I continue to be amazed at the consequences of Moore's Law.

I went into Fry's yesterday looking for a video card, and I saw on display a five-port auto-sensing switch for $29.95. Not just a dumb hub, but a dual-speed, full-duplex, non-bandwidth-sharing, packet-collision-avoiding switch.

But wait! There's more. That was the regular price. That day, and that day only, it could actually be purchased for $19.95.

Still not a good enough deal?

What if I told you that packaged with it was a 10/100 auto-sensing PCI network interface card, all at the low, low price of $19.95?

I couldn't resist, even though I already have a couple spare NICs. I figure you can never have enough NICs. I took it home, and plugged it into the ethernet outlet in the spare bedroom. It started to pass pings with merry abandon, and now I have another node on the network.

I fully expect, the next time I open a box of jumbo Cracker Jacks, to find a bubble-packed Cisco 2600 router...

Relating to the 'never have too many of' idea, last month I picked up a package of 100 3.5" floppies from Imation. I jokingly told a friend this would probably be the last box of floppies I purchased in my life. Hell, I still have old floppies from AOL to be recycled. The main reason for buying the Imation box was for making emergency boot disk sets for clients that didn't look like, um, recycled AOL disks.

For reasons I won't go into here I became frustrated by the mess in my place on Monday and went on a massive clean-up binge. In the process I discovered several ten-packs of Sony floppies from a package of 100 bought long ago.

Then I realized that I had probably bought my last set of floppies five years ago.