Life in late capitalism is challenging at the best of times, even for those of us who live relatively comfortable lives in the imperial core. In times as turbulent and difficult as these, it is important to have hobbies, things that bring us some joy as the current hegemony flails about in desperation to maintain the status quo. Some like to hike or garden. Others like to fix up cars or engage in some other physical, tactile activity like sculpting. While writing is one of my favorite pastimes and the focus of this website, my main hobby is definitely computer tech. That’s a broad category that encompasses a ton of different things, and I’ve dipped my toes into a lot of them over the years. I could go on at length about every little facet of this ‘umbrella hobby’, but today’s blog is going to focus on one ‘sub hobby’ that has really captivated me the last few years.
I’m not sure exactly what to call this hobby. I don’t know of any snappy terms or shorthand phrases that can properly convey it, so I’ll just describe it the way I described it to my boyfriend when we were first getting to know each other. I like to acquire and restore old computers (and computer accessories) and to make them usable in the modern day. This started from my first experiences using a computer I could call ‘mine’. The exact specs are lost to time but it was an old horizontal desktop form factor PC that ran Windows 2000 (the second best Windows). I think it may have been a Gateway of some sort, but it’s hard to say for sure two decades later. I remember that it had a heavy-ass CRT monitor that sat atop it and that the resolution was 800x600. How quaint!
Even back then, that machine was quite old and far from a powerhouse, but it met my needs well enough. I wrote book reports on it with Microsoft Office. I freely surfed the web for the first time. I played NES ROMs when I figured out how to do that, as that’s about all that old machine could handle, that and The Sims 1....poorly. The motherboard on that machine eventually died, and I moved on to my next machine, a hand-me-down Sony Vaio that I remember a lot more vividly. I might write up a full blog post about that computer some time, because I have a lot of great memories associated with it.
I digress. My first computers were old and not exactly snappy, but I made it work. This taught me a lot about making computers work, and grappling with their limitations, a skill that serves me really well now in this hobby that I promise I’ll talk about shortly. I remember being an angsty teen and being envious of the high end gaming machines that a lot of my friends had. They were getting to play Skyrim maxed out. That was a pipe dream of mine for ages...of course I did eventually play Skyrim and was so underwhelmed that I went back to Oblivion, but that’s neither here nor there.
ANYWAY. Back to the topic of keeping shit out of landfills. There’s very little you or I can do to curb the shocking amount of e-waste that pours into dumpsters every day. This little hobby of mine is infinitely smaller than a drop in the bucket. I have no delusions of grandeur about that. But what’s the alternative? Buy a fancy gamer mouse when I don’t even play competitive shooters and my Intellimouse from 2000 works just fine? Get a shiny new graphics card every two years so I can keep playing Stardew Valley and The Sims 2 and the Game of the Decade? Get a new motherboard, CPU, and 64 gigs of RAM? For what? To needlessly gulp more power for my already overkill media server? My main rig at home already exceeds my computing needs to an absurd degree. Hell, the old Thinkpad I’m writing this on is WAY more powerful than what I need considering I use it almost exclusively as a word processor, and this thing is seven years old! I am going to keep using this thing until it finally dies several years from now. At that point I’ll do exactly what I did to get this, go to ebay and find an old thinkpad for cheap, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Even my bitchin’ main rig at home is still using old peripherals. My webcam is some logitech camera from 2012. The keyboard is an old Packard Bell Dome with Slider keyboard that I got off of ebay for 20 bucks. The mouse is 25 years old and it still works as great as the day it rolled off the assembly line.
‘But gay elf mage’ I hear you object. ‘my computer is too slow and old to do what I want’ Okay! Try to buy used if you can! Learn what hardware you need and get it second hand. You’ll be surprised at how well old machines can handle modern tasks, and you can get old computers and parts for a fraction of the cost of the shiny new machine. Earlier this year, I built my boyfriend a PC out of an old Dell workstation, some old drives I had laying around, and a modern but modest graphics card. The project costed me less than 200 dollars and it plays every game I’ve thrown at it, even The Game of the Decade. Is it gonna play the newest quadruple A micro-transaction ridden nightmare at 4k at 300 frames per second? No, but who gives a fuck? Despite what dorks on reddit tell you, you dont need two thousand dollars and a 4k monitor to have fun on your computer. If you’re one of those folks who wants the bitchinest computer in the world, this blog post from an old gay weirdo isn’t going to change your mind. For the rest of you, give this some thought. See if buying second hand can still get you what you want. You just might be surprised at how well that can work out for you.
Until next time!