Tuesday 1 October 2002

Pic of the day: Going, going ...

Formatting day

I think today would be a good day to write short and factual. Because it's already way past midnight, for instance. I spent much of the evening formatting the North computer and re-installing Windows ME on it, so that I can give it to someone I don't know. The daughter of a coworker had an old machine that, after the installation of Win98, had room for no more and generally did not work. (The phrase "Mary had a little RAM" comes to mind.) This machine should fit her needs better, as long as she doesn't need to stay online while doing any heavy work. (The machine drops Internet connection too frequently, regardless of what modem is used. It is pretty clearly a fault with the main board, and the shop refused to even consider that, instead blaming my phone line. So I, and my workplace, stopped shopping at North Corporation.)

I haven't used the machine for months. I had forgotten how much unique information was on it (almost nothing). I had forgotten how many hard disk partitions it had (2). Even so, there is this tiny little sadness at letting it go, like parting with an old friend. An old friend who has been dead for ten months and lying on my living room floor. OK, not much sadness actually. I guess it just felt a bit strange.

Besides, I like to give away stuff. Preferably to people I know, yes, but family ties kinda helps. OK, preferably to young women it seems. But even so.

I guess now that I've written about it, I'm not going to get any reward in Heaven for giving this gift. That's what the Lord Jesus said about such things. Then again, even should I come to Heaven, I don't think there will be wild celebrations for me shuffling off a machine I haven't used for almost a year. My biggest sacrifice was actually the time I couldn't play DAoC because I was doing this stuff on my desk instead. Again, I suspect the heavenly rewards for not playing DAoC a few hours are rather moderate.

***

Well, that was that. And uploading 3 months of old journal entries, picking 1 file at a time (1 diary and 1 picture per day for 93 days, plus some auxilliary files) from a list and uploading them from a HTML page because I can't get FTP because I can't pay because I can't get PayPal to understand that Magnus Itland and MAGNUS ITLAND (as of my credit card) are the same person. Since PayPal has such a strong position – near monopoly – in money transfer for very small and / or non-profit web sites, it is understandable that they don't bother to bother. If people want so badly to pay, they can get a new credit card that complies with our arbitrary rules. "It's not like we give a clod. Our customers chose us because we were cheap, not because we're doing our job."

So that's where my evening went. My job, you remember, I am not supposed to write about. I think all parts involved shall be happy about that.