05 July 2009

Quests for Power

I figure I should post before a full year since my last post elapses. I'd like to share the fun story of trying to find a replacement power cable for my SATA dock.

I have a hard drive dock. Sadly, I appear to have misplaced the power cable. No problem! I'm sure power cables are easy to replace. First I went to Radio Shack. I told him I needed a 12V/2A cable with an H-connector, and he proceeded to tell me they didn't carry them. That sounded fairly wrong, so I led him over to the wall where they indeed have power cables with a neat little adaptor that lets you put any connector on the end. However, it turns out the main cable plus the H-connector somehow costs $35, which is considerably more than just buying a whole new dock. Since Radio Shack was probably my best hope of finding a cable, I decide to try and find another dock or enclosure instead, but they don't carry them.

Next I tried to go to Best Buy, but couldn't find it. Probably a good thing, as I imagine the docks there cost more than multi-terabyte hard drives at other stores. In desperation, I went to Walmart. I don't think I've ever bought anything computer-related at Walmart, but I tried anyway. I poked around in their external hard drive section for a minute until one of their very helpful staff came over. This is verbatim, even the last line:

Me: Do you guys have any hard drive enclosures?
Helpful Walmart Employee: ...what?
Me: Any hard drive enclosures? Or docks, maybe?
HWE: Uh...no, we just have...the RAM
Me: ...OK, thanks

In conclusion, I was disappointed in Radio Shack, but completely unsurprised by Walmart.

On a totally unrelated note, I now have the power (I originally typed "ability", but couldn't resist the pun. I'm weak) to control my hall light from my computer, which I'm fairly pleased about. I planned to describe the complicated procedure involved in settings this up, but unfortunately it's pretty much:

  1. Take off a light switch and wire the WS467 in
  2. Plug in a CM11a and connect it to a computer
  3. Install heyu

I'm still awesome though. I need more of these modules. Lots more

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