Hamfest Irony

Although I did work for several hours this morning, I was able to get away mid-morning to take Lisa to the Polk County Fairgrounds in Rickreall, west of Salem, for the Salem Hamfest. This is a sort of swap meet/flea market, with people selling/trading/displaying all manner of gear, mostly related to ham radio, but also some computer stuff. Lisa had gone to the Hamfest looking for some specific things that she didn't find, although she did find some other things like someone selling large spools of video cable cheaply. I hadn't expected to spend anything other than the cost of admission ticket and maybe some lunch; however, to my surprise I ended up buying several things. Someone was selling computer equipment, and among the stuff there was a 17-inch Dell monitor that I will use to replace the older, lower-resolution monitor I have back in California. (I've been obliged to start working with higher resolution displays for work reasons, so I needed to upgrade my very old home monitor.) I also bought a small belt holster in which I can carry my pedometer without having to worry about it falling off, and several small Ethernet cables that will be useful in situations where I need short cables.

We checked out the monitor when we got back to Mehama, and it worked as expected. (It was working when we bought it -- he had it plugged in to a computer he was also trying to sell but that I didn't want to buy.) I guess that having driven to Oregon and knowing that I could haul the monitor back south made me impulsive, but I was going to need to buy a new monitor eventually anyway, and $40 was a pretty good price.