Garage Sales and eBay

Last week the family went on a foray into the local neighborhood garage sales. I accompanied them, with the hopes of bringing home some "new" computer stuff to play with. I must say I was quite successful. Total results:

• Compaq tower/monitor/peripherals, 900MHz, ~15GB hd w/ Win98, 256MB, and an extra 8GB hd - $25


• Older tower/monitor/peripherals, 866MHz, 10GB w/ unregistered copy of WinXP, 512MB, and an 80GB hd installed - $15


• Big box of electronic goodies - $10

I was a bit torn on whether or not to get the Compaq. I decided $25 was an acceptable price for a machine that might make a decent linux server.
The box was originally a bunch of stuff in two boxes, and the guy was asking $2 per item. As I was looking through to see what I thought would be worth $2, he came up and said, "Tell you what, guys, I'll give you both boxes for $10". SOLD! Considering I had seen at least one external hd enclosure and a few (working?) wireless mice.
The XP computer was sitting inside the owner's garage, not easily visible from the street. And the sign on it indicated that it had been marked down from $25. And, yes, when I got home, XP notified me that I had 28 days to register my copy. Oops. Oh, well, linux works just fine.

Now, back to the box. When I started actually looking through it, I found all sorts of goodies. Two working external 3.5" hd enclosure, two working 2.5" enclosures, several camera card readers, four wireless mice (two working, two non), two Geek Squad flash drives (1GB working, 2GB not), and a few other items. But the major find was an iGo Stowaway, a bluetooth fold-up keyboard for your PDA or smartphone. At time of writing, if you market it right, it can go for as much as $60, including priority mail shipping. So, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to recoup my entire costs from the garage sale with one eBay sale. Cool or what?

If you're interested, I've also put some of the other items I'm not interested in up for auction. Here's a link: eternicode's eBay auctions. Before clicking through, though, be sure to check the date on this post; the auctions have a little less than two days left. I may also put some of the card readers up there, so watch out for those, too.

IRC Amusement

I normally leave an IRC chat window open all the time on FreeNode channel #web. Imagine my amusement when I find this little tidbit on my idling client:

Names blotted out to protect the guilty XD

Stupid computer design

My sister has a Dell Latitude C600. Naturally, I'm the family tech support.

Now, the C600 has one major flaw: it comes with only one, unsecured, integrated USB port. Well, it's secured, if you call "secured" tied to the motherboard through the four pins that it sends data through. Recently, this USB port became loose. Then it stopped working. Turns out that, when it was loose, the jiggling broke one of the four pins that connected it to the computer, rendering the port itself completely useless.

The computer has two PCMCIA CardBus slots, arranged in one-on-top-of-the-other fashion. One of these (the bottom one, naturally) has been taken up by an Ethernet adapter that, in turn, blocks the top slot. Our first solution to the USB port problem was "buy a cardbus card!". It would be nice, since my sister is madly in love with her Wacom graphite tablet, but would be even better if she could do the USB and ethernet at the same time. So we bought a 4-port USB card and a strange-looking USB-to-Ethernet adapter.

It works, but the 4-port USB card requires additional power to work at all. Guess where it gets this power? From a power cord, which came with it, that plugs into an existing USB port. And, with the one USB port on the notebook gone (yeah, I snapped it out...oops), the only way this'll work is if the power cord plugs into another computer's USB port.

Fortunately, we have two other computers (a desktop at the same area she frequently works in, and my notebook which is usually with me at class, etc) which she can plug into. Unfortunately, this ties the two major things she does with her computer to an existing computer with a free USB port.

I hate old technology.

Contact your Senators, ask them to oppose ENDA

The AFA has sent out an email to their subscribers today alerting us that the ENDA has made it past the US House, and is going to be voted on soon in the Senate. This bill is a piece of homosexual activism, and essentially will result in the government reaching its hand into private businesses and mandating that employers set aside their personal religious convictions when choosing who to hire. The email:

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has passed the U.S. House and Senator Edward Kennedy is now leading the push for a vote in the U.S. Senate. ENDA is aimed at providing heightened protections for a particular sexual behavior - homosexuality. It would grant special consideration on the basis of "sexual orientation" that would not be extended to other employees in the workplace.
ENDA violates employers' and employees' Constitutional freedoms of religion, speech and association. The proposed legislation would prohibit employers from taking their deeply held beliefs into account when making personnel decisions. This would pose an unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into people's lives.

ENDA would approvingly bring private behavior considered immoral by many into the public square. By declaring that all sexual preferences are equally valid, ENDA would change national policy supporting marriage and family.

It's obvious that the real agenda behind the innocuously named Employment Non-Discrimination Act is a push to enshrine homosexuality in national policy. This dangerous legislation would dramatically expand the government's reach into your work place and create unnecessary work-place conflicts and lawsuits. ENDA is a sweeping employer mandate to create special new legal protections based on "sexual orientation" (or "perceptions").

Don't let this bill make it past the Senate. Email your senators and ask them to oppose the ENDA. AFA's even been kind enough to write a response for you, and give you the capabilities to edit it. All you need to do is sign it and click "send".

Believe it or not, one email can make a difference.

If you're interested in reading the bill yourself, it's available online. Go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and do a Bill search for "HR 3685". At time of writing, the most recent version is "Placed on Calendar in Senate".