Sometimes it takes a village. . .

to build a computer, but I am happy to report back that after getting over the flu, the recipient of Dan's computer has had time to work with the used Dell computer and bring it into a conformation that will work well with his work and hobbies at home. And it is such a pleasure to have a computer that is so responsive, one doesn't have to wait and wait for it to get around to loading pages or programs. It just DOES IT!

Without spelling out the entire story, I will say that he is finally (this month!) up to full salary again, but with credit still in shreds, a new computer would have been impossible for the conceivable future. With friends donating software and hardware and his own ingenuity (and many trips to the local Fry's) this is now a truly superior creature to the one that he was using for the last 8 years. Good thing memory is cheap these days: 128Meg RAM is now 2 Gig, 20Gig hard drive is now 500Gig, the CD player was swapped for a DVD burner (my christmas present hardware contribution, along with numerous small programs and a power cord).

There is something very rewarding about taking the raw material, a used box with a good chip, and through a little cash but mostly patience, turning it into a useful tool for years to come. And from there, my friend has remarked that it would be nice to be able to do something like that here in the community for someone else. When you go through all of the steps, figuring out the foibles of the software and hardware, you get a great refresher course in computing and computer building.

I've been struggling with my computer, but I got there through my own mistake. I uninstalled a proxy server that (had I known) should never have been installed on my home computer without being told that uninstalling it would eviscerate my operating system and take away everything, including the blinking cursor. I reinstalled and restored and generally limped along for a couple of weeks before I got a new hard drive and built up my operating system and array of programs from scratch. So my friend and I have been on a parallel quest and formed a small mutual-admiration society, congratulating each other on the accomplishment of a functioning computer. But his is the bigger accomplishment, because it brings him a functionality that has been lacking for a long time. He's talented, and now he has the machine that will let him do other kinds of work he does well. (He is my mentor when it comes to canning, and I gave him many pounds of produce out of my garden this summer. After a year of no canning, during many months of grief after the death of his long-time partner, he went on to win the blue ribbon for strawberry jelly at the Texas State Fair this year!)

Thank you very much, olddude, for making this possible. I hope that facilitating this kind of transformation of a used piece of office equipment into an important tool for someone who couldn't get there on his own brings you as much pleasure as it brings the recipient (and his friend!)

SRS