. Spinning .

Ah, it’s not a question of tradition or romance. And the prices have come down within reach. It’s not a case of fighting the onslaught of change or resistance to modern technology.

The Book rises over the Kindle, the Nook, et al, for this: it can be safely left on the table beside a hospital bed without fear of theft or confusion. It can be picked up by anyone, any of his visitors who are willing to sit and read to him. A continuing narrative stopped not by button but bookmark, a thin slip of paper holding the place.

Wife, son and brother, sisters and an occasional temporarily-approved friend. Each know the mechanics of opening a book, flipping a page, reading. Even an aide may get antsy herself, go through the motions, her voice carrying the story on through conflicts no worse than what the man goes through just lying there on the bed. He gets tired, frustrated, scared in uncomfortable, pinned down like a butterfly day after day. His vista a wide-open expanse of the ceiling with the occasional head popping through like a cloud in his sky.

He escapes into dreams in his sleep. But he needs more to escape while awake.

When faced with the cost of a new PC (really, the Mac Mini for $700 plus insurance) I did one more run through of J’s PC. It really felt like the problem centered on the on/off switch, but with this Acer Aspire layout, it was nearly impossible to check it out, or completely eliminate anything else as the problem.

I’m glad I gave it one more try. It was indeed the damn button. The on/off button is a flat triangle about an inch large that is on one corner of the top of the case. There is very little resistance when you press this “area” which is really what it is, since it’s not really a button. I imagined something beneath the surface made contact with a certain amount of pressure, but even looking at it from the inside gave me no real indication of what was contacting what to turn the machine on. I made a wild guess, put on a dab of hot melt at a point where a bit of a lip held in the chip, and voila!

But this kind of thing annoys me. It is just another example of the poorly design and engineering that goes into something these days. The whole case is a farce. Even the side panels which can be tricky until you learn the proper way to hold them while sliding them in place are ridiculously aggravating on this machine.

Oh yeah, I’m happy that all it cost was a week of my time and a dab of hot melt glue, but I was already getting excited at the thought of a new Mac Mini.

Well I’m trying my darnedest to not only find the problem but to somehow fix it at a reasonable cost, but J’s Acer PC is built to work only with what God gave it.

I did get the power supply tester and it shows that the power supply is working just fine. That leaves the possibility of the on/off button and connection, or the whole motherboard itself. Sounded like I should be able to transfer the innerds into another case (which have gone up considerably in cost lately) but Acer builds to Acer, and then changes design so that the new cases don’t quite work with the motherboard configuration of this PC. The connections from the on/off switch are also a bit odd–and in an all-in-one plug though I suppose I could rewire it. The other problem is that it doesn’t have a reset switch, nor a main on/off to the power supply (which is why I had to spring for the p/s tester). I also managed to get a connection adapter kit that may allow me to grab some data off of J’s nearly empty 320 gig hard drive.

So once again, as happens every two to three years, I’m at a crossroads of decision. Right now, with the price of PCs I’m looking at the long term (again, two to three years is long-term) picture. I’ve got a Dell Laptop, a 2-year old but rarely used main PC, the clunker in the shop just for internet really, the MacBook, and J’s Acer Aspire with some hefty power but a serious problem. Now the MacBook is what I use daily, almost non-stop. It’s got a warranty that expires in January (naturally!) and after 3 years, is starting to slow down and throw some curve balls now and then. It won’t, of course, die before the warranty is up, and it’s not sick enough to send in for repair. It’s the typical pain that stops hurting in the dentist’s waiting room.

What I’m thinking (looking into, researching, pricing out) as the best possible solution is to hand over the Main PC to J, backing up my own files on it and copying the most important over to the Dell Laptop as another backup. Then, perhaps getting a Mac Mini for myself that will serve as a backup should (when) the MacBook dies an irresurrectable death, then consider a small MacBook or MacBook Pro at that point. This would give us two Mac systems and two PC Windows systems that back up each other. Plus the three external hard drives and the multiple USB thumbdrives for all my creative work.

And yes, I’m probably a borderline obsessive compulsive.

I’ve pretty much been told to twut-up on twitter as I was loading someone’s twit-roll with my constant tweets.  I completely understand; the more folks you’re following the more likely it is that you won’t see all the latest from everyone without going back a-ways or you’re just ignoring them anyway. As must be the case with those who are listing hundreds or thousands of little friends and are interested in numbers–not people.

On the other hand, it was a method I used to keep track of the moves from Typepad to WordPress, and those extras on top of my rants, one-liner poetry, and other just-gotta-tell-ya’s, I suppose I was cluttering up some folks’ pages. So it’s either back to the copybook method of noting changes–I have the first notes from ’97 when I built a computer–or making note of some of the things done here at my own site where I am free to unravel. Meanwhile, my literature comrades are waiting for me to get over this and get back to lit postings.

What I might do, since twitter did serve me well in this function, is open another twitter account under an alias that no one else knows about. It might not be possible without making up another email address; I believe I ran into that problem before.

While pointing out my twitter-hogging has been a legitimate complaint in the pros and cons of social networking, it just seems that having to go back to the old ways is such a copout when so much internet communication is available and growing. The other possibility is to risk losing readers and that’s an option that’s out of my hands.

The Dell monitor–not too thrilled with the clarity unless I can adjust something or put in the video card as added help to the integrated graphics, but it only weighs 12 pounds…

And this is neat, a glow-in-the-dark PC:

Not quite as romantic in daylight:

“Perfect Systems is proud to announce the first fully variable format bound paperback book manufacturing machine, the Perfect Book 040.”

Video

Frankly, watching the movie made me think “old and clunky” because if it’s printing one single copy, I sure hope the film clip is going at slow-speed just to show how it works.  Actually, the website claims that the Espresso Machine produces 15 to 20 books per hour, and I’ve no idea if that’s good or bad–likely good, I suppose.

Now where I can put it?