Misc. Ramblings

It's that time..... The time in between benchmarking our 8th graders to see what they know (or don't know) and standardized state testing. Which of course if HIGH STRESS time for all teachers!

So, what do I do to relieve stress? Glad you asked! I dabble in technology of course. There's been an unexpected round of computer work which paid for and got me started on a parallel round of computer upgrades around the house. I've been writing about my desktop and server upgrades, but this is not about that.

It started out as a simple call to help a co-worker's husband with a laptop that he'd been given. It was an old 133mhz bus, PIII little laptop that he wanted to get going, but wasn't worth enough to invest any real money into. To make a long story-short, that machine died very quickly and he ended up with a far better replacement; a Dell Latitude D610 which was an older, but still very usable Pentium M based machine that just needed some upgrades. We ended up putting about $150 into it, which included a new WD 250Gb HDD, 2Gb of RAM, and a complete reload. In the end, he was VERY happy and going to town on his new wireless ecstasy.....right up until his desktop developed a catastrophic failure that very week!

So then, it was off to the races: 2 different HP desktops with integrated video that showed to be failed "southbridge" chips, 2 laptop purchases, and a sold battery later, I made enough (with a little bit of added luck) to have enough to do some personal upgrading as well. Let me explain:

• While I was looking for a machine for a client, I came across an IBM T43p (yes, that's a "p" on the end of the T43), on Craig's List for $250.... maxed hardware specs, and Windows 7 loaded! So this replaced my resurrected T42 with the 15" Flexview screen which went...
• To Josh to replace his A31 which went to......
• Camille's Uncle Dean who needed something to replace his REALLY aging A22m. In the meantime, the machine that I had bought to go to him, but killed in shipping, gave up some parts to go to a "barebones" T42 that was sold to a client and ended up partially paying for the T43p that started this whole mess! Make sense?

I'm currently in the process of putting together client laptop number 2 that will pay for the rest of the upgrade. So basically it's a chess game. All the moves ultimately end up paying for the technology upgrades that happen around here, so that those don't have an impact on our real-world budget!