It all started with a picture. I was surfing the web on a wednesday, looking for something cool and techy to slap up on the blog. I saw a picture of a three monitor solution in widescreen. That led me to an incredible youtube clip of people playing first-person-shooters using three monitors in tandem. I was hooked. I wanted to do this in the worst possible way, never once considering that the worst possible way meant poor planning and research.
I went out and priced monitors. Too expensive. I went only to popular sites. Too expensive. I scoured ebay. Bingo. I finally found and won a monitor for $50 (with shipping included). Weeks later the monitor arrived and I was shocked to realize that the monitor’s aspect ratio of 16:9 was different than my 16:10 monitors. No biggie, I just couldn’t play at the ratio I wanted.
No, I couldn’t play at all.
I didn’t have a DVI-D cable. $25 later that problem resolved itself. However, I still could not play at any sensible speed or graphic capability.
Turns out you need to be working through a linkage called SLI in order to get smooth 3d play over three+ monitors and 2+ video cards. The set I’d collected over the years no longer had the SLI connector, so all the cash spent went for naught and now I find myself with an extra monitor and no opportunity to do the three screen solution without papering the problem with hundred dollar bills.
In other words, I need to concede defeat before blowing a wad o cash I don’t have on a problem that has minimal relevance to my daily life. The old me would have blown the cash. Today’s me is willing to concede. Sometimes concession yields nice things. Now I can save that money for something I really need,like a new S-belt.
I learn something new every day and today’s lesson is about stubbornness. Losing at such a small and insignificant thing used to crush me inside, but today it didn’t. It bothers the heck out of me, but I can move past it and focus on the larger challenges in life, like grading papers and building my boys a loft-fort.
More on that next time.