Wow, that'll never fill up

I just got back from an interesting vacation, first to Lincoln to help Ryan till a yard so he could replant his lawn (my back!)...and then to Long Beach to help Jim with what I always help him with: His computer.

I had gotten Jim a receipt scanner for his computer last Christmas, but Jim let me know he couldn't install it because he had no hard drive space left. And so I came to the rescue.

I had actually gotten Jim the computer as well - a state-of-the-art Dell desktop with all the latest features...for Christmas 2002. My, oh my how time has flown! Both Jim and I had to look at the original receipt to be reminded that his machine wasn't just "a few years old." In computer years, he might as well be using an abacus.

Jim's computer sports a whopping 30GB hard drive. Yes, that's thirty. I'm certain when I ordered his computer from Dell in '02, I thought to myself "he'll never fill that up." Sure enough, with the explosion of picture and video files starting around '05 or so, he has managed to choke his hard drive almost completely full.

When I checked its properties some seven years later, I saw that I had endowed his Windows XP "screamer" with all of 256MB of memory. It's hard to remember that there was even a time when such specs were considered healthy. Ah, progress. No wonder Jim was complaining about slow loading of programs!

So we took a field trip to Micro Center and did some shopping. Mind you, there really isn't a great deal to do in order to "upgrade" Jim's current setup; I would have had to give him a reasonable hard drive, plus upgrade his video card, and so we opted for a quick fix until I can buy him a computer for Christmas 2009: More RAM.

Amazingly, this particular 2002 Dell maxes out at 1GB of RAM, but that's a heck of a lot better than 256MB, so we invested $80 to tide him over. Jim also used up a gift certificate to get a really great 22" monitor bargain, which will help him now and can be used later when the new computer arrives.

A bit of partition resizing doubled the size of his main C: drive to 20GB...which I promptly began to fill up by doing all the Windows Updates Jim had ignored over the years. (Jim is the landscaper in the family; I am the computer geek.) But it still left enough room for Jim to get his receipt scanner installed and use the beast until we can do a complete swap-out in December.

At that time, no doubt I'll spec something like a Windows Vista machine with 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. He'll never fill that up.

HDTV - 25 years ago

I'm comfortably settled in front of my LG flat screen in the living room, and about two hours from being comfortably settled in bed, in front of my LG flat screen in the bedroom. Whether I'm watching a cool episode of "Life After People" on the History Channel or the latest installment of "Lost," the quality of the picture is absolutely stunning - especially when you compare it to, say, 25 years ago and the old, curved, not-quite-rectangular, heavy, static-y, vertical-hold-challenged TVs we all had to put up with then.

Except...the gorgeous picture we all take for granted today actually existed in 1983. I know because I saw it then.

Back a little more than 25 years ago, I was a post-college kid struggling to make KQMA work. This was the radio station I founded in my hometown. In between dealing with the sorta-evil competition (the local AM radio station) and the definitely evil stepbrothers with whom I depended on partnership funding, I had a chance to go to a National Broadcasters Association convention in Las Vegas.

I stayed at the Riveria, which back then was a classy hotel near to the convention site. I was overwhelmed by all the technology of that year - and in one special corner, JVC was showing off "high definition" television with an unbelievable 1,080 lines of resolution.

About all they could show were live pictures being taken on-site using models and props. And yet, we conventioneers were blown away by the quality of the broadcasts. "When will we see this in our living rooms?" I asked. The answer would make a salesman of any generation proud: "This will be in homes in two or three years."

Ten times that prediction had to pass before we actually got it. And, if you do actually look at your HDTV picture, no doubt you'll be reminded of what it used to be like: Constantly fiddling with the tint controls, adjusting antennas or turning the "rotor" control, and of course, when in doubt, banging on the side of the set encased in its real wood cabinet.

When it comes to watching sitcoms, we really have come a looooooong way.