Being glad I'm not New Age

*sigh*
Another of those nights where I fall asleep and my dreams are haunted by people I used to know who keep telling me cryptic things and almost connecting with me, till I wake in the morning and wonder "What did that all mean?". It happens once a month or so, and always leaves me feeling vaguely depressed and wary the next day. So I'm thankful that I'm not New Age or hardcore pagan, because then I'd have to spend a bunch of time pondering the purported meaningfulness of it all. As it is, I discipline my mind to asserting "that was some random neural firing there, and nothing more" and call it good. Because, y'know, self-preservation is our friend.

In other news - saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night (finally). It was very pretty. Reasonably gripping and engaging while you're watching it, and leaving a faint pleasant aftertaste and no intellectual engagement after it. Like milk chocolate. Which is about how I felt about the book HPIV, so that all works just fine. So far movie #3 was my favorite, but as J. quite reasonably points out, this is probably because bk #3 was my favorite.

Eh. Time to eat some breakfast and drag myself to the gym. My hip aches like mad.

OSS, Libraries, TechWeirdness, and Me

Well. So I'm supposed to come up with an idea for a "change project" at a library for my youth services class, and what immediately springs to mind, all full of rightness, is this:
Rebuilding old discarded computers with open source software (Linux, Mozilla, maybe a text editor of some kind) and using them to increase the number of computers available at small public libraries.

Advantages, I thought:
Free computers.
Free software.
Expanded access.
Cool way to get volunteer hours for interested high school folks (install software, help users).
Cool way to build experience employers will want for college age folks (do the computer rebuilding).

I knew that my college, Carleton, had a program that rebuilt donated computers for low-income students. And I knew that my grad school had a program, Prairienet, that rebuilt computers for tech-access things for low-income communities.

Problems:
*sigh* As I'm reading the computer/library literature info, I realize that there are a small number of people going "gee, wouldn't it be nice to add some open source software to our public computers and/or use open source integrated library systems (there are a handful in development)" and a vast population going "the price of regular computers keeps dropping and there are grants that provide integrated library stuff and it requires no deeper tech knowledge on our part and the cost to us in stress/learning to go to open source isn't worth it"

And now I'm all discouraged which is a bit late, since the project rough draft is due tomorrow night.
Part of my brain was still thinking back to 1997 (the last time I actually bought a new computer, my gramma and auntie bought my laptop for me) and going, well, computers cost $2000 a pop, there are huge savings here. But that isn't true anymore. A new desktop computer on the Dell website goes for $299 after mailin rebate and has way faster stuff than my old computers did.

But part of my brain says "haste makes waste, we've got all these old computers gunking up the landscape and polluting and everything, and it's not like you need a ton of memory or speed to SURF THE FRICKIN' WEB for instance. it's not exactly Adobe Photoshop or an online RPG or anything."

So now I'm sadddddddd. And I was sorta hoping that someone out there (like Greyhame, hint hint, I remember you doing all that linux-y stuff back when it intimidated folks) would drop me a line of encouragement that would help me stop feeling so stupid and out of it. I swear there's a good idea in there, a nice ecologically responsible, community education creating idea. Really. now if only I had any confidence in my ability to make others think so.

*sniff*