News

Some of you know that I tend to be a bit of an impulsive buyer, especially when it comes to shopping. And even more so when it comes to electronics. I have to admit that the last few years I've kind of fallen behind on the technological curve. I mean, I don't even own a Mac or an iPhone yet, my iPod is a second-generation, 15GB tank (as well as a refurbished Shuffle), and I'm only running 802.11G in my apartment. Sad, I know!

Well, today I put the cranium to work and impulse purchased the dream laptop. That's right, I've joined the masses and have left the desktop computing behind in order to become increasingly mobile. Really, with the amount of traveling I did in my yut, I should have had one for years. I left the desktop behind, indeed: in a pile in the middle of my apartment due to a fried motherboard or CPU. Hmmm....sounds like an intriguing project for the spring might be rebuilding this bad boy into a Linux box to run web-caching and snort traffic on.

I purchased ourselves a Intel Core 2 duo HP laptop running 64 bit Vista Premium and 4 gigs of RAM. Dude, this thing is totally overkill. But for $750, how could I not? It also has a built in HDMI port (crucial for watching streaming Liverpool games on my LCD TV), a built in webcam (hi mom), a monster 320gb hard drive (I was in need of an upgrade from my 80 gigs anyway), DVD burner, media reader, yada yada yada. So far, I am unimpressed with Vista. How the hell can an OS seem slow on a computer like this? Hopefully Windows 7 is an improvement.

But the biggest news is that....drum-rolls please.....I won the lottery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! $24 million!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, I assume that I will win it tomorrow because I bought my first lotto tickets today after a vision during my dream last night. In my dream, my dad won $3 billion playing poker with his friends - full house with Aces and 9's. Don't ask me, it was a dream. And then, Erika said her mom had a dream about me and the lottery, so surely that is a sign. After purchasing our laptop, Erika and I proceeded to plan out how we would spend the $24 million that I will win tomorrow and I assure you all that the world will become a better place as a result of this. And we will then be able to afford to buy a Mac laptop (I'd go for the Airbook, personally).

J. Riley, and now I am off to have sweet dreams of writing vows for me and my new laptop.