Cray for Sale

I want it. I don't have a place to put it nor do I have the means to get it out of the current owner's place, but I really, really want it.

So Steve Steinberg, guest blogger of Boing Boing, is selling his Cray Y-MP EL98. This thing is an icon and part of a lovely heritage. It's the kind of conversation piece that geeks around would recognize and drool over even though it's not exactly in working condition.

He's accepting bids starting at $400 for someone to be able to come and haul it away before Friday. (via Boing Boing and Craigslist)

Custom Ketchup Labels

How about ketchup bottles as favors at your next big party? How about not! I cannot, for the life of me, understand why someone would want to have customize Heinz bottles This must cater to the same group of people who want custom M&M's, etc. Alright, I'll come clean. I was thinking of buying one of those customized bags of M&M's but that's just more fun that ketchup.

The must amusing part of visiting the Heinz website is the flash animation with example messages and events. Recent grad? Say it with Heinz! Your friend Amanda's birthday coming up? Say it with Heinz!




The most dreadful of all, however is the last example. Imagine your wedding day. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing and everything is just perfect. The party favors arrive and instead of that little bag of chalky candy with a customized ribbon, a burned CD, or whatever David Beahm can dream of, your guests get this:



Jamie and Mark must truly be in love... with ketchup. I would rather a mixtape of dreadfully sappy music than this.

It's too bad that there is a 20 character-per-line, 3-line limit or I would try and fit a great Henry Miller quote on the bottle: “Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish." (via Boing Boing, Neatorama, Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

Maxing out the MacPro

I will admit, I am practically a recent Mac convert. It's not that I haven't used them before or liked them before. It's just that I have never had both the financial ability and the interest to switch over. I did, however, buy myself a MacBook Pro a few months ago and I have not feel any pangs of Windows withdrawal since. But that's another story for another day. This story is about the MacPro , the new Apple desktops running two dual-core Xeon chips, and how I wanted to see how those on the "other side" live.

When the new MacPros were introduced at WWDC, everyone was a buzz. Since then, there have been so many reviews and benchmarking articles that a simple search on google will give you what you need. What I felt like doing was seeing what one could order and how much it would break the bank. Here goes:

The point of comparison is, of course, what you get "standard." For a reasonable $2499, you can get:

• 2 x 2.66Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processors
• 1GB (2 x 512 MB) RAM
• 250GB (7200-rpm) SATA hard drives
  
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT 256 MB video card
  
• 16x SuperDrive
• Apple Keyboard / Mighty Mouse
• Mac OS X Tiger

Not bad right? If you wanted to save some cash and downgrade to 2 x 2Ghz processors and also go down to a 160GB hard drive, you could pick up a MacPro for only $2124. That's downright cheap! But we're not here for the cheap because in the imaginary world (or in the world of the design firms, et al of the world) we would be able to max this baby out! Here is what we really want:

• 2 x 3Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processors
• 16GB (8 x 2GB) RAM
• 4 x 500GB (7200-rpm) SATA hard drives
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D Video card with 2 x dual-link DVI
• 2 x Apple Cinema 30" HD displays
• 2 x 16x SuperDrives
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR / Airport Extreme
• Fibre Channel Card
• Apple Wireless Keyboard / Mighty Mouse
• Mac OS X Server

This comes out to a mere $17,933. The question, of course, would be if its worth buying all those components or just buying some of those pieces (hard drive, memory, video card) separately and ordering the cheapest option from Apple. That I leave to you.

If I had $18,000, I would probably use it to put a nice down payment on a car. Then again, who needs a car in New York?

Post your dream setup and tell us what you would use it for. Until next time...