Man vs. Machine

Forget what I wrote a couple of days ago about the weather. It's bitterly cold again, with a wind chill already at -34. The wind is howling, windows are rattling, and the gutters on the roof are singing--sounds reminiscent from the 1998 tornado. At least we aren't getting the blizzard conditions that are raging east of here. The wind is miserable, but we don't have to shovel snow like certain people in the Owatonna area. But that's not what I intended to write about tonight. Instead, how about Larry's purchase of...

...a new HP Pavillion computer! Wonderful! Exciting! Current! State-of-the-art! Too new for any exisitng wireless card to meet the specs for this fantabulous collection of bytes, gigs, rams, and whoop-de-dos. Since this is a desk top, not a laptop, a wireless card is not standard equipment, so yesterday Dad/Paco took a couple of extra trips to Best Buy (aaaahhhhhhh! Just the name of the place gives me the willies!) to find a card that will work with this phenomenally high-tech gadget. Notice I said "a couple of trips". As some of you have experienced recently, nothing works out the first time in the retail business world. And in this case, not the second time, either.

So Dad/Paco talked to Stu "Computer Man" Hanson, and they concluded a cable connected from the household hub to the new computer in the basement would be the answer. Fortunately, Dad/Paco had an extra 500 foot length of cable lying around for just such a situation. To his credit, he strung the cable between the upstairs computer room and the basement bedroom-that-once-was-Charlie's before I got home from work today. You can see how neat and tidy it looks.

Be honest...are there any women you know who would deliberately invent something dependent on a spaghetti-bowl of wires to make it function? This is 2008, people! The wireLESS age! Not to mention there are four or more cables that came with the new computer that seem to have no use whatsoever. Despite the lack of logic on the part of Hewlett-Packard, it's a fine and dandy piece of electronic equipment, with a wide screen and enough pixels to show vivid, colorful, and cute details on uploaded grandbaby photographs. Here's Dad/Paco, showing off his hardware...er, His new computer.