Every time I look inside my PCs (or even my Mac, but not as much) i get really irritated? Why? Because my PCs are riddled with legacy crap. I have been thinking about the legacy stuff (ports, etc.) in my computer and have come up with this list.
It seems to me that just about every connector on the back of a modern PC can be replaced with USB and/or Firewire. I haven’t used half the ports on my computer in ages, and i’m a geek. Most people have absolutely no use whatsoever for these ports and I would love to see motherboard manufacturers start to recognize this. I’d love to be able to buy a motherboard that replaces all these legacy ports with a shitload of USB and a few Firewire connections.
I’m sure some people will disagree (some strongly) with my opinions, and I’d like to hear from them..
Parallel Port - The last thing I used a parallel port for was a printer. The last time I had a printer was my freshman year at RIT. In that time just about every printer either comes with a USB and Parallel port or has completely moved over to USB. The only thing I can think of using my parallel port for in the past 10 years was a Parallel Port Zip drive (which was slow as hell and would be better served by USB anyway, if I actually needed a Zip drive anymore) and a Laplink cable (I originally wrote Parnet cable but then realized that I was a geeze).
Serial Port - Sure, there’s going to be a few geeks who disagree with me on this one, but I really feel that this one needs to go as well. I can think of a single use for Serial Ports, and that’s for connecting to or programming embedded devices (including network hardware) or for connecting to headless servers. You know what? If you are one of the 1 percent of the computer-using population that needs a Serial Port, just use a USB to RS232 adapter. Christ, they could at least throw me a bone and switch to something smaller than a D-SUB (my Tivo uses a headphone-style jack).
ATAPI and their 40-pin headers - I know Serial ATA is on it’s way to save us from old-school ATA, but it still isn’t quite mainstream. I’ll be satisfied when all motherboards REPLACE the 40-pin headers with SATA ones. If I have a legacy ATA device I will buy the SATA to legacy adapter.
Floppy Drive/Controller - I hate the floppy. You want a floppy? Hook one up using USB. You want one internal? Replace the floppy controller header with some USB ports for use inside the machine. You probably already have some of these, my past two motherboards have had 4-pin USB headers for connecting front-panel USB connectors. Add a few more of these, and you’re all set. Or “they” could make a Serial ATA floppy drive, and all your internal drives would use the same interface. Either way, it has to go.
Game Port - Do they even make new Game Port joysticks anymore? I am sure you can buy old product, but every joystick I have seen in the past 4 years has been USB.
ISA Slots - ’nuff said. Fortunately, it seems that most motherboards in the past few years have ditched this slot. The only use I can think of for ISA anymore is hardware hackers wanting to make/test on the cheap. ISA is a no-brainer to work with, maps right into the address space, and PCI or USB controllers are expensive. Again, the majority should win (and by all obvious signs, have in this case).
PS/2 style Keyboard and Mouse connectors - Pretty much every mouse these days is USB, and pretty much every keyboard SHOULD be if it isn’t. Remember how annoying PS/2 mice were? If they became disconnected after the computer was booted you usually had to reboot to bring your mouse back to life. What the fuck were they thinking?
I’ve been feeling a bit ho-hum lately, not sure what’s up, but whatever. Yesterday I went out and bought a pair of warm socks, my existing pair has a hole in the heel, so I felt that I needed another pair. I only need one or two pairs of warm socks because I wear another pair of socks underneath them. These prophylactic socks make sure my feet are in contact with clean socks.
A bit of catch-up first. Corinna was here this weekend, which rocked socks. She arrived Friday night and left this afternoon (she has MLK day off). Friday night we just crashed, pretty much, but Saturday we got together with Chuck, Johnny, and Calmie and played some Pop-Culture Trivial Pursuit (DVD Edition) at Chuck’s place. I DOMINATED without remorse, winning the game with the closest person behind me having only 2 pie pieces. We played Uno afterwards, a game which I never really played before (or at least haven’t played in many moons) and my dominance did not carry over there… :)
Sunday and I just rented two movies ( The Hunted and The Talented Mr. Ripley) both of which were OK but not great. I took Corinna back to Hoboken today so she could catch her bus in NYC but on the way we stopped at Davy’s Hot Dogs for some wieners. They were yummy. I tried to circumnavigate a traffic jam on Rt. 3 near Montclair, but ended up getting somewhat lost. I ended up in East Orange and jumped on 280, so I wasn’t really lost as much as misplaced. Even with my meandering around The Oranges I still think I made better time than if I had sat in the traffic jam, and at least I was moving the whole time. I hate traffic.
Regarding my experiment: I think I am getting used to Expose vs. Virtual Desktops, so my real analysis and comparisons will begin over the next week. I seem to have mostly deprogrammed myself of the pager hotkeys, and am working pretty efficiently with Expose.
I am such a huge dildo. I have had this pet peeve with NetNewsWire, where when I double-clicked on an entry to open it in the browser, the browser would pop up to the front. This annoyed me because I generally open a ton of stories at the same time (each of which opens in a different tab in Firebird).
I always assumed this was some kind of weird browser problem, but it turns out it was a preference in NNW. I’m a douchebag.
It seems that lately I am the guy who hangs out in the neighborhood copy story, as I have been conscripted by the family as the mailroom clerk. Ok, conscripted is a very, very large exaggeration, considering I volunteered for the work, but it doesn’t change the fact that I have spent more time in the past week with the chick who runs the copy shop than I have with my girlfriend. And trust me, if you saw the chick who ran the copy shop, you’d feel bad for me.
Fortunately, the arrival of the lovely and talented Corinna is drawing near, so this situation shall be rectified quickly. At some point tonight I get to head down to the not-so-lovely and not-so-talented (?) Hoboken to pick up her-hotness.
I woke up this morning sometime between 8 and 8:30am needing to pee, and while I was up I noticed that the hot water pipe to the kitchen sink was frozen. It was frozen last night, but I wasn’t about to go trying to track down a hair dryer at 2am when everyone else was asleep. It was still frozen when I woke up, so I got bundled up, went downstairs to the spot where it always freezes, and after quite awhile of heating finally got the faucet dripping. Once you get it dripping it eventually thaws itself, which it did, and I have left it slightly dripping all day to prevent it from re-freezing. The real problem is that all of the water pipes are located in the un-insulated overhang, which to me seems like a completely ridiculous construction choice. As part of the renovations, all these pipes are being moved into the house, and are being insulated. In addition, the overhang itself is being insulated so we don’t waste as much heat.
What does it say in the signature line of your emails?
--
Sean M. Graham - [insert my email address here]
http://www.sean-graham.com/
I used to have a more compllicated .signature, but I got sick of long
signatures with quotes and shit in them. This one is simple and covers all
the bases.
Did you have a senior quote in your high school yearbook? What wasit? If you haven’t graduated yet, what would you like your quote tobe?
I can’t remember, and James lost my yearbook, so I can’t
look it up. may have a copy of the yearbook, and
if he does, perhaps he will look to see if I had a quote and reply to this.
If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If youalready have them, what do they say?
I’m not in to vanity plates,
but I think that PCLDLTR would be funny.
Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? Whatdid the inscription say?
A desk nameplate reading “Sean M. Graham - Lead Programmer” and several things inscribed “Sean”
What would you like your epitaph to be?
“Holy shit was this
guy crazy.”
I went to the grocery store a little while ago because when I went to make Waffles for breakfast this morning I noticed we were out of butter. So I went out, got the butter and some soda for the household, and when I got back, I opened the fridge to put the butter away and saw a pound box of butter staring back at me, dead center in the fridge. I guess I am losing my mind or something, because I scoured the fridge earlier today and didn’t see shit.
The main bathroom is making steady progress, seemingly more steady than the previous bathroom. The contractor we have doing the bathroom has dialysis every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so he can only work half days those times. But he did all of the plumbing work for this bathroom while doing the plumbing for the previous one, so he got quite a bit of the annoying work out of the way. Hopefully in another 2 weeks we will have at least a toilet we can use in the main bathroom. It really sucks sneaking through my parents’ room ninja-style at 2am so I can use their bathroom.
Update: I am already finding myself in “Desktop Switching Hotkey Hell”. I feel like I have phantom movement of an amputated limb. This won’t deter me, though, I will at least see this through for two weeks.