Okay, I bought a new computer at Compusa, which was having a going-out-of-business sale. I forgot they were shutting down. I got a pretty good deal — It’s got Windows Vista Premium (ugh, but I didn’t have any trouble with the initial setup, it’s just fancier XP), and more important it has 2 GB of RAM and a big hard drive. It’s a Gateway, but it seems to work okay. I just went ahead and bought it before I could change my mind — I’ve been dithering about getting a computer for months now, and if I waited any longer I knew I’d end up with a dead computer and no money again.
Of course, I can’t connect to the internet yet — my cable internet is still out, I’m stealing some weak wireless connection just to get this up here. The computer came with all this stuff, which surprised me — keyboard, mouse, speakers, some sort of remote control media setup thing. Unfortunately, it isn’t a laptop — they had some, but they were still going for a tad more than I wanted to spend despite the fire sale discounts — it’s a desktop. Well, I had the monitor mouldering away in the closet anyway, now I can use it. And I half killed myself getting the box up the stairs — my arms still ache. But it just fit under my desk, so it will work out. I’ll be removing lots of crap software once I get everything set up (McAfee Antivirus and all its garbage will go bye-bye, as will a bunch of outdated internet connection stuff (AOL! Netzero! No thanks) and Napster for some reason is installed), but I’m used to that. Not bad for under five hundred bucks. And it’s all thanks to my readers and their generosity. You guys rock.
My laptop took ages to start up. I think I bought the new machine just in time. Well, I’ll get back online tomorrow, I hope. I am diverting myself with “classic” (80s-era, “Fifth Doctor” –the blond one) Doctor Who dvds. One thing I have noticed about the “classic” Doctor Who that I don’t miss at all isn’t the horrid cheap sets (they weren’t all horrid; “The Keeper of Traken” had quite a nice set design) or the rubber monster suits, or the uneven acting — it is the excruciatingly slow pace of the old shows compared to the new one, or frankly any new show that’s been on tv since the 90s. I don’t know what happened, but television shows are filmed at a faster pace, or at least the illusion of one, and with a lot more detail crammed in to the forty-five or so minutes of episodes, and I’ve gotten use to it, which makes watching anything filmed before, oh I don’t know, 1992, difficult.
One more thing: thanks (again) to the contributions from readers, I will still be able to make the upcoming rent, with just a little squeezing. All I have to do is hold out until April 30 (well, as things turned out it’s actually until May 3rd, because I moved in May 4th last year) and then I get my deposit back. Of course they’ll take their time sending it to me, apartment management companies always do, but I plan to have a job by then. Actually, I plan to have a job in the next few weeks, because this situation is ridiculous. I caught a glimpse of an article in today’s paper about how immigrants are leaving the state because of the construction industry (and everything else) downturn. And I’m sure that only about half of those “immigrants” are actually illegal aliens, without which we were told the construction industry would collapse. Well it collapsed frickin’ anyway, didn’t it?
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