Month: October 2012

In a previous post, I wrote about getting a free computer from a local gaming company that had undergone staff reductions. This computer turned out to be a beast, at least size-wise, as it came in a full-sized ATX tower, measuring over 20″ in height. I don’t see cases that large anymore as in my experience, smaller cases are more popular and easier to lug around.

In addition to being big and heavy, the computer case was also banged up. It had barely any front ports and what ports they did have were not working. If this computer had anything valuable in it, I’d have to transfer it over to my own case. It turns out there were some better components inside of it. This new computer had a quad-core processor while my existing computer only had dual cores. I had a friend help me transfer over the processor. The free computer also had 8 Gb of faster RAM than I had, whereas I had only 6 Gb. Transferring over the memory was quite easy. Last but not least, the freebie had a 7200 rpm hard drive with 750 Gb of storage. This drive is faster and larger than my current drive so I also brought that over.

Overall, I didn’t quite get a completely new computer but I certainly got some significant upgrades from what I had originally. If you factor in the price of free, I got a pretty good deal.

On Saturday evening I was in Abbotsford for a social engagement with a friend. For those who don’t know about the city of Abbotsford, it’s a city located about 75 km southeast of Vancouver. It takes about an hour to drive there from Vancouver.

The residents of Abbotsford are, for the most part, honest and decent folk but there’s a definitely a segment of their population that’s not known for their refined culture and sophistication. I saw an example of this while my friend and I were getting ready to leave and go back into the greater Vancouver area.

I saw a woman smoking in a parking lot in full view of the public. What made me surprised about the whole thing was that I am almost 100% sure she was pregnant. My friend didn’t see her so he asked me if it might have been if she was just an overweight woman smoking. I’ve seen my fair share of women: not pregnant, overweight, and pregnant. This woman was pregnant.

There she was puffing away on a cigarette as if there wasn’t a developing human being inside of her. It’s the 21st century, it’s my belief that all women understood the effects of smoking while pregnant. Now it’s possible she was smoking an electronic cigarette but it sure looked real to me. If it was one of those things, the safety of such devices has been called into question.

Poor kid, I hope he or she doesn’t have any problems in the future.