Good party last night

Pick one: (glad you came | sorry you missed it).

Good crowd, in spite (because?) of my late announcements, and a few people came out of the woodwork that haven't been seen around the Starport in years (including a former cow-orker from my Zilog days -- there were four former Zilog types among the guests, but three are regulars). Plenty of good conversation, as usual.

flower_cat's monitor died during the evening; the display started shrinking and there was a distinct smell of fried electrolytic capacitor around the back when I checked the cable. Time for a new one.

Another party note

Another amusing thing about last night's party was the number of Prius owners (at least three or four, plus one soon-to-be owner) in attendence.

I still like my gas Civic. By the time it needs replacing there should be plenty of choices available.

New toy for the Cat

Bought a Hyundai L70S 17" LCD monitor at Fry's this afternoon; about $320 with tax and a 3-year warranty. The original plan was to keep it for myself, and give the flower_cat my aging 17" Hitachi, since she mostly uses Windows and doesn't really need anything more than 1024x768 -- my monitor goes up to 1280x1024, but it's a bit fuzzy there.

But the task of clearing away enough debris to excavate my monitor, lugging it over to her desk, and shoehorning it into place looked pretty daunting, so I took the easier course and gave the new one to the Cat. It has a couple of problems: the Windows drivers don't have the right timing for 1280 (though Linux works fine), and it seems to have trouble with Linux VT's (which are mostly black) and keeps resyncing. The Windows problem will probably clear up when I upgrade her machine.

All of which leaves me with two problems: whether to get another one for myself, and what to do with the old monitor if I do.