Oh, the Joys of a New PC!

It's been a blogless few days. Not because the creative juices (what little there are) have dried up but because of Mrs B's Mother! Now, let me say I've never met the lady and am hardly likely to as she died last year. What she did, however, was left her only daughter a few quid and the aforesaid daughter, being of benificent nature, has decided to invest some in technology for yours truly.

Now, as some of you might realise, I am a bit of a techno-freak (geek! I hear you cry). I spend a lot of my day with my computer and Mrs B uses hers quite a bit as well. She had already said she would like me to have a new one and made the fatal mistake of telling me to get whatever I wanted! The friction burns I got from rubbing my hands with glee are healing nicely now and I had a lovely time discussing the alternatives of custom-building with my local computer store, Az-Tech Computing (Hello, Ash, that mention has to be worth at least 5% discount!). We discussed loads of alternatives and I think I've got my mind made up.

For those of a technical bent, the spec is as follows:

Antec P182 Case
CoolerMaster eXtreme Power RP-650-PCAP - power supply - 650 Watt
Asus Commando P965 Motherboard With Heat Spreading Copper Pipe – Up to 8GB RAM (Dual Gigabit LAN Controller/Firewire/Sound/USB)
Intel Core-2-Quad 2.4GHz Quad Core Processor 8MB Cache with Go Stepping Technology
OCZ 4GB Gold Plated Heat Spreading 800MHz RAM
Seagate 320GB SATA2 Hard Disk x 2 (640GB)
Western Digital Raptor 36GB 10,000 RPM 16MB
Cache 2 x Samsung 20x SATA Dual Layer DVD+-RW XFX
Geforce 8800GTS Edition 640MB DDR3 RAM/ DUAL DVI

Having also got my super-duper 24" monitor as well, I should be set up fairly nicely for a while now. The operating system will run on the Raptor drive which promises response times twice as fast as conventional hard drives and keeps it all nice and whizzy whilst utilising 2 other hard drives means I can back up all my writing, images etc.

Anyway, all of that hasn't been taking the time, it's been Mrs B's fault. She'd got it into her head that she wanted one of the new desktop-replacement laptops so that involved lots of research which culminated in an extremely large box arriving home with us yesterday evening. The lap-top (and I use the term loosely, as it weighs 17lbs) is pretty wonderful as well but the initial excitement soon wore off as we were faced with setting up all the programs and transferring everything from her current PC.

I'd heard varying stories of incorporating Vista machines into an XP network and was optimistic that this would be a simple task. Of course, working with Vista is a new experience for me and, needless to say, it didn't go smoothly. Eventually however, everything talked to everything else and then came the boring work of transferring data, installing programs and all the other things that need be done. I eventually left Mrs B still at it at 5 this morning and retired to bed. Today has seen almost everything sorted and has at least forearmed me when the time comes to do mine.

Like anyone with a couple of kids and a mortgage, money was always a bit tight and I never really felt I was worth it when it came to spending a lot of money on myself. The inheritance has meant that we can now do a few things that we have always wanted to, but couldn't afford, and that's great. Being able to build my ideal computer has always been a dream of mine and it looks like that particular dream will be coming true soon. Only another 20-odd thousand to go!

On another completely different track, Terry Pratchett has a new book published this week. It's called Making Money and is a kind of sequel to Going Postal, involving the former conman and arch-swindler, Moist von Lipwig who, by a convoluted set of circumstances, became Head Postmaster of Ankh-Morpork. He basically introduces the first paper money in the City so, to me, the book is a perfect combination of 2 of my interests i.e. Pratchett and banknotes.

The wife of the guy that illustrates his books runs an internet store of Pratchettiana (?) so I've done what I normally do and ordered from her. The benefit of doing it this way is that every new Pratchett that arrives carries the author's signature within and adds to my collection of signed first editions.

For those that have never read any Discworld stories, I recommend you try at least one. Everyone should be introduced to characters such as Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler and Otto Shriek.

C.M.O.T. Dibbler is best described as Ankh-Morpork's most enterprisingly unsuccessful entrepreneur and has fingers in many money-making ventures. When Dibbler's business plans fail, he falls back to selling (mostly) 'pies with personality' and 'pig' sausages on the streets of Ankh-Morpork. He has been accused of 'not being able to make both ends meat.'

Otto, on the other hand, is a vampire and a professional newspaper photographer ( "Iconographer" in Discworld parlance). His job allows him to indulge his suicidal fascination with light. Otto is one of the "Black Ribboners", vampire "teetotallers" who have forsworn drinking human "b-vord"(This stands for "blood", but don't say it around him. He might get offended). Due to the supernatural nature of their "addiction", Black Ribboners must replace their craving for "the b-vord" with something else; in Otto's case, he has become obsessed with light and photography. Since sunlight reduces vampires to dust until someone administers a drop of blood, the flash salamander he uses (which gives off stored sunlight) constantly causes Otto problems. He now carries a small vial of animal blood on a chain around his neck, which smashes and reconstitutes him if his salamander goes off too brightly.

As you can see, normal, everyday characters, whose world and mine neatly dovetail into a reality of inconsequential, but highly amusing, chaos.

© BertieBassett Enterprises Inc. 2007