2007-03-30 Dell

Dell Pentium 4 1.7Ghz PC with 256M RAM and a 40G HD. Has the funky paired memory with blanks required for unused slots. Bit of a pain. Machine had Windows XP install and hung for no real reason late in boot process, seemingly just prior to login. Eh, who cares, Knoppix is the answer. (But then also note that for some rather large set of computing machinary related questions or problems, Knoppix is the answer). Points to note on contents of HD:

• Family had Canon PowerShot A60 and curiously neglected to take a picture of the computer or of the box the Canon came in. How weird, though I suspect they had a prior machine when they bought the camera. Zero points for self-referentiality anyway. Pics of kids and Temple Sinai all over the HD, in fact everywhere except the My Pictures directory.
• Family also have some form of scanner and was digitizing various older pics and diagrams etc.
• No digital audio or video media.
• No word docs etc.
• No porn except for the possibly inadvertant image file in cache named penis_enlargement_stretcher[1].jpg.
• Beanie Babies and Baseball in the cache directory, how curiously appropriate, both are completely pointless by design and each markets multiple functionally exchangable instances of the same thing.

Pic shows what might be the family dog winking with one eye and getting redeye with the other. Maybe it knew it was destined to have this picture shown on the interwebs??

2007-03-29 Athlon

Compaq Athlon 1.3GHz with 500M RAM and 75G HD. Has a whole family's worth of users on it. Yum, delicious found data. Machine bluescreened on boot and seems to have io errors on the disk. But then also the main 71G partition is absolutely stuffed full, zero bytes available. Highlights:

• Program Files/Microsoft AntiSpyware is 4.1 G in size.
• An older male offspring has complete downloads in watchable but annoyingly bad quality of The O.C..
• Also a 90 minute porn movie, Ninfas en Hawaii, again pretty sketchy rip from DVD, seems like it was torrented. Two differently named copies present on HD.
• 10 or so topless pics from some female acquaintance of aforementioned offspring, She is referred to in AIM logs as his "hot cousin from Anyville". Note I changed the name of the town to protect the terminally clueless. She seems very proud of her mammary glands.
• Assorted porn pics sprinkled throughout caches, AIM logs and other random places.
• Lots of home movies involving the various younger offspring, edited and snazzed up with small stories etc and MSpaint style intertitles.
• Lots of AIM accounts with 4036 sessions recorded, along with pictures etc. A totally randomly chosen one (really!) starts like this (anonymized again):

   
     Friend (10:00:07 AM): yo
     User   (10:00:09 AM): yo
     User   (10:00:11 AM): what up killa
     Friend (10:00:15 AM): nm u
     User   (10:00:19 AM): nm'
     Friend (10:00:37 AM): you were supposed to call me yesterday douche bag
     User   (10:00:48 AM): i know cocksucker
     User   (10:00:54 AM): if i had something to tell you yet, i would have
     Friend (10:01:13 AM): what about the summer shit
     Friend (10:01:18 AM): send me an email
     User   (10:01:50 AM): oh yeah
     User   (10:01:55 AM): aight, i'll get on it
     User   (10:02:00 AM): those things are hard to find
     Friend (10:02:20 AM): wha d o you mean
     User   (10:02:58 AM): like,  it's  hard  to  find  good college
                           programs that aren't like all work for five weeks
     Friend (10:03:13 AM): oh yeah
     Friend (10:03:26 AM): is it 5 weeks
     User   (10:03:53 AM): i dont think so, how long do you want to go for
     User   (10:03:54 AM): about
     Friend (10:04:30 AM): i dunno whatever
     Friend (10:04:43 AM): not really long like 7 weeks though
     Friend (10:05:02 AM): are there choices
     User   (10:05:26 AM): yeah, but im still lookingh
     User   (10:05:34 AM): i'll email you all the choices by tonight
     Friend (10:06:22 AM): ok ggt
     Friend signed off at 10:06:24 AM.
  

  Thus do the high-flyers of tomorrow spend their time today.
• Lots of crude MSpaint drawn images.
• Firefox installed, heavy usage on both it and IE.
• 1500+ iTunes plus assorted other P2P acquired music. Summary by "artist":

      389 Compilations
       92
       79 Outkast
       74 The Notorious B.I.G_
       71 Dave Matthews Band
       40 Van Morrison
       38 Bruce Springsteen
       34 DMX
       28 Creedence Clearwater Revival
       27 The Offspring
       24 Dropkick Murphys
       22 The Beastie Boys
       20 Bob Dylan
       19 The Jam
       18 Green Day
       17 Sublime
       17 Jimi Hendrix
       16 LWL
       16 Jerky Boys
       16 Bob Marley
       15 Paul Weller
       15 Chili Peppers
       15 Blink-182
       14 Red Hot Chili Peppers
       14 NaS
       14 Metallica
       14 J-Kwon
       14 Jay-Z
       13 Pearl Jam
       13 Lit
       13 John Mayer
       13 Incubus
       13 Guns N' Roses
       13 Bob Marley & The Wailers
       13 Black Eyed Peas
       13 Barenaked Ladies
       13 Alien Ant Farm
       12 Will Smith
       12 Nirvana
       12 New Found Glory
       12 Midtown
       12 Matchbox Twenty
       11 The Strokes
       11 The Streets
       11 Death Cab For Cutie
       11 Counting Crows
       10 Jojo
       10 Franz Ferdinand 

• 3000+ mp3s, too lazy to document them at present.

2007-03-28 Art

Unknown art of unknown provenance. It has been donated to somebody who may appreciate it.

2007-03-27 Wine Rack

A wine rack made from that modular wireframe shelving system whose name currently eludes me. It is complete with all the little plastic collets required fopr assembly (in the a tupperware box!), but I think it has never been assembled. Useful for a friend or a stranger via craiglist I suppose, we have no need for a wine rack.

Update: Traded to a wine-store owner for some fine wine but we kept the tupperware.

2007-03-24 Books

A pile of faintly interesting books. The salacious exposé into the secret ways and workings of tools is of interest to certain relatives who collect hand tools and the Bell System book is of interest generally, because all old Bell System stuff is cool.

2007-03-17 Delta Saw

A Delta compound mitre saw in rather nice condition. It is not the most recent type, which I think is a good thing as it feels pretty solid. It runs nice and smoothly of course and the hinge-down action is good. The blade is carbide tipped and fine for good number of cuts. This will be pressed into service in place of the previous one that had some issues.

2007-03-17 Dell P4

Most of a Dell Pentium 4 PC. No HD, cpu or memory. I have one exactly like this that has a bad power supply, hence this will result in one working machine plus a spare motherboard. Fine and dandy.