Welcome to February

Geez, another month and a half have zoomed by. At this rate, I'll be in my mid-fifties before the end of the week!

Since last I blogged, I have spent inordinate amounts of money on various junk and non-junk, the world around me has frozen and thawed several times (currently frozen), and a new president has taken office.

I've got a new computer, but I haven't set it up yet. I'm a good American, remember, it's all about the acquisition, not the outcome. It's a very fancy-schmatzy system, an HP Pavillion Elite, with what I hope will be a very speedy AMD quad processor, 6 Gigs of RAM, and a bundled 24 inch widescreen. Already I have begun whoring it up with aftermarket stuff - another 2 Gigs of memory to bring it to its max of 8; a new TV card (the one from the computer it's replacing doesn't fit, and I can not live without tivoing The Closer and Judge Judy). I've been looking for just the right drive to fill its available expansion bay, but I think I'm going to wait until the prices of Blu-ray writers drops another 50%.

Once I move into the new setup, Old unReliable will be passed down to the Nurse, and the Nurse's system will get handed down to Mom. Old unReliable used to be a great computer, two years ago when it was shiny and new. Now it has that lived-in look, and is starting to feel slow. For the Nurse's purposes, it will be a big step up from his Compaq, and once I have restored it to its pristine better-than-new state with additional RAM and storage, it should be relatively speedy again - just not as speedy as mine. Yes, this is a race I refuse to lose!

The big winner here is Mom - the Nurse's Compaq is a decent machine, and will get e-mail, play Slingo, and surf the net with the best of them. She's been stuck with my laptop, and it's very frustrating for me when I have to use it, so it must be doubly so for her. She simply can not deal with the integrated crowded keyboard and touchpad, so using an external keyboard and mouse forces her to be at least a yard away from the screen.

The big moves should happen this weekend - so if I never blog again, just tell yourselves that it didn't go well.