Thursday, August 06, 2009

Seeing

A beautiful day it is! I placed moisture drops in my eyes at 7:30am, and it is now noon and no more have been required. I can see with both eyes; not great, but much better than in a long while. Please cross your fingers for me.
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Obama the electric man. I will give Mr. Obama credit for the electric car initiative; there are many technology breakthroughs out there waiting to happen so as to largely decrease our dependency on foreigh oil as a fuel source. The worlds next generation of kids will likely not be tied to a power or communications grid in any form. Cheap solar energy conversion—and I mean very cheap compared to today's prices for consumer electricity—will generate enough electricity with only three or four hours of sunlight each day to power our future homes. Solar cells will become so efficient that on days when the sun does not shine, enough energy can be generated to keep a house running. Solar power is already a viable alternative in places where ample sunshine is received each day, and it's cost once the equipment is installed is near zero. To boot, the equipment to solar-power a house is rapidly falling in price. A $6k one time investment will now buy the installed system for a 3,000 square foot energy efficient home, and all that will be needed is infrequent maintenance.

Let's get behind the President on this and the health care reform movements; let's make him do it.
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Did I tell you it is a beautiful day?! I am getting some things done that have largely been ignored for a month, and I hope later on to get to Flickr and do some catching up on my dear friend's photos. I have been viewing them when opportunity arose, but I have done but little commenting.
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Beginning tomorrow, I may go AWOL once more for a few days if my eyes hold up. For the past several months, I have been collecting parts to build the last computer I intend to construct (that is what I said about the this one). All the pieces have been purchased piecemeal from online retailers that were having closeouts and open box sales, no taxes, free shipping, and some were acquired with points I have built up from doing online surveys for the past ten years. The only part that is cutting edge technology is the cpu, an AMD Phenom II triple core unit. The pc I am now using was built by me exactly five years ago and could possibly be upgraded, but the price for the new one is significantly lower than an upgrade that still would not be as good (fast) as the new one; a two-core cpu upgrade would cost more than $400 for a used part (the new cpu is less than $100), and the entire new computer will be not much more than that when all is said and done and I will have warranties on everything. This computer I am using to write this cost more than $1500 to build in 2004 less a monitor, and it has been trouble free except for crappy software. Why am I doing it? Photo editing is the main reason; with today's too feature-rich software that hogs memory and cpu cycles, it is almost a must if you want to get anything done before the coffee becomes cold. Besides, when you get everything in place, plug in the power cord, and see the motherboard bios do its self tests and beeps that everything is ok, and when the boot screen flashes on the monitor, it is very satisfying, much like the thrill of having sex for the first time in a long while (not quite that good, actually).
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Yep, a beautiful day!
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2 comments:

Maggie said...

Hi
Happy to see you are having a wonderful day. No pun intended. Well.... maybe some intended since I am such a perverse, contrarian. :-)).

You are such a great geek, my friend! That ability to build your computer is something I really, really envy! Not to mention your expertise with those memory eating softwares that fix fotos.

Just got back last nite but could not resist coming to your blog to bop you! Am too busy, as usual.

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Glad to see you back, my friend. I have missed your insights and charming humor. :-)

PsP has not been doing well with my video card I had to buy for the 24" monitor and a lot of other things seem to run better on multi-core processors. Building a computer has to be easier than building a backyard pond. You may as well get started on your own pc build. ;-)))

Thanks and take care.

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