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Just a little sidenote, since I don’t know if I mentioned it anywhere yet – Paypal can finally transfer money from a Canadian bank account into my Paypal account. And it can apparently do instant payments, so I could use Paypal to pay for things directly from my bank account. I haven’t tried it out yet, but that’s pretty damn cool. No 7-8 day wait for the funds to get to Paypal!

But, I’m also planning to start saving money. I’ve mostly just been spending what was leftover from my paycheque. But I don’t really need much more in the way of computer parts, now that I have my new laptop. Other than maybe a new hard drive or three. But yeah, tydel (I still usually don’t use real names when referring to people, for some reason) reminded me about ING Direct the other day, so I signed up for an account. 2.5% interest is a hell of a lot better than 0.05%, or whatever crap that Royal Bank gives you. And their GICs give a much higher interest rate too – starting at 2.85% for one year, as opposed to 1.5% or something from Royal Bank. Who knows, maybe I can save up enough for a down payment on a house by the time I have my student loan paid off.

And speaking of hardware, xenon currently has Debian (unstable) installed on there. And nothing else. Although, I might switch it to dual boot with Windows, for playing games that won’t run on my laptop, or if I want to be able to use both at the same time. I still haven’t set up sound or CD burning in Linux. One of these days I’ll get that working. Oh, and printing with my crappy USB Canon S200.

Now, I soon have to get ready for day 1 of a 7 day shift. Since I just had my long weekend. But, it’ll be broken up slightly for Remeberance Day. Which is also when we have our Christmas party for work (yes it’s early, but it’s the only time before Christmas that most everybody isn’t working other than a few part peak time people).

Well, since I’m off work tonight, I finally have some extra time to write an entry here. My laptop got here on Friday, and I love it. I think I’ll end up buying laptops as primary computers in the future. I’d still like to get a Powerbook at some point. Upgrade my wireless to 802.11g, so I can get 54Mbps instead of 11Mbps. My DSL was upgraded finally, supposedly to 3.0 Mbit down, 640 Kbit up. Although I haven’t been able to really get those speeds. Not sure what’s up, I’ll have to phone Newtel Aliant soon to see about it.

I also got my laptop backpack today, from someone on eBay. Since I haven’t gotten around to taking a picture yet (or even of my laptop yet), here’s the eBay auction: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3434655792. It’s pretty nice, although the colour isn’t my favorite. But the blue one I saw like it elsewhere on eBay, I didn’t really like the seller, or his terms or shipping prices. But this will do. Much better than paying $100+ for a laptop bag that doesn’t even have all of the stuff this one does.

Tonight I’ll be rearranging files, so I can format xenon and put Linux on there. And I’ll be putting Windows XP Pro on my laptop later as well. It currently has Windows XP Home, plus lots of preinstalled crap. So right now, I have 2 legal XP Home keys, and 5 or 6 XP Pro keys. I still don’t like the idea of activation, though. I think it’s rather stupid. People that want to pirate it will just get around it anyway. So all it’s doing is annoying legal users of Windows XP (and now their office software too, apparently). I’m mostly using XP on my laptop for the wireless signal strength, and Cleartype. And fast boot times, I guess. Otherwise I’d be using Windows 2000 here, too. XP with the Watercolour visual style isn’t too bad. It looks to be based somewhat on the original visual style during the beta. Which was far better than the Fisher-Price visual style that ended up as the default.

Well, a couple of days ago I was poking around on Dell’s website to see what laptops they had. They have their own financial services thing, so I decided to see if I’d be approved. According to their instant online approval thing, I was – so I went ahead and configured a laptop for myself :)

Dell Inspiron 1100: Intel® Celeron® Processor at 2.2GHz w/15.0" XGA Display Memory: 512MB 266MHz 2 DIMMS PC2100 SDRAM Hard Drives: 30GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive Floppy Drive and Additional Storage: No Floppy Drive Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home – English (I’ll be installing Windows XP Professional instead) Network Adapters: Integrated Network Card Modem: Internal 56K Modem Fixed CD/DVD Drives: 8X Max Variable DVD-ROM Drive Wireless: Dell TrueMobile™ 1300 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card Productivity Software: WordPerfect™ Productivity Pack Security Software: Dell SecurityCenter by McAfee, 90-day introductory offer Digital Music: Dell Jukebox Premium powered by MUSICMATCH Primary Battery: 94Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery Warranty: 1-Yr Return-to-Depot (RTD) Service, 24×7 Phone Hardware Tech Support, 365 days a year

I was considering saving up some money to get a Powerbook G4 at some point, but that would take a while. And would cost at least $1000 more (this laptop is about $1600, and I’ll be paying less than $60/mo). Maybe I still will someday, but not so soon. Or I could just get a desktop Apple system, if they are cheaper. I’d love to be able to play around with OS X.

Financing isn’t exactly the way I wanted to get a laptop, since it’ll cost me more in the long run. But I didn’t have a couple thousand bucks lying around. Plus, with my crappy credit, this will probably help somehow. Making regular student loan and laptop payments should make it look better. I fucked up in the past with some credit cards, and regret it. The limits weren’t high, but the damage is done. Recovering from bad credit choices sucks.

Now I get to play the Has My Laptop Shipped Yet? game! (Thanks to a local friend for that link)

I haven’t updated this in about a month now. Nothing substantial to say, I suppose. I’ve had enough to ramble about in my LiveJournal, but not really much I’d want to put here.

Work has been getting more frustrating lately, once again due to lack of people working nights. It’s getting close to Christmas season there, and something just has to give. It’s probably not going to be the best sight when it does. Everybody is fed up with it all, and most of us just don’t care anymore. I hate having that feeling, because I do like to do a good job.

I recently added a new computer to my network, connected to the TV and stereo. Great for accessing my MP3/OGG collection to play on the stereo downstairs when I’m there. And when I get some network hardware back, I’ll have it on a 100Mb connection, instead of the 11Mb (theoretical) wireless connection. Which is fine for music, just not movies. The video card with TV-out could be better, but it was basically free – I traded some other computer hardware that wasn’t being used for it. I’ll build a better system for it at some point. After I upgrade my main computer, and get a laptop. My server has gotten upgrades recently, too. At the moment, it’s a dual Pentium Pro 200 MHz with 512 KB cache, and 320 MB EDO SDRAM. Nice little box for my server needs. All I really need is a better connection. I’ll have a faster connection soon, though (but it’ll be a dynamic IP, using PPPoE). Right now I have a 512Kb/128Kb DSL connection. I’m getting it upgraded to 3.0Mb/640Kb very soon. Hopefully the end of this week.

I’m liking this rotating long weekend thing we have at work. I’m heading into a long weekend right now, actually. I have tonight off, work Thursday, and then have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. checks to see if it was mentioned on here previously Ok, I mentioned it, but never explained it. After this weekend, I’ll have to work 7 days. Then off for two (Monday and Tuesday). Work 7 more days, and off Wednesday – repeating the cycle. I don’t mind working 7 days in a row, but some people do. I think it’s a small price to pay for actually getting weekends off. Before, I could probably could on one hand the number of days off I had on a weekend. For over a year that I was working there. I’m much happier with my job now because of that. And luckily, this Friday is a friend’s birthday, so I’m actually available to head to the bar for some beers with her :)

And speaking of laptops (a couple of paragraphs back), I think I’m going to try to get a Powerbook G4. Also on my wishlist is a Mac, so why not get both things at once? Makes sense to me. I have a wireless base station here, so it would definitely be great for using around this place. They are expensive, even for a 12″ version. And there’s no chance I’d be able to get this financed somehow, even though I’ve been working a steady job with decent pay for well over a year now. Not that I’ve tried, I know there’s just no point. I’ve had too many credit fuckups in the past. It’s a learning experience, I suppose. Hopefully my sister learns from that, and doesn’t end up the same way. She’s a smart girl, and she turns 17 next month later this month.

Ramble ramble ramble… I’m just tired and bored and writing whatever comes into my head. But since I’m writing for myself, and not necessarily a particular audience, it doesn’t really matter, does it? :)

I’ve been trying to read a lot more this year than I have been for the last few years. My collection of books has been continuously growing, faster than I’ve been reading them. I almost bid on an auction on eBay for like 150 science fiction books. Most of which I didn’t already have, and a lot of which I would have wanted. Even with the high shipping (150 books weigh a lot), it would have been a great deal with the winning bid (and lower than I was willing to pay, actually). But I stopped myself from getting it. Maybe when Paypal finally adds the ability to transfer funds from my Canadian bank account to my Paypal account, I’ll get more stuff on eBay, or even elsewhere online. I have their ATM/Debit card, which actually acts like a credit card, but uses the balance in your Paypal account. Nifty stuff, since I can’t get a proper credit card right now. Like I said, my credit is fucked. Anyway, I took a break from reading while I was on vacation this summer, and only started to get back into it recently. On the third book in Asimov’s Foundation series right now. I like it.

So, this post ended up taking a long and winding road to the end. Which is right here. The end of this entry –> · <–