I have the scanner blues. Lemme ‘splain. I have a 3 year old SCSI scanner from Umax. It came with a SCSI card and with my old machine it was fine and dandy. Sadly, the new computer only has PCI slots and therefore the old SCSI card will not work. So I went off to Fry’s to get a new one. Now, I didn’t want to spend a mint on a SCSI card since scanners are not very expensive anymore. So after getting my card and installing into the machine and loading the drivers, I realize that I am a complete moron. I bought a SCSI-2 card and my scanner is loverly old SCSI-1. Nuts. So off I go back to Fry’s to wait in the third longest line in the universe (theme parks excluded). After searching and searching, I did find a SCSI-1 card, but it was $80. Just a few feet away I saw the latest scanner from UMAX at $65. I really didn’t feel like getting a new scanner, so I had my money credited to my card and came home to surf the web to try and find a cheaper card. Well, at this point, a new scanner is looking good. It is such a waste when you think about it. New products are cheaper than getting parts for old outdated ones.
In other electronics news, my Sony 8mm camcorder that I won last year at the company Holiday party has decided to stop playing tapes and eating anything that comes near it. It worked fine a few days ago then just went kaput. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be another “It will be cheaper to buy a new one than fix it” since this camcorder is just about a year old. My 14 year old RCA VHS camcorder runs just fine thank you (though it does need a new battery).
Oh and in case you were wondering, the other long lines are the DMV and the bank. Sheesh how long does a person have to stand in line to get a roll of quarters?