Day: July 25, 2002

I’m here to tell you it works

My DVD-ROM drive in my PowerBook G3 (aka PowerBook G3 2000, aka PowerBook G3 FireWire… man, these things need model numbers) started slowly going south back at Christmas. I couldn’t watch Blazing Saddles on the DVD over Christmas without going through an elaborate ritual of rebooting the computer (yes, I was running X, but the drive wouldn’t be recognized again otherwise after it stopped working), listening to a few tracks from a CD, and then putting the DVD in.

As Linus once said, “You’re looking at me as though this weren’t a scientific explanation!”

Eventually the drive mostly cleaned up its act. Then when we moved to Seattle, it conked out completely. I looked for replacement options and ended up bidding on a replacement drive from EBay. It’s pretty close to a direct replacement, I think, from Matsushita, a Model SR-8171-B. I was pretty much able to drop it right into the caddy from the old drive, which came off by removing six screws. Though I did have to file down the door plate to get it to fit in the Pismo case. It works with DVD Player and iTunes, which is good enough for me right now.

Kudos to XLR8YourMac, which had posted an article a while back about
mounting a similar combo drive in the Pismo. Curses that I wasn’t able to find a combo drive being auctioned; I would have loved to have a CD burner too.
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Everything fallen apart comes together…

…or just about everything. Lisa got a call from Delta saying they would bring her bag by later tonight. The plumbers are all but finished—just some touch up work in the bathroom they were remodeling. I may get a car this weekend. My DVD-ROM drive has been replaced in my laptop (more on that below). Feeling pretty good, if a little tired.
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Houseblog update: almost done

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the houseblog (which really needs its own category—maybe soon…) The plumber has just about finished work on the second bathroom. The tile is up, all the appliances are in place. The dishwasher stopped working, so the electrician will be out to fix it, but otherwise things are pretty much done.

Our unpacking is going slowly. I almost have all the boxes unpacked that were brought into the house by the first round of movers. We’ll be getting into real terra incognita with the stuff from the Lucadamos. I’m going to have to get the inventory sheets out to figure out where our good china is—and we’ll probably have to wait on most of that until we get a larger hutch. We also need to buy a new spice rack. Oh yeah, and a car. 🙂

But with the plumbers just about done I was able to vacuum the whole first floor last night, and we can start setting up the guest bedroom, rehanging closet doors, etc. It’ll be good fun.