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My early Father’s Day present

June 9th, 2009

I have been hemming and hawing about needing a new monitor for our computer for a long time– years, actually. The one we have been using was somebody else’s cast-off. It is a big-old CRT, not that the screen is big, I think it’s nineteen inches, but like all CRTs it takes a big bite out of the desk it’s on. These downsides don’t even consider the fact that it shows its age in the picture it displays. It’s faded, blurry, and the gamma is just all messed up. It’s usable I suppose, but it makes using the computer like wearing dirty glasses. You can deal with it, even on a long term basis, but when you clean them you realize it was just adding an unnoticed layer of friction to your general experience.

Since our van is now payed off and Gideon has graduated from preschool, we have a bit more discretionary (I was going to say disposable, but the only people who have truly disposable income these days make considerably more money than I do) revenue and I decided it was time for an upgrade.

Last Thursday night, I forget what exactly prompted it, but Ruth suggested that in light of the abovementioned additional discretionary amounts, I should go ahead and get the monitor I had picked out some time ago. She said it would be an early Father’s Day present. So I clicked a bit and it was on it’s way.

Since I placed my order about midnight Thursday night, I figured it wouldn’t get here till Tuesday at the earliest. I was pleasantly surprised when Ruth notified me Monday afternoon that it had arrived. In fact, I was kind of meaning to cheese out of work a few minutes early, but something came up late in the afternoon that scuttled that plan. I did eventually get thome, though, and there it was waiting to be hooked up.

I had never heard of Hanns G until my buddy Ed from work got one with the computer he had built at a local computer store. He had only good things to say about it so I felt confident saving a few dollars on a lesser known brand. I am quite pleased with it and happy about the price. So far it seems absolutely perfect. Some of the reviews on Newegg mentioned dead pixels on arrival and I had hoped I would not have a similar experience since I envision such things getting hairy.

“I’d like to return this monitor you sent me. It has dead pixels right out of the box!”

“How many, sir?”

“How many what?”

“How many dead pixels, sir…”

“Uh…. one…”

“Sir, please read the bottom of your invoice stating that the minimum number of dead pixels to justify a replacement is four.”

“But I just plugged it in and there’s a dead pixel. Come on, is this how you treat your customers? Hello? Hello?”

I am very glad that such exchanges remain only in my imagination and not my memory.

Now it is like I have just cleaned my glasses for the first time in months. It’s a pleasure to use my computer for things other than browsing for the first time in a long time. Not only is the picture crisp and bright (with actual gamma), but there is now enough real estate that I can enjoy using my favorite programs like Blender, InkScape, and Gimp.

Of course, the first thing the boys wanted to do was watch The Trap Door on the new monitor. The second thing they wanted to do was play Bionicle games on it. I acceded to the first request and we spent a few funny minutes with Burk and the gang while Ruth cooked supper. The second request was not granted until this morning when I left for work.

Isaiah was downstairs reading a book when I came down as he usually is. He asked if he could get on the computer. Initially I said no, but then I changed my mind and logged him in. I stipulated that before he could play games he needed to write a blog post.

So it seems my early Father’s day present has been a gift to everybody. Ruth had discovered that FaceBook looks much better on an LCD, the kids have found that it works great for our favorite Youtube content, and it is a smashing price-point compromise for digital content development.

Now I need to clean up and reconfigure the whole computer desk set-up, but first I think I’ll start up Blender…