Oh, right. LiveJournal. I knew I’d forgotten something these last few days.
On Thursday I left work at about 3:30 PM (a little early, but not much) and headed down to Linnaeus‘s place to leave my car. Predictably, the Edens Expressway was horrible with pre-holiday traffic, but I was comforted by the thought that I wouldn’t have to drive in the worst of the traffic. I got home, grabbed a few last-minute items, and headed out with my suitcase and computer bag. I only had to walk about four blocks to catch the bus, and then it was a rather bouncy but otherwise stress-free ride down to the Jefferson Park station. A short walk from there and I was at the Blue Line stop, where it seemed that the trains to O’Hare were running every 2-3 minutes. Wowsers! I enjoyed the ride up the middle of the Kennedy Expressway, looking at the cars all around me that were stopped and being glad it wasn’t me. I-190 into O’Hare was a parking lot, but the train sailed in to the stop in the middle of O’Hare, no problem. Wow. I need to take the El to O’Hare more often. $2 beats $50 in parking anytime!
So I got there around 5:20 or so, just in time to miss the earlier flight to Raleigh-Durham. Ah well. There was some screwarounds at the American counter that prevented me from using the self-service kiosks (evidently my name was on the List That Doesn’t Exist, and they had to call and get clearance from the TSA to let me fly). So that was an hour waiting in line. Then the plane was delayed an hour getting in. Then we sat on the tarmac for an hour as they fixed the attitude indicator which had apparently gone blank (I didn’t mind that – I’d just as soon be on an airplane where everything works, thanks!). In the end we left two hours late, and I got into RDU just before 1 AM. Ow. But it was worth it to see my wonderful husband again!
On Friday we puttered around the house for a bit, then as I was going to check on some stuff online. I opened up my laptop and…the video was scrambled. Just like back in January. And this was even after they apparently fixed it by replacing every damn thing in there. After poking at it a bit, we finally decided that after at least three nuke-and-repavings and two trips back to Sony, it was time to retire the piece of crap once and for all. Best Buy had some great deals on Compaq notebooks, so we went in and walked out with a Presario R3306US laptop. 60 GB hard drive, 512 Mb RAM, DVD-ROM, and 3 USB 2.0 ports for $700 after rebates. Sounded like a great deal to me!
Zenwolph joined us at Best Buy as he drove in from Richmond, VA, and from there we did a quick grocery trip to prepare since the grocery stores were going to be closed the next day. Then it was off to Rio Churrascaria. I can’t improve on what Zen had to say about it, except to say it was a damn good meal. We returned to the house and had fun swapping gifts. We got Zen some nice presents from International Wolf Center (or at least, some pictures of nice presents, since the USPS apparently has some fascinating ideas about what “priority” constitutes in Priority Mail). Dan got me what amounted to the Coffee Geek Gift Set: a vacuum coffee maker, a coffee burr grinder, and a coffee bean roaster, as well as a wonderful selection or green beans for roasting. (By the way, I found out after the fact that Seven Bridges Co-Op, where Dan purchased the coffee roaster, also sells homebrewing supplies. Oooh, two fixes in one supplier!) Zen gave me a couple of great homebrewing books although he extracted the promise from me to let him sample anything I made from them.
As for Dan, Zen got him a nice DVD player. Unfortunately, so did I 🙂 That was resolved later with a little return action at Target later on. I also got Dan a copy of Alton Brown’s newest book, and of course a Playstation 2 with some games. Thanks again to everyone who helped with the PS2 – Dan was surprised (well, if nothing else, surprised I could get my hands on one 🙂 and very happy with the gift.
Christmas evening I made a tasty Bolognese sauce for fettucine, and me_not_you and wildmouse joined us for dinner. Dan and Donald played some NFL Blitz Pro, and we generally just hung out and enjoyed the company. On Sunday we met up with Thomas and Sherry and Donald and Janelle for a lunch that…well, at least the company was good. And it’s always great to spend time with friends. After lunch, Zen headed home, skirting the snow and ice storm which was pounding the area south and east of the Triangle (we saw not even a snowflake). I took my time packing up – I really didn’t want to leave. This separation has been hard on both of us; we’re holding things together well, given the circumstances, but the goodbyes are harder than hell sometimes.
My flight back was uneventful, and Linnaeus was kind enough to give me a lift from the airport (thanks again!). I went to bed far too late.
This week has been pretty good so far – easy commutes, and while work has been busy, it hasn’t been insane. I’ll be spending time at Roho and Genet‘s place on Thursday, then Friday is the LAFF New Year’s Eve Party. I’m looking forward to seeing friends there.
And now, back to work!
Merry Christmas, and I’m glad the flight went well. I’ve heard some real horror stories airline passengers lately!
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/business/28air.html?oref=login
Glad that you didn’t get in to that mess! Take care!
Oh yeah – it was amusing to walk by the Delta gates and baggage claims and seeing the mess they were in. Between that and the winter storm that skirted us in NC, I really got away lucky this time!
I should ask you this simply because you’ve gone through so many of them. I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a while for a new laptop and I might’ve finally found one I like. It’s a Sony S260, somethingoranother.
The only problem is, I keep hearing horror stories about Sony laptops and I’m not really interested in buying a ticket for THAT ride.
What I’ve alway been looking for is a compact or sub-compact laptop with a reasonable amount of features and basic horsepower that DOESN’T cost me any memorable parts of my anatomy. This thing’s small, but not tiny and everything else I see is usually an armbuster that’s more Desk-top than lap-top. Apparently that’s what I, as an american, am supposed to like.
So if you’ve gotta minute and you can share some advice, I’d be very interested.
Thanx,
–kit
Well, apparently the newest Sonys are better than ones they’ve made in the past, due to less outsourcing of manufacturing on Sony’s part (this is from a Best Buy computer tech, so take it with a grain of salt). For me personally, I’ll probably never buy a Sony laptop again due to the problems I had with the last one – the Windows installation was never fully stable, there were hard drive issues, there were video/motherboard issues, and calling their customer support line was a direct line to darkest New Delhi to people who could only read off the script in front of them.
Mind you, from a customer service standpoint, that’s probably about as good as it’s going to get in today’s market. Bleah.
As for what I do recommend: first off, I’m going to assume you’re looking for a Windows laptop. If you’re looking for Apple or *nix, I’m not the person to talk to. That having been said, the first thing I recommend is getting a Best Buy or Circuit City credit card, if your credit is good enough to handle it. That will get you eighteen-months-same-as-cash deals, and that makes the laptop suddenly a lot more affordable. The other thing to remember is that you’ll probably be paying up to $300 more than the list price for the laptop if you get it from these places, then get the difference back in a month or two in rebates (or “rebate cards”, as Best Buy is now doing).
As for size, remember that laptop size and price are inversely proportional: the smaller you go, the higher the price goes (exponentially, it seems, sometimes). The Compaq I went with is what is called a “desktop replacement” and yeah, it’s big for a laptop, but it’s still only about 7-8 pounds. Put that into a laptop case and sling it over your shoulder and it’s no big deal. When you start trying to whittle that down to less than five pounds, suddenly you’re up in the $2000 – $3000 range.
So now that we have all that down, which laptop to buy? Well, I bought a Compaq mainly based on price, and the knowledge that if anything goes wrong from a software standpoint either I or someone I know can deal with it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, according to this article which it appears just came out, it would appear that the overall rating for Compaq is pretty crappy, only better on the reliability list than…Sony. Wow, what a surprise. I guess I’m trading up a little, anyway 🙂
Take a look at the chart in that article and that can probably give you better guidance on which brand to go with – you’ll have to balance reliability with price, as there seems to be a direct relation between the two. I’m guessing you’ll probably wind up somewhere in the middle of that list, which doesn’t look too bad.
Hope this helps a little – let me know if there’s any other info I can provide!