/Intuition environment. As both programmer and user, those have seemed the most powerful and liberating environments I have used.

I'm fond of IBM mainframes largely by nostalgia and the fact that they did so much with what was ultimately so little (memory and storage were tiny in spite of the huge boxes they came in back then.) I love Linux for its sheer pretension and David against Goliath history. The old TRS-80 and CP/M systems are impressive for their durability and simplicity.

But to me, VMS, AIX, or AmigaOS (in spite of the unstable applications) are truly liberating. The fact that VMS runs equally well on three utterly disparate platforms (the VAX, the Alpha, the IA64) is proof of its well balanced design.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Amiga <3

I still play around with them, and I love them dearly. ^^