(no subject)

[primroseburrows]

Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for what you've all been waiting for: Yet another Random Post of Randomness!

1. It's official: _scally loves me and wants to make me happy.

2. I just ordered 50 gallons of heating oil. $219.95. Ow. I'd seriously consider waiting and boiling water for cleaning and stuff, but I can't bring myself to take cold showers. *sigh* I want a solar water heater.

3. scally wants me to be even happier.

4. I have a $500 credit from Hannah to replace my laptop that got broken in Oz last year. I really want to get one before my vacation next month. Can any of you guys who know stuff about computers tell me if this seems like a good deal? It's got a 120 gig HD and a dual-core Pentium processor (which I have no idea about but hear it's a good thing). Also Windows Vista, which I've heard not-so-good things about.

This looks like a good deal, too. It has more features, a bigger HD and a bigger screen (also a full-sized keyboard, which I would really love). It has a different processor--would that really make a difference to non-graphic-gaming me?

I'm going to browse for a refurbished Mac to compare, also, but I'd appreciate if anyone can give me an opinion.

5. Great Big Sea is going to be at the Orpheum this fall. I want to go but probably won't unless someone would like to go with me. Anyone interested?

6.When someone dies, one of the pat answers is to say "the world is a smaller/worse off place" without the deceased. And it's usually true, because each person adds a piece to the soup of human history. It couldn't be a truer adage in the case of George Carlin. Here's a guy who not only told us the stripped-bare, ugly, honest truth about ourselves and the society we live in when others were burying their heads in the sand, but he made us laugh hysterically about the whole situation. There's not enough people who make us laugh like that. And even fewer who are brave enough to tell the truth. NPR's Fresh Air has excerpts from a couple of interviews that host Terry Gross did with him (in 2004 and 1990).

Here are some videos. If you haven't heard George Carlin speak, you should. And even if you have, watch these anyway, they're awesome.

This one's on war:

This one's about the American Dream:

Here he compares baseball to football:

And this one's about some things that unite us all:

I could link to more. I won't. You don't have to thank me. ;)

RIP, Mr. Carlin. Thanks for bringing humour to honesty, and vice versa.

7. I finally got my hair cut. It's nice and short again, with nice red roots. The hairdresser told me I have beautiful skin and she couldn't believe I had kids who were old enough to have kids. She sounded sincere, too. And I know her eyesight's good because my hair looks really nice. I think I love her.

8. THIRTY DAYS 'TIL VACATION!!! *wild kermitflail*

meresy! nos4a2no9! We maybe should Plan Stuff. How do y'all feel about Second City? If I can get tickets, that is. If not, just dinner and general schmoozing? And maybe even teaching mr_t00by the fine art of Wandering Aimlessly Around Toronto. Other fangirls would be good, too, if we could get up a Fangirl Posse or something. mr_t00by needs to meet more of us.

9. Did I mention that _scally loves me?

Comments

[dragonflymuse.livejournal.com]

I loves me some Tom ;)

Did your package ever arrive? I didn't pay for tracking so I am quite vexed about the late arrival situation.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

I don't know why it wouldn't have come. You sent it to the Tewksbury address, yes?

[dragonflymuse.livejournal.com]

Um, I think so. I have to find my address book (which is missing!) to double check. If I didn't, it will eventually make its way back to me and then I will confirm address :)

ETA: The only address I have for you is in Pawtucket :/ so that is where I sent it. It should be returned to sender and I will re-mail it when I get your new addy.

Sorry :( Your b-day pressies are really late now

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

I'll send you my address by email ASAP. :D

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

Okay, offhand I would rec the Toshiba over the Sony just because the Sony is very small and because of the HD space. No, the processor will not make a difference to you if you're not doing hardcore gaming on it.

I would also suggest looking at newegg.com's specials, particularly their open box specials. You might get lucky and hit one that's got XP already installed. If not, it's probably worth your time to get XP and install it - Vista is such bad news, and laptops are already so ... what's the word... particular about their drivers and so on that it might be worth it.

Also do keep looking at the Apple Store's refurbs. They post them every few days, usually early in the morning Eastern time (or maybe late night Pacific time?). Even if you spend $949 on an Apple it's still going to last longer and be better than almost any low end laptop you can buy today.

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

PS

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=32&name=Notebooks-Laptops

or maybe if this link works their XP Pro laptops:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2030260032+1044906965&Configurator=&Subcategory=32&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&Order=BESTMATCH&srchInDesc=

The one thing I would avoid is an AMD processor. They fail more when they run hot, and laptops run hot anyway, so stick with Intel, and preferably stay away from Celerons.

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

PPS: A Toshiba Satellite w/ XP Pro:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114466

Also stay away from Acer. I don't trust them. If you can't stay away, make sure you get a new one and you document your purchase for the warranty.

[meresy.livejournal.com]

I second the Toshiba recommendation. I love mine. My other advice is to go for a 15.4" or smaller. Yeah, the full keyboards on 17" are nice, but the laptop is a behemoth. Trust me.

Yay, plans! I like Second City pretty well! I've been twice. They serve good drinks, and the humour is usually quite Canadian and dorky, which should please you. Some troupes are cruder than others, but whatev.

I also like just dinner and schmoozing. We could maybe invite bohemian__storm along? She and Nos and I have met up twice, now, and she's aces.

[phoenixw.livejournal.com]

I'd been thinking about George Carlin the day before he died, remembering his monologue on the difference between dogs and cats. He still makes me laugh, and we were lucky to have had him around, making comedy art.

I'd recommend the Sony VAIO over the Toshiba Satellite primarily because the Centrino processor? Not so good. Get the Pentium dual-core. Your biggest problem with a laptop is the buildup of heat and that affects the processor first and foremost.

Whichever you settle on, I highly recommend a cooling pad. Something like this.

My favorite laptop to date is the IBM ThinkPad, but they're freakin expensive. Nice little workhorse though. Our neighbor boy has an Acer laptop and it's held up well. I'm not unimpressed.

I can second the recommendation for newegg.com. And you might check Dell's website - they also sell refurbished units.

[phoenixw.livejournal.com]

Or... you might want to check out this HP laptop.

I forgot to mention that my son's desktop has Vista and it's not bad, but you'll want to make sure to turn off the Aero feature. It consumes a lot of resources to no effect but making things shiny. (I've read that research shows it doesn't but I saw a huge difference for my son, who is a dedicated gamer.) And he has only 1 gig of RAM. I absolutely agree that 2 gigs would be better, but with a dual-core processor you can get by on one.

And if you're adamant about not using Vista, you do have the option of downgrading from Vista to Windows XP.

[aingeal8c.livejournal.com]

Vista is fine as long as you've got enough RAM. I had to upgrade my Acer to 2GB of RAM just to get it to run properly. But I've had no trouble with Vista since.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_scally/]

Yes, I do! :-))

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

*dances*

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I second the rec for Toshiba over the Sony, mostly because I have heard that Vista requires at least 2GB of RAM to be reasonable. (My old laptop was a Toshiba Satellite and I liked it a lot! I ended up buying a Lenovo but that might be out of your price range - just under $1000.)

Also, you can still get computers with WinXP - I did. Sites such as http://www.pcworld.com/shopping/browse/category.html?id=10010 and http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=32&name=Laptops-Notebooks let you filter by things like price, operating system, and so on. (I think I compared computers and settled on one via newegg, but then was able to get a better price going directly through Lenovo because of special deals. Check notebookreview.com for special deals.)