Papa Want!!! Posted by Hello

I’ve always been a bit of a geek when it comes to cool toys. Like my father, I always wanted to have the biggest and best stuff available. With him it was stereo equipment…with me it was computers.

Ever since the introduction to the 486 days, I’ve been building my own PC’s…but I rarely ever kept the same system in my residence for longer than a couple weeks at a time. I built a machine, and then promptly sold it so that I could build something slightly better. Through this I’ve managed to keep up to date on new technology and cosmetics, and it’s the latter that seems to have finally taken a firmer hold in the industry.

Computers used to be so ugly. Well, that depends on your definition of ugly. The old Dec Alpha server I used at work once was beautiful to me, but just a big grey box to everybody else. All PC’s were designed to function as a piece of office equipment, not a home furnishing so there was no thought put into the esthetic design.

This trend began to change a few years ago. I remember buying my first Black and Silver case in 1998 and being viewed as the rebel. It just looked so cool. Then the first iMac’s came out – those transluscent ones – and everybody wanted a PC you could see through. And boy did the industry embrace that. Now you can buy partly transparent cases with neon lights and really interesting button layouts.

The picture above is just a piece of beauty. I discovered it on Tom’s Hardware website (www.tomshardware.com) and fell in love. The thing would be awesome for it’s ability to dissipate heat so you could run some amazingly overclocked system without burning your province to the ground. The only problem is it’s about the size of three computers side by side, so it’s almost a throwback to the old days of needing a big computer for anything functional.

Maybe if I was to redesign my office I could find a happy home for it. I’ll throw out my corner desk and design a new one around this masterpiece. Yeah!

Sadly, this would be the extent of the conversation Melanie and I would have when I rolled it into the apartment.

Mel: “What the….”

Tim: “Honey, it followed me home…can I keep it?”

Mel: ………..

Sadly, those dots would keep going on for longer than your buffer could hold so I will spare you the gory details.

Hmm…maybe it’s big enough so I could sleep on it. It would certainly be warm enough…and I’d pretty much need to as I’d be banished to it or the couch, and I’d have to fight the cats for the couch. They’d win…they always do.