Can I call a do over?

[elfs]

The T61, dismantled

Where do we start with today?

Let's start with going to meet a recruiter who wanted me to interview for a job at Cisco. Our meeting was at a cafe. As I stood up, I bumped the table and spilled an entire cup of hot coffee into the laptop. The hot, sugary liquid immediately gummed up the keyboard badly, and I lost my mouse and my arrow keys.

I was unable to do any demos for the interview that morning.

The interview ran over by half an hour. There was a ticket waiting for me on my windshield when I got back to my car.

Then I get home to discover that another company I had screened with earlier in the week had turned me down. "We chose a candidate with a better cultural fit," which I've learned to read as, "You're too old." This is the flip side to the "You'll just get bored here," which is HR code for "You're too experienced."

At least before I poured the coffee into the laptop, I had a nice half hour wait at the cafe and did 858 words. Not my best speed, but better than nothing. It helped that the cafe' didn't have WiFi.

Comments

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

there still exist cafes in the pac northwest that don't have wifi?

T61.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

I was peering at your photo and thinking, "Hmm...either a T60 or T61...probably T61, like what I drive." Then I looked at the comment. Doh.

I don't do coffee from cafe's much, but when I do, I ask them to fill my no-spill cup, or take their cup and pour it into my no-spill cup. The no-spill cup and my T61 are good friends.

However, I feel like my T61 is showing it's age. I'm into it's 4th year of use, and I'm thinking of swapping my 500GB 7200RPM HD for a 128GB SSD. Maybe swap the 3GB RAM for 8GB and go with a 64-bit OS. I suspect that'll breathe new life into it.

Re: T61.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I found that using a third-level memory page driver allows me to use all 8GB of RAM with a 32-bit OS. So I'm happy. And I don't think I could live in such a small hard-drive.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Apparently.

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

My mind, it is blown. :P

Re: T61.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

I've been pondering it for a while. I'm currently only using 206GB of space. This is really the laptop I use for work, so I'm sure I can trim out any big video files, cut out about anything that's not work-related or sees regular use. Plus, I can tote an external USB HD around that has 250GB of space.

However, short of that, I was thinking I'd just slide a 32GB SD Card in, which gives me 160GB of space on 2 volumes. And, I usually carry around a stack of USB thumb drives in my pocket with various tools I use on client equipment regularly. And since I am the IT-Department at most of the sites I'm on, I can generally control my own internet access, which means I could use cloud storage for anything left over.

At least that's my thought process so far. I'd just really like to see some new life in the system, and I think I can do it for $200 or less, while a new T500 series will set me back over $1k.