Graduation Day/Click! Zzzzzzzzzzzzz... Click

About time I created another post...

I recently graduated from college, after a three-year period. My last semester was hellish (due to a calculus class being completely out of my league), but I passed the important stuff, and should be getting my diploma (rather than the placeholder) soon. The PDA helped somewhat with one of my final projects, but not quite enough. Maybe I'm not busy enough for this thing... ;)

Now that school is done, I'm hoping to be able to get back to the projects I've been putting off for months. I have a good-sized backlog of old radios to attend to, as well as some repairs for friends. With any luck, I can make a good-sized dent in the pile before I continue my education (the details of which have yet to be finalized at all). I'm considering selling off part of my antique radio collection, so I can concentrate on the sets which matter most.

In other news, I recently got back into one of my long-dormant hobbies in a small way. At a flea market, I picked up an '80s vintage Polaroid Spectra System instant camera for $3 (the film I bought to test it cost five times as much!). I've long had a good-sized collection of Polaroid cameras (mostly 600 series flip-flash models, with an Impulse and a SX-70 thrown in), but they never got much use (mainly due to the high price of film). This Spectra (a high-end model in it's day) is in pretty good shape, and takes nice photos.

As a kid, I was intrigued by the prospect of a camera which didn't require you to take it's rolls of exposed film to a local store, and wait a week or two before they were developed and picked up (mind you, this was before digital cameras). I spent much time drooling over the pictures of Polaroid cameras (especially the Spectra series models) in the (now-defunct) Service Merchandise catalog. My first Polaroid was acquired while I was in middle school, a low-end OneStep 600. It later suffered technical problems, and was traded in for a more-expensive Impulse model (which I still have). I later inherited my father's SX-70 setup (which, even without a long-discontinued flashbar, still takes nice photos), and found several 600-series flip-flash units at yard sales for cheap prices (wonder why...), but they saw little use.

Anyway, getting this Spectra has me thinking about perhaps getting back into photography, which I dabbled in as a kid. Among the cameras I used were a cheap 35mm Konica, either of the two Polaroids I bought new, or even a Kodak Disc Film camera (which took decent photos, but the cameras were flaky, and Disc film has been out-of-production for a number of years now). Most of my photos were taken of my various obsolete computer setups, as well as holiday decorations and our house. One of my most treasured shots was a Polaroid taken of me while I sat in the front seat of a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair Monza convertible I lusted over for a long time (I took a few shots of the Corvair without me in it, and then my father took one of me sitting in the driver's seat).

In any case, I hope to be posting to this long-forsaken blog more often, now that I'm out of school. On the horizon is a possible internship with a local company, as well as a likely continuation of my education (graduated with an Associates in Science in Computers and Telecommunications). Hopefully, my future will pan out well, and I'll be able to get a nice job with a good-sized company.
-Adam

The Bargain Hunter/My "New" PDA

Well, folks, another long delay between posts. Contrary to what I thought would happen, my workload hasn't abated much since the passing of the April 15th deadline. Fortunately, I haven't been working too much on weekends, which gives me time to rejoin one of my passions: visiting yard sales and flea markets. The signs have started appearing on telephone poles around town, and the weather has generally been improving, which means that it's time to go hunting for bargains outdoors.

This past weekend, unfortunately, was not a very good one for yard sales. On Saturday (prime yard sale day in my area), it rained steadily much of the day, so pickings were slim. I did manage to come across a rather nice find, which I will get to soon. Sunday, contrary to the weather forecasts, was only marginally better; most of the vendors at the local outdoor flea market had tarps over their booths, which made the trip there largely useless (though I did take back a piece of malfunctioning video equipment purchased there a couple of weeks ago, and got a refund).

Getting back to the 'big' find: at a relatively nice-sized yard sale, I came upon a bagged item, which I figured to be a modem or somesuch. It turned out, however, to be a semi-antiquated Palm Pilot model Vx (though the front badging says Palm V, the back cover and specs match the Vx, which leads me to believe it was upgraded in some fashion during it's lifetime), with a good selection of accessories. After buying a USB-to-serial adapter (which, incidentally, cost several times as much as I paid for the Palm!), I was able to hook it up to my modern laptop (which Sony saw fit to make without either a serial port or floppy drive; I have spent far too much on making up for these indiscretions), and download programs for it from the Internet.

For a long time, I figured I would never get one of these things. During the internet boom, I remember seeing Palm Pilots and other PDAs everywhere, and never thought the day would come where I'd find myself with one. Now that the fad has essentially long since died out, and this unit has been surpassed many times over, I see this as an opportunity to attempt and use this semi-obsolete device to try and manage my life. It should be interesting to see how well I manage to use it, and whether or not it actually has an impact on my level of organization, if one currently exists... ;)
-Adam