04/26/2001

Last Updated on April 15, 2017 by Dave Farquhar

Ugh. I’m dead tired. Why does it seem like I’m busier now than I was when I was dating or when I was writing a book? It doesn’t make any sense. I wanted to talk about something other than computers today, but I’m beat as I write this (10 pm Wednesday night), so I’m taking the lazy route.

Umm, I do have this. Most of the Daynoters have already mentioned it. I don’t know all the details of Kaycee’s story, but if I’ve got the details right, she’s come back from being clinically dead twice, and she beat cancer last year. Now her liver is failing and there’s nothing the doctors can do.

We said a prayer for her in church last night. I can’t claim to know God’s plan for her (I’m clueless about God’s plan for me, let alone for anyone else), but obviously He wanted to keep her around a while longer for some reason. If He’s through with her here, or nearly so, nothing can stop it. But if He’s not…

Don’t write off Kaycee just yet.

We’d all do well to follow her lead. Look what Kaycee’s doing now. She’s got at least a little time left. She’s making the very most of it. We’d all do well to appreciate and make the most of what we have.

Hmm. On to much less important stuff.

Asus reports they’re selling more P4 motherboards now. Don’t fall into that trap. Don’t buy one. Planned obsolescence. Intel’s changing the socket again later this year, so you’ll hit a dead-end on upgradability. Besides, the P4’s just a lousy performer. Give Intel a year to sort the thing out, and don’t fund them in the meantime. Intel needs to learn that they can’t just ship lousy product and people will buy it just because it says Intel on it.

Meanwhile, reader David Huff sent me this:  An AMD Duron-750 for 38 lousy bucks. Astounding. The retail box version with a fan and 3-year-warranty is $50. T he same place has an FIC AZ11 motherboard for $65, so you can be in a Duron-750 for $120 or so considering CPU fan and shipping costs. (I checked; shipping is $10.50.) Red Hill doesn’t like the AZ11’s BIOS, but at that price, whaddya want? Red Hill also doesn’t like the lack of ISA slots, but unless you have a nice ISA modem, that probably won’t bother you. (Put your ISA modem in another computer, get Freesco, network ’em together, and share your net connection.)

AMD will cut prices Monday or Tuesday, but I can’t imagine they’ll have anything in the $38 price range. I’m about 98% ready to bite on this one.

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