Bigger than a tall building...

Faster than the speed of sound....

Its, its...

Who am I kidding?

Im still here. Caught up in mundane things. Truth be told this past week has been interesting.

Friday night, late the serviceman came to fix the burner for heat and hot water. Took him nearly three hours but we had heat when he finished. All we had to do was go to a gas station and buy some diesel to hold us over till the fuel truck came the next day.

Service burner, and clean out shell: $400

Fuel delivery, 200 gallons home heating oil: $400

Warm fingers and toes: Priceless.

For everything else, theres pillaging...

Ive watched Master and Commander too many times. Went through all my swashbuckling, and swordplay movies since Ive been home. But why havent I been writing?

The computer on which Im currently writing has several faults to it. One, its not mine. Its actaully my baby sisters who is currently staying with my other sister to work, closer and take care of my nephew. She wants it back. I also informed here the past few days windows hasnt been wanting to start up. It freezes, scrren turns black or the screen fills with alternating characters from the keyboard in random fashion. Possibly a virus, but we have no recovery disc. So I am at the mercy of this thing, which is also 4 yrs old. Eww.

Man on a mission I went to 3 diffrent retailers last night with dad. Best Buy, Circuit City, and another local chain. Not one of them had a computer to sell. They are all waiting for the new Vista machines due by months end. I know I wanted Vista, but remembering good advice for not buying the first release of any operating system kicked in. And I wasnt waiting 2 weeks for internet. I then turned to an old friend....

eBay. The curse and salvation of all online shopping. Amazon turned its back, as did that pansey MySimon. eBay...never let me down..

The final contestants were 12 strong. Several were desktop packages, or towers at reasonable prices. The specs were vaired but I had minimal needs which had to be met to make the final cut. Eventually, the need to be mobile took hold. A desktop would have been grand fr the house. Easier to upgrade, and look after. But there was no way to transport a desktop plus its monitor in my car another 1600 miles and not be able to use it in a hotel room. id be better off leaving it home, which also is a waste of money for me.

Portability, also was the reason I set aside the dreams of a 17 inch widescreen. *sigh* But this was desperation. Function over form. Barebones, what I could settle for and still get the job done. The mystical 4 inch penis of computing.

Dell XPS M120. 12" screen. DVD-RW. Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.83Ghz. 2GBSDRAM @ 667mhz. 100GB SATA HD @7200rpm (big reason to buy as was the ram preloaded) And the cherry for this cake was the 256mb NVidea Geforce GO 7400 video card in it. And the best WiFi card on then planet. Yes it was a refurb, which made me cringe. But it felt like buying a certified preowned Lexus. Still under warranty directly from dell. And the configuration I had would have been double what Ipaid for it.

Such a tiny screen Ghost. Fine for on the road, but 12 inches? This isnt porn. Sitting at home with a tiny screen sucks ass. So I also ponied up for a 22 inch flat widescreen monitor from dell too.

Ok, now Im giddy again.

Took me over 7 hours to deliberate which system won, but I think I did good. Laptop was $1500 with shipping. Monitor was $350 with shipping and fees. Roughly a $1900 bandaid for Ghost. Part of me wishes I didnt.

But I wouldntnhave been able to talk to my friends. The only ones who ask how I am doing. SHow any concern for my circumstances. Money well spent.

I cradles my guns hello. Slept soundly on a old couch, and took a nice hot shower. All that remains is waiting for work to call saying to come in after I filled the paperwork out. Now I wait for my new toys and Im foaming at the mouth.