Watch the Watch

A few years ago, for an anniversary gift, I recall spending a bit of time looking at Nixon watches online with J, working to pick out the right one for him. He's not a big watch fan, and will often forget to wear one, but I wanted to get him something special. Something that he'd like wearing and hopefully would remember to do so often.

I'm the complete opposite. I wear a watch (digital, always digital) almost 24/7. Have since elementary school. I feel horribly naked without one, and pretty anxious too. I suppose it's a bit of an obsessive thing for me, though I don't care about buying a nice expensive watch. I'm fine with a $12-24 one, generally styled for men and waterproof, then a $60 gold analogue piece that looks more like a bracelet.

I've worn a watch so long now, that I've got permanent watch-tan and a bit of a skin discolouration. I think it's also affected the way my bones developed on my left arm. It's weird, probably gross to other people, but man, I need my watch. I suppose one day I should look into getting something like Nixon though, something nice to last a long time.

Only if it's digital, no analogue here!

Simpsons Obsession

Since last summer, I've been on such a huge Simpsons kick. Watching the DVDs I've bought over and over, at least 5 times since November. Which is crazy. Those $15 DVD sets have paid for themselves quite well. I guess my renewed love with the series is because...well, I don't get to watch them everyday with dinner anymore. And I never realized how much I missed out on the fantastic extras and commentaries. Ohohoho, I'm quite obsessed.

I've always loved the show, and have seen every episode ever aired on Fox (didn't get HBO when they were the shorts on Tracey Ullman). I had two toys, a Marge and Homer rubber set where you could move their limbs, to a degree. I lost the toys when we moved, and I've never forgiven myself. Hopefully one day I can find, or replace, them. Making me feel whole again.

Ooooo Canon!

I didn't realize this because I've been out of the state for so long, but apparently our old Epson printer was on its last legs. My father has been shopping around for multifunction printers and finally decided on the Canon MP260. We picked one up from Best Buy today, because it had the lowest price of $109.

I think the main selling point for my dad is that it's wireless. After some fiddling around today on both of our laptop, we were able to get it to work perfectly. This makes me quite excited, since now I can just print from anywhere! It's also got some pretty cool scanner/copier features. Pretty nice early family holiday present I'd say.

Reading the watchmen on red koi.

Well, I did it. I finally ordered two things I should have had a long while ago.

Watchmen and a yoga mat. I know, I know, I'm super late for both. I should have bought a mat months ago when I started this new yoga-sizing thing, but I just kept dragging my feet about it. Hoping I would be fine just doing yoga on the carpet. No such luck though, as I tend to slip a bit and I'm sure that's not good for my joints and makes it more difficult to get into poses.

The other...I know I should have bought this amazing comic book a long while ago, but I'm really such a newbie when it comes to owning English comics. I did want to buy it before the movie comes out, so at least I met that goal. I don't want to be met with a huge sudden rush of Watchmen fans, like what happened with The Dark Knight. While it's an excellent movie, which I enjoyed immensely, the giant and sudden "hipness" of Batman just hit too quickly. Yes, yes Batman is angsty and cool. Indeed, the Joker is a fabulous foe who represents what all of us would be like if we just let go of modern day ethos.

Anyhoo, I'm hoping Watchmen will be just as bloody amazing. The trailer at least brings hope:

Ode to my PC

Oh hallowed screen
shining brightly through the night
I spend so much time staring at you
I can't imagine what my life might be like
if your light were to fade,
or your image freeze
or your body were to break
I dare say I'd cry for you
and probably bake a sad cake:


For you are my job
you are my life
you are my one and only
Oh PC please do not freeze
and make my evenings lonely


...yyeeeeaaaahhhh....now you see why I never pursued a poetry career.

Really though, I've spoken many times about my PC troubles here. How my last one died and the torrent of A/C adapters it took with it. It's still living on battery power and it is a good machine. Oh well, so far I haven't had any big hardware problems with this laptop. I don't really think my family stays constant with what kind of PC we get, however we always have used Windows as our operating system. I couldn't tell you why we started using Windows, but it's been the only OS we stick with. No Mac, or Linux, or Unix for this household. I do use Macs, but I'm not a big fan of them. To me, Macs are for people who don't know how to work a PC, or don't want an operating system they can dig deep into and fiddle with. But I love learning about my computer and manipulating its operating system in fun ways. I'm no tech geek, but I can still have fun with Windows and alter it in the ways I wish.

So I've gone through all stages of Windows, from 95, to NT, to 2000, to XP and now Vista. On my personal computer, I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate. J uses Vista Home Premium and my father uses Vista Business for the family desktop. While I wasn't completely for or against it, I've learned that it isn't a piece of crap like a lot of people seem to believe. I think it's offering more on the design side than XP did, but I don't see to many issues. And I'm able to work around compatibility issues, so I can play games designed for XP on my Vista machine without problem. Really, I think a lot of people who whine about Vista's shortcomings just haven't bothered to look up how to get around them.

Of course, no operating system is without it's fault and Vista is no different. Even with a fast processor, good hard drive and plenty of RAM, my computer decides it will freeze or give me weird little graphic glitches. The freezing problem is so common with any computer, it's hard to chalk it all up to Vista. The worst part is when it freezes at an inopportune time. Such as when I'm in the middle of working on a large Photoshop document and made some major change but hadn't saved yet. OOOooo and when that happens right when I also need to look something up for work or need to get that image to print? Yeah, that's a wonderful moment to freeze on me, Vista. Thanks a lot.

Oh well, that's nothing that a reboot while muttering under your breath can't take care of. With more serious issues, like trying to connect to another computer via Vista's remote desktop assistance, the customer service reps are pretty useful to chat with on Microsoft's site. Also, their support with Service Pack 1 is free right now, until March 18, 2009. Though I rarely have to use that option, it's nice that it's there. When your operating system includes a search bar built into the start menu, that means it's going to make troubleshooting and file finding easy.

As long as Windows is around, I'll probably be using their OS on my personal computer. As will my children, and my children's children, and my children's children's children.Then they might move to Linux for a year, but that penguin can only hold their gaze for so long before they do a dual install with Windows.

Cisco Certified?

Everybody needs a backup plan, right? Especially in this day and age where good jobs are scarce and a single person can go through an average of 5 jobs before they find "the one". It's better to have a lot of skills so you won't be out of work for too long, or at all. Which is why one might decide to look to the IT field to help pad out their resume.

But what do you need to become a great IT rep and find good work? Well, having knowledge of computers certainly is a start, but it also helps to have Cisco certification. Too be honest, I don't know too much about Cisco, but I have seen people I know list their certification on their resumes and I know it helps with getting work. I am a bit curious as to what Cisco is, what their training entails and just how could this help me in the future.

Well, it looks like Cisco offers several different training programs to those interested in the wide world of Information Technology. I seem to be fairly adept at computers, but it's more software work than hardware. I'm lucky in that I have a very computer-literate father who's taught me quite a bit about PCs. There's no way I could be considered for any IT job though, considering how I don't actually have much experience or knowledge of the field. I tend to focus more on the design, and visual, side of things I suppose.

Cisco does have a wide selection of certification programmes though, that can be completed via the web. They offer three levels of degrees, Associate, Professional, and Expert. With 6 different "paths" you can choose to center on.

It looks like CCNA certification is the most basic. If you complete the training for that, you're certified to install, configure, operate, and troubleshoot medium-size routed and switched networks. While this is excellent to get an IT career, it's also great knowledge to have in general so you can properly understand your own home network.

The more I think about it, the more I think I need some IT training. If not for my current job, then to include on a future resume and to turn my own home into a palace of working networks.

Finished Half-Life 2!

Whoo!

I've finished another game. This has become the summer of Xbox 360 for me. With the goal of finishing as many games as possible and getting as many achievements as my fingers and eyes can handle. So far, I've finished Army of Two several times and now I'm working on finishing The Orange Box. You may recall that I finished Portal a while back, and I can't accomplish Team Fortress at this moment.

So, Half-Life it is! And on to chapter 1!

The Simpsons make it all better.

Mhm...it's the little things in life that make me happy. Knowing my schedule for next quarter is one of them, another is watching fabulous Simpsons episodes.

I've watched all of Series 4 a few times and it's definitely up there among my favourite seasons of The Simpsons.
Here's one of the great Treehouse of Horror episodes. The Simpsons 405 Treehouse of Horror III

Hosted by the wonderful, Watch The Simpsons Online, the best website I've found to find streaming videos of all of The Simpsons episodes.

Oh, also, this isn't from Season 4, but it's probably my favourite Treehouse of Horror story:



Homer: No Beer and T.V. make Homer go...something...something...
Marge: Go Crazy?
Homer: DON'T MIND IF I DO!!!BBWWAFDAKJKJKLDAHK

See more awesome random screencaps at the LiveJournal community, Simpsons Fix

Sparky

I'm always happy to take on ideas to blog. My mind is too tired to create anything with real substance, unfortunately, so prompts are fantastic. Which is primarily why I signed up with Izea, PayPerPost and SocialSpark. I'm pretty happy with Izea's companies, even though I've only been blogging with them for about a year, every post I do is met with excitement. No matter if it's a mundane subject or not.

What I like about Izea, and especially SocialSpark, is their focus on the blogger. The forums are filled with people who are both pros and newbies at blogging, and conversation is promoted well. If you have something negative to say, you won't be censored. If you have a question regarding a post, you will be answered with bloggers and Izea staff alike. It's great!

SocialSpark is kind of like PayPerPost Vr. 2.0, in that it is set up a little differently but still works basically the same way. Social Spark still provides:

-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

It also utilizes Izea's blog rating system known as RealRank, which is an improvement over using Google's PageRank. If you're in the paying blog universe, you're probably well aware of Google's PageRank drop last summer, where a lot of us lost our coveted pageranks or the number went down. To non-paying bloggers, this massively effects what kind of posts you can take, and hurts us. RealRank is an improvement, and SocialSpark utilizes it well.

I'm really happy I signed up with SocialSpark, having a little extra income while blogging is a fantastic thing.

I was just at the Cutlery Barn...

I've become addicted to finding weird comedy shows. So far I've developed quite a collection of British funnies, and recently I happened upon the old Ben Stiller Show and The State, which has several members of Reno 911 and Stella! in it.

I leave you now with one of the weirder skits from The State. Simply titled "Cutlery Barn". See if you can spot Lt. Jim Dangle and Deputy Trudy Wiegel!

Cutlery Barn

Wacom sadness.

I think my wacom finally kicked the bucket.

aw poo.

I suppose this is to be expected of course, yet another expense I need to factor into my budget this year.

At least we had a good 8 years together.

Lovely Black Box

Well, the year of large purchases continues. The t.v. in my dorm room recently had the evil problem of getting green corners on the screen, caused by magnetic interference from my fridges. It's a CRT, and we've had it off the fridges for a little over a week. It's gotten better, but I know it will come back.

Which is why I offered to buy us a new one.

A new LCD HDTV that is.

It was a hard choice between the 23" Samsung and the 26" Toshiba, but after viewing them in Best Buy, I'm pretty happy with my choice to go with the Samsung. Yep, I'm quite excited about this new t.v. However, now we have to try and sell the 20" Magnavox CRT t.v. Hopefully this will be a good time to do so, when kids are moving out of the dorms and willing to buy stuff.


it's like that one but black instead of white.

Although now my roommate is considering just keeping it to use the year after I graduate. Since I'm a year ahead of her.

I look forward to many years of happy television watching with my baby.

Scarfe Night

Gerald Scarfe's talk was fabulous last night. He basically showed a lot of his illustrations with personal commentary on each one.

His personal views on politics I think aptly resembled that of everyone at the lecture. He really does believe many to be asses, and his comparison of George Bush to a scared, confused little chimp was received with much applause.

Perhaps what I found most interesting about the evening was when he touched on the subject of animation and his work with operas. Gerald was the character designer on Disney's Hercules.




He said that Disney treated him well, which was nice to hear since I've heard many horror stories about the company. He also talked about his experience working for several years on The Wall with Roger Waters, which gave some insight into that type of long-term work.

His resume is quite full, and worth a read if you've never heard of him before. Probably one of his best illustration artbooks to date is Drawing Blood.



The room, which was only set up to hold about 300 people, became packed with standing room only available. Perhaps the coolest part of the evening was hearing Scarfe mention my friend Anna. She's the one who originally contacted him for a school project, and from there her professor took over and they succeeded in getting him to visit.

After the talk, Anna ran off to have dinner with him and a few of her professors. I'm sure it was a dream come true for her and I'm glad to have had this opportunity to meet him.

Play like a Star!

The recent Academy Awards were kind of....boring. I'm not really one to get into the Oscars, but I know a lot of people felt the same way. Perhaps it was the fact that the writers didn't have as much time to work on the show as previous years. Perhaps Hollywood is actually getting tired of honoring itself in the guise of a little golden man. Who knows why it wasn't the same entertaining 3 hours that many have come to expect, but I do know this:

Probably the best part of the show was seeing Jon Stewart play Wii Tennis with another actress. I'd love to show you the clip, but it appears that posting it on YouTube violates the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences copyright. So you'll just have to imagine him running back and forth, flinging his Wii remote as he looks at a gigantic (movie theatre sized)screen. What does this mean?

It means the Wii is finally the mainstream console it always wanted to be. Nintendo is ridiculously smart in their adversing, promising this is the game console for all ages and skills to love. Which is true, it is a great family game console, that's why it can be a challenge to own one.

However, to those familiar with Charter High-Speed internet, or just those willing to enter, you can now win a Wii.

All you have to do is register and you could be on your way to playing Wii tennis in the comfort of your own home. The winner will receive a Nintendo Wii Console, Wii Stand, 5 Sports games ( Boxing, Baseball, Tennis, Golf and bowling), 1 Remote Controller, 1 Nunchuk Controller, 1 Sensor Bar, 1 Wii AC Adapter, 1 Wii AV Cable.

You also have the chance to participate in Charter's Win High-Speed Internet for Life auction, where the winning bidder will get the fastest internet speed in their area for life, a cable modem and wireless router and free professional installation.

Even if you have no need for Charter internet, or you're not in the right area, the chance to win one of the most popular consoles of our time is pretty nice. Plus you can always pretend you're playing at the Oscars, with any number of celebrity as your opposition!

Click Here for a Chance to Win a Nintendo® Wii™!

blllarrgh!

It's another moment where I sit back and marvel at my body's ability to inflict pain on itself and all the little nuances of said pain. Like how only the left side of my body is in great muscle pain, or how I get shortness of breath when I want to do something as joyful as laugh or as needed as sneeze.

I've got a viral infection that's decided to show itself by making some of my muscles swell and hit my bones (at least I believe that's what the doctor said, he had a thick Russian accent and I was trying not to wriggle in pain) and therefore make it hard to take deep breaths. But my lungs sound clear, so there's no need to worry too much. Just a bunch of Tylenol and water, that's it. Great, right before Christmas.

I am feeling a bit better today, so I hope that translates into feeling proper during the usual family Christmas party. Which means that I hope I can just sit there and drink and make my way through the typical onslaught of people bragging about their kids and then asking, again as always, what am I studying and what is Sequential Art and where is Savannah. Hopefully I can act just antisocial enough so as not to arouse suspicion that I may indeed be trying to avoid watching my cousin's stupid football game or prom video. Seriously, I don't think that beyond the grandmother anyone else cares what your kid and his good-looking (of course) blonde date looked like at Prom. I really hope I can bring my DS and just play Raving Rabbids.



Why yes, I am a spoil-sport and know exactly what my parent's got me for Christmas. Probably because I only asked for one thing, and I am ever so excited for it.

I don't own a Wii, and probably won't for a long time, but I got to play the first Raving Rabbids on PC and it was quite fun. Apparently it sucked for the Nintendo DS, but they've changed that in Raving Rabbids II. I'll just have to wait a few days and see though.

Till then, these are the commercials that really made me fall in love with those widdle bunny rabbids *WARNING Could be considered a Spoiler. So don't watch if you love mysteries. Or at least watch with your eyes closed. I don't really think you'll ever figure out the story anyway from these clips*:

Holiday Photo Edit

Earlier I mentioned that I was busy this past week. Last week I had a few things going on, which included visiting the Edward Hopper and E.W.Turner exhibits in the National Gallery in D.C. as well as my boss's holiday party. Both days were fun, and both days were cold.

During the week I had a great job. I had about 18 photos taken from a business holiday party that I needed to cut the people out and stick them on a wintery background. I love doing this stuff, but it was a bit of a task and mindlessly editing photos can get quite tiresome.

I don't do too much editing along these lines, but I am happy with the end result:



That photo I probably had the most work to do because I needed to make the little snowman visible. The biggest time consumer was finding an appropriate background photo and a frame. That sucked, I need to start taking indoor photos of window frames so I don't run into a problem like this again. Stupid windows.

I love how I took a ton of time to find a great stock snow image only to have the focus point (a lovely red barn) be completely covered up in all the photos.

Anyhoo, I am kind of pleased with how these turned out, especially since I didn't fiddle with people lighting (as the client deemed it unnecessary) or retouching (which I do like to do but rarely have the willing sources to work on).

I would love to have more business like this, and get back into the world of photo editing on Photoshop. It's been too long and my skills aren't as great as I'd like. Though, to be fair, I couldn't really find a good tutorial on how to cut out hair. I appears to be something you just need to figure out on your own. So really, not a new way to learn for me.

Blah

Things have been quiet for me lately. Because of snow I couldn't go to work, and because of other people, I have no work to do at home. In all honesty, all the work I need to do for VisArts can easily be completed here, so I really wish that the person I need to send me my information could. Oh well, I guess there's always Monday >.<

What I have been up to:

I just got my glasses back, using an old frame and getting new lenses to fit my updated prescription. It's a head trip, everything is very sharp and strange to me. This is the first time in many, many years that I didn't get transition (the ones that turn dark like sunglasses when outside) lenses too. Why? Because I'm looking toward the future. I expect to only use these glasses for another 6 months or so, until I get my new and improved eyes in the Summer.

I'm looking at the disposable nature of things right now. My glasses are disposable, even though they've been a part of me for well over 13 years now. I'm looking to discard them for a good 20 years, or only rely on cheap reading glasses to help with close drawing or night driving. It's an exciting feeling, and certainly something I could never have predicted when I first started wearing these coke-bottle sized beasts. And yet, also completely expected since I've been counting down the years till my 21st birthday, the signal that I'll finally be able to get surgery.

My days have been filled with playing Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, the only game I own so far for my little Nintendo DS. It's a great game, really, and I'm completely confused as to how Nintendogs could get a better ranking than Zelda on Gamespot's list of top DS games of all time.


Why?!!


I look forward to my next DS game, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2. Should be plenty of fun and will distract me from the slow days that keep popping up.

Search and Prosper

Searching for people online is a common pastime, as is searching for your own name and seeing who else shares your vowels and consonant. I doubt that there isn't a single person reading this post who's searched for themselves online. And if you haven't, I'll patiently wait for you to go to a website like Spock.com and search for yourself.

Go on, I'll play some lovely elevator muzack until you get back.

....doot do doot da bum bum doot dooot dee...

Back? Found yourself? No? Then you aren't popular enough and need to spend more time online, and perhaps a little time getting to know the real you.


There is certainly more of an obsession with a person's online entity now than even 5 years ago. We're a people obsessed culture, as top searches have shown. Celebrities like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have topped "most searched for" lists for a good 6 years now. While I'm not going to get into why people continue to waste time and internet tubing on those two slags, the point is that they are people and that seems to be the most important factor pushing us to use online searches.

Often the trouble is doing a search for a person and getting a lot of unrelated links. For example, if I do a search for my last name to see who else shares this suffixial bond I end up with several Italian sites using my name in their articles. Because in Italy my name has a totally different meaning, and is not really a last-name per se. However, with a people oriented search engine like Spock, it's much easier to whittle down those links into ones actually related to your search.

Spock also has a tag system, which other search engines seem to lack. These tags are added by Spock members or the people in question as well.

So, let's say for instance that you want to find, well, Spock. A search for him comes up with these results:


Oooo.

See those websites listed under each person? That's where that person can be found on the web, where they're mentioned or if they belong to a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook.

Looking at the more traditional search result page, you can see all the tags that are associated with that person. Those tags come in handy.

I know Leonard Nimoy is the most famous Vulcan of all, but really, he hogs the limelight. Oh Spock, all knowing search engine, who else is a Vulcan?



Huh, really, Horatius Cocles? I had no idea he had pointy ears. Well, you learn something new every day.

Spock.com could entertain me all day. I could keep going with this search for vulcans and bounce off onto another interesting tag when I feel like exploring the non sequitur realm of internet searching.

Go ahead, get lost in the tags of your ancestors and annoying relatives. Let me know if any of them are Vulcans. I'm sure at least one of them must be, right?

Demon Depp is Delightful

Oh I am excited for this coming December 21st. A certain little film by one of my favourite directors starring a few of my favourite people will finally arrive. That's right, Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's latest endeavour.



I'm a big Johnny Depp fan, and Tim Burton fan, and Helena Bonham Carter fan. Oh I do enjoy Depp films. He's a fantastic actor who can portray both the normal, modern and perhaps boring man and then turn around and be the weirdest, off the wall character you've ever seen. It's hard for me to choose two of his roles that I loved the most, I like almost all of his movies. I suppose, of course, I tend to enjoy his weirder characters better. Hrm...I can name three of my favourite Depp films:

1. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
2. Ed Wood
3. Edward Scissorhands

Before I get caught up in the "oh, of course you like Edward Scissorhands every mall-goth kid loves that", I will say I'm not a mall goth in the slightest and I refuse to buy the overpriced crappy clothing. I have no connection between dumb Hot Topic cronies and this genuinely original film. Depp is so young and innocent as Edward, it's quite appealing. The whole movie makes me want to go "dawwwwww, lookit his widdle scissorshands! I would totally hire him to cut topiaries and not think for a second he was weird!"

...but maybe that's just me.

His scenes in his master's castle are the most endearing to me. Sad, tragic, but beautiful. This whole concept and Depp's character of course rely strongly on the great connection he has with Tim Burton, and Tim's own fantastic imagination. I can't imagine that castle looking "normal" and I can't imagine anyone else portraying poor Edward.

Ed Wood is another top choice because of the partnership with Burton. In this film, Depp is so energetic and positive, you really want him to make it in the B-movie biz. I absolutely love his smile when he's telling his grand ideas to a group of stone-faced listeners. The ensemble cast works with Burton and Depp perfectly, and I think the scene with Orson Welles (as portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio), is quite clever. A great callback to fans of Welle's classic Citizen Kane. I generally don't like black and white films, but I like Ed Wood, the lack of colour separates it all the more from reality.


OKay, my absolute, favourite Depp portrayal does have to be him as Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Fear and Loathing is one of my top films, and books. The director, the location, the cast, all perfect to bring Thompson's drug-filled journey to screen. Terry Gilliam is the best man for the job as director and his crazy, schizophrenic style was made for Johnny Depp. Even though Depp's character spends the entire film looking like one more hit will make his head explode, you can tell he had a fun time playing Thompson/Raoul Duke.

I love every moment of Fear and Loathing. I don't think the movie would have been as convincing had the director and main actor not spent a ton of time with Hunter S. Thompson himself. Spending any time in that crazy bastards basement, as Johnny did, really screams role commitment.

I love Johnny best when he's completely out of his mind on the screen. He has the best sense of humour about himself, which is nessicary to play such absurd characters as a timid man with scissors for hands, a b-movie director with a penchant for cross-dressing, or a fuckoutofhismind journalist wobbling his way through Las Vegas.

Now comes Sweeney Todd. Aside from his Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, I feel like it's been a while since I last saw a crazy Johnny Depp. I did visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site, watched the trailer, downloaded a lovely wallpaper (featuring one of my top favourite actresses, Helena Bonham Carter...who happens to be the wife of Tim Burton...I have strange taste), I can confidently say that my crazy Depp is back!

Like all movies now, this one has a myspace so visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace and preview some of the great songs featured along with wonderful evil acting.

Y'know, as a personal thing, Sweeney Todd was apparently the dinner theatre production where my parents announced their engagement to my mother's family. It's a bit of an odd musical to announce such an event, but nevertheless I assume I'm not the only member of my household who looks forward to this film.

Catching up a bit

Oh I am a happy camper.

My laptop is working wonderfully. I went with an HP Pavilion DV 9500t, their "entertainment laptop PC". 17" screen, Intel Centrino duocore hard drive, great resolution, good ram, upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate and fully loaded with Adobe CS3 and full Microsoft Office 2007. It's pretty comparable to my boyfriend's new Asus machine, with only a few little differences (like he has a higher resolution and slightly better graphics card), but I'm happy. This little baby is quite lovely looking and I'm rather excited about my tiny, insignificant and probably never-to-be-used remote that fits in the express slot. What? It's the first time I've had anything to go in that slot! It's nice.

On top of that I've got my Mustek Scanner all loaded and ready to go. It's a bit of a beast, but hopefully worth it, as it's one of the very few A3 size affordable scanners out there.

I've been sucked into this machine and am using it nonstop. I've transferred almost everything from the old HP and just need to get a few more files.

Tomorrow I'll be a bit sad as I won't be able to spend all day on this lovely little machine, but that's to be expected as it's Thanksgiving. I expect tomorrow to be a very busy day, filled with too many relatives (and future relatives) and food. I expect to be bloated and sleepy by about 6 p.m.

Hurrah.