Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Phantom Bridge


Jess and I went hiking this weekend in an area southeast of Portland in the Cascades. This picture is a panoramic stitched together from 6 separate pictures I took at the top of a place called Phantom Bridge. On the left side you can see Mount Jefferson, and peaking out behind some trees on the far right side you can see Three Sisters.

Dead computer

Well, my five-year-old custom-built computer finally bit the dust tonight, it seems to have some memory problems and/or motherboard problems. Since the computer is so old, it's probably not worth trying to fix, since the cost of compatible parts is probably as much as buying a new computer. Sigh.

It's interesting how disposable computers are now. I have to wonder how long until we have a computer recycling "crisis." Greenpeace just released a report on how China and India are getting tons of the world's computer junk, creating these toxic computer landfills. Traditional CRT monitors (not LCD flat-panels) have a lot of lead in them, for example. On the other side of things, groups like Portland's very own FreeGeek take old used computer equipment, pull the working pieces out, and give away the resulting working (though old) systems loaded with Linux to people for free in exchange for volunteer work. Hard to beat that deal!