Jeffrey and I worked on the Droid Discovery Kit this evening; we’re part-way through building L-3GO (their basic droid). Even though it was my present, he’s doing most of the building (though I’m helping when required).

Other than that, it’s been a quiet day; we avoided going anywhere near a shopping center (though Diane did brave the grocery store, and apparently it was quite an ordeal). Jeffrey wants to go out tomorrow and spend some of his Hanukkah gelt on some Game Boy games, but I have a feeling it’ll be better to wait another few days. Online prices are no bargain, at least not yet.

And I get to brave the returns line at Home Depot sometime; the fluorescent light requires grounding to work, and there doesn’t appear to be a ground wire in the box (the perils of owning a 40-year-old house).

So I celebrated it by taking advantage of Home Depot’s 10% off sale and
buying a pile of halogen bulbs, two nightlights, and a replacement
fluorescent fixture for the hallway. Oh, yeah, and a small ratchet-drive
screwdriver, though I guess that doesn’t fit the theme.

Later this evening, we go to Shir
Hadash for the monthly family service; we’re on the Oneg committee
and will help set up munchies for after services. The Hanukkah service
is always popular (and there are two Banot Mitzvah tomorrow, to boot), so
we’ll be busy, but at least we’ll be getting there early enough to be
able to get a parking place!

Sweatin’ it off

Every year, the YMCA runs a special December promotion to encourage
people to come in and exercise — if you come in twelve times during the
month, you get a little tchotke and are entered into a drawing for a
more substantial prize. Today was my 12th visit for the month and I got
a combined keychain/tape measure; maybe next year will be more exciting.

I also reached the 15,000 point plateau for
FitLinxx points, which is the “White Award” level. I wonder what a White Award might be; I have the sneaking
suspicion that there’s another T-shirt in my future.

More memory?

Jeremy suggested that I might be able to solve my photo editing problems by putting more memory in my old machine. I’ve already got 192MB in it, which should be enough for almost any application, but he certainly diagnosed one of the symptoms — the disk-in-use light was on solidly while I was waiting for the programs, and that usually does indicate a memory shortage.

I made a mistake when I originally configured the machine; I bought a motherboard (ASUS PL97-S) with an integrated SCSI controller. It’s been a good motherboard, but I can’t put a 2x or 4x AGP video card into it (and I’d like to upgrade my video), and it only supports PC66 memory, so I can’t do much in the way of upgrading without replacing the motherboard. And that would require either trashing the SCSI disk, CD-ROM, and CD-RW, or buying another SCSI controller, neither of which appeals to me. And I have idle dreams of being able to use my computer to edit video so that I could liberate the few good minutes on my camcorder tapes, and that really would need a faster machine.

I still haven’t decided what to do — fortunately, I don’t have to do anything at all for a while. Maybe I’ll play with it some more this weekend and do some semi-controlled experiments to see where the problems really lie.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!