Wednesday 6 August 2003

Pic of the day: Two of my old discarded computer ("computer graveyard" in my living room).

Slippery hard disk slope

So I went to North Corporation, since they do specialize in computer stuff. I don't at all like their attitude when they blamed the phone lines for my computer being unable to stay connected to the Internet, despite my protestations that my other computers worked quite fine. But that's in the past; daughter of a coworker has the computer and seems happy about it. Well, the coworker seems happy. Since she also is cute and female, I guess that must suffice. Anyway, let's get to the point here.

I went to the only specialized computer store in downtown Kristiansand, and asked them to find me an external hard disk drive with at least 120 GB. Actually I don't need that much, since it is only for the anime – the rest fits comfortably on my internal hard disk drive – but it is nice to have some room to grow. That is to say, it would be nice to have the disk in 6 months and NOT find it full. And with an external disk, I should be able to just hook it up to a new computer if the old one needs repair (which it already does) or if I get a new one. (Although the point is to NOT need a new one.) For this purpose, I wanted a hard disk with USB 2 connection. I have several computers with USB connections, the latest has at least two USB 2, and I expect all my future computers to have that too. Well, for the foreseeable future, if any.

The shop guy was quite sympathetic to the cause, and found that they could order just such a disk. However, there was one with 200 GB disk, for only $100 more. That is a substantial increase in storage space, definitely more so than the increase in price. So, after a brief pause for thought, I agreed. The guy however had some problem ordering the thing, so he asked a younger man to help him. This one was fully capable of ordering, but he also noticed that I could get a 250 GB hard disk for only $50 more. Now, that may not be a 66% increase, but it is still a lot of disk space – almost as much as I have already – for a very reasonable extra expense. So after a brief pause for thought, I agreed.

***

The hard disk should be in the shop on Thursday or Friday. I am not going to come to pick it up until Friday, because in this line of work, things almost always take more time than you expect. Actually I would not be surprised if it shows up next week, but I want to drop by on Friday because it would be cool to have it for the weekend. Not that there is actually such a flood of good anime right now ... one a day on average, perhaps, or even slightly less. But the sooner I stop playing DVD jockey, the better. Now perhaps I can go back to saving up an entire series before I burn it.

Or, just as likely, the hardware will fail grandly. After all, 1 of my 2 CD burners stopped working almost immediately (that's why I bought the second), the DVD burner chokes on cheap DVDs, the DVD player in my latest computer died after a few weeks, the previous desktop computer collapsed when I tried to install a high-end graphics card, the one before that was the one that choked on the Internet, the one before that had its only floppy disk drive die horribly the day I brought it home, and the one before that had too many defects to remember offhand (it was the Toshiba). It stands to reason then that something as advanced as a 250 GB external hard disk is very likely to collapse spectacularly, and the shop is very likely to blame it on the computer, or the electricity grid, or the constellations in the sky ... anything to not take responsibility. This is the standard in our line of business, I am afraid.

Still, it has potential for entertainment, not least for you people.