So, all day with Tallulah at the office. Gramps is eager to finish reading her a story before he flies off the the sea islands. The Dster has been looking for an excuse to buy a webcam. Convergence is not just a floor in the Time-Warner building. Off I go to the best home electronics vendor in Altamont — Target — and pick up the cheapest webcam they have: a GE mini-cam pro.
The first plan was to install this sucker on the laptop. This part of the plan would go only one of two ways. A) surprisingly easy and in affirmation of the open source format or B) down the rabbit hole of open source geekdom where yours truly gets to feel like a true imbecile. As luck would have it, the answer was B. So on to the second plan.
It is at this point that I might want to explain the particular economics of a small non-profit organization which seems to value expendatures on human resources much less than capital improvements. In other words, I can waste more time than it is worth to buy a new computer in the process of trying to get the old one to work. But there you have it. While I suppose that the installation may be complete now at hour 5 on the guest workstation, it is unlikely.
Plan three, in which Sanuk D is banished to Siberia while Tallulah and Gramps read Heidi. On with the show! There were — gasp! — some non-computer things for me to do. Putting papers from last February into a box in a closet so that we can do something with them later on, for instance. And change the desktop on the guest computer. That’s essential. Tallulah was well occupied for 45 minutes, and I was 45 minutes closer to a complete day.
The payoff comes as we return home. It may be a sad statement that there are at least two and possibly more computers in my home which are more powerful and better suited to their tasks that any of those at work. Not to mention the speed of the data connection. So, I did what needed doing for some time. Dragging out the slimline, Windows Media Center running Acer PC, I added a USB hub and brought the cables for various objects around to the back of the cabinet where they belong.
The driver and other software for the webcam quickly and easily installed because, hey, its Windows. After I plugged in the webcam and download Skype (a process which took less time than it takes to turn on a computer at work) I tested everything out. I should mention, by the way, that this rig is hooked into a 40″ Sony Bravia flat screen LCD display. Running the new Safari on this thing, especially using the top sites feature, is like being on the set of Dr. Strangelove. The addition of video chatting only enhances this effect.
I am sure there are better ways to do what I am doing. God knows Apple makes them more effecient much of the time. Surprisingly, however, this has proved to be a whole lot of fun. I know that I won’t be launching sattilites from the community green space next door any time soon. But it is nice to know that I can.