DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

This week has been a drag. I think I need a cheer transplant; mine seems to have atrophied.

I’m most of the way through a series of workstation upgrades. I can’t justify a new dual-processor G5, but I feel pretty good about installing a CPU upgrade, faster video card, and additional RAM. Total cost of the upgrades is under $500, whereas the G5 would cost about $2500. So I’ll be getting about 1/10 the performance of a new system for, umm, 1/5 the price.

No, it makes no sense. My financial decisions rarely do. (Hey, wanna buy some Syquest stock?)

The CPU upgrade went too smoothly. I mean, I just plugged it in, and it worked. What’s up with that? I’m supposed to have near-death experiences when I do hardware maintenance. I’m supposed to make desperate phone calls to experts, late-night runs to the electronics store, and offer prayers to the gods of Sts. Torvalds and Jobs.

Fortunately my first attempt at an LCD upgrade was a dismal failure. I’ve had a mismatched pair of LCDs for a few years, and decided to buy a second unit of the bigger one so I’d have a matched set. But then I bought the wrong screen.

Here, see if you can do better than me. See if you can tell these model numbers apart:

• 1900
• 1801

The difference is subtle, but if you look closely you’ll see it.

The replacement’s replacement just arrived. I’ll set it up shortly. I want to publish this first in case that workstation implosion I’m overdue for finally catches up with me. There’s nothing quite as cathartic as having something really disastrous happen to justify having felt bad where there was no obvious reason for it.

Oh, wait — this is election season. Scratch the line about not having a reason to feel unwell and depressed.