Mildly Hurtful Sarcasm: Farewell to my ancient 14"

Last month I finally broke down and bought an LCD monitor (that'd be another blog post). For more than 8 years since I got my Viewsonic 17" CRT monitor, my mother has been nagging constantly about me keeping my old KFC 14" super VGA in the garage. It's boxed up and tucked away at a quiet corner but still she couldn't stand knowing its presence psychologically. Yesterday was company eWaste recycle day, it's finally time to throw it out.

My ancient 14" KFC in the living room. With .25 dot pitch it wasn't bad in its time.

I got the monitor as a bundle with a PC. I can't say this is a good monitor cause it broke twice and cost me a fortune to fix. Nonetheless it has accompanied me through college. So many cold lonely nights I had spent programming away under the dim illumination from a brown task light clipped onto my brown folding table where that monitor was set. It was tough, those quiet late nights would seem to last forever, yet in an ironic twisted way so sweet and memorable. While figuring out how to implement a radix sort in parallel or make that tail recursion a for loop, sometimes I'd indulge myself with an entire 12oz bag of Lay's (KC Masterpiece BBQ), or put on a Star Trek TNG rerun on my 13" Samsung (it was enough to just listen to the conversations, I've seen them all); other times I'd just stare at the screen saver in search for inspiration, in vain of course. It is strange that my memories of college years are of computer peripherals instead of beer and parties; guess that's what makes me the person I am today.

eWaste collection took place at the parking lot close the building where I used to work at. I needed to fill out a form - California recycle regulations I suspect - then pull up to next to some pallets where a guy with work gloves picked it up from my trunk.