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Saturday, June 30, 2007

Happy Birthday Johnny

Took the family to see the latest Bruce Willis Die Hard movie this evening. Even took my daughter who definitely prefers frilly girly movies. It was great, though I embarrassed her continually by laughing out loud. But it was a comedy, wasn't it? I wonder where they got the freeway to destroy. Yippee Ki Yay.

Johnny wanted a big LCD monitor for his birthday, but it was too big for my budget, so we compromised and bought him a large selection of little stuff. We started a week ago with an industrial cube shaped chassis the size of an end table. Then we ordered a used motherboard from someone on the overclockers internet forum. Next were some parts from Newegg, and some special standoffs (for the industrial chassis) from another Internet supply house (parts $3, shipping $5). Today we followed up with a regular computer chassis from Iguana Micro, a local computer shop. We tried "Surplus Gizmos", but their selection was pretty meager. The stuff was either really old, or weird/dirty/ugly, or actually valuable, which meant it cost more than we wanted to spend. Once everything arrives he claims he will have enough parts to assemble four computers. Right now he only has one, a P2 system screwed down to a piece of plywood. He has got it running Windows XP, and it actually runs. He continues to surprise me with what he is able to accomplish. Meanwhile we have the parts for these four computers scattered around three or four rooms of the house. You can't even walk in the family room, the floor is covered with bits and pieces.

His siblings got him a CD (Russian Circles?) and a book: "Zombie Survival Guide".

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