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I finally got my new computer! And yes, Greg, this is not an anecdote. (I was going to post a pillowcase story mocking Amber, but she was in rough shape today - so I felt bad about kicking a dead horse in the mouth. I love mixing metaphors. Tomorrow, she will rebound, and I will mock anew.) So, on Thursday, after three solid years of work from my current computer (which I am currently typing on), my new computer arrived, or rather the parts for it did. It is much cheaper to buy the parts for a computer online and assemble them together than to buy it premade. However, it does require a certain amount of knowledge and access to an operating system, both of which I have. The specs: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton - 333Mhz FSB, 512k cache) 512 MB KingstonPC 3500 RAM (433Mhz, one stick) 80GB Seagate Hard Drive (SATA, 8MB cache) Epox 8RDA3+ motherboard (nVidia nForce2 chipset, two Ethernet jacks, digital audio out, 6 USB 2.0, 2 Firewire, 2x SATA RAID, 2x IDE - also really good for overclocking) Gigabyte Radeon 9200 video card (with video capture in) Antec Sonata Case (hopefully really quiet) The goal -- make a quiet, overclocked (fast) PC. Unfortunately, the goal was sidetracked for most of Friday as I could not get it to boot. After about 6 hours of sheer frustration, I figured out by sheer, random luck that if you plug the cord for the USB port on the front of the case onto the motherboard, umm - the whole computer doesn't boot. No lights, no power, no nothing. That made no sense, but whatever. After finally getting it to work, I headed off to the DVD bash at Sevin, a nightclub in nearby Pontiac. (For those of you new to this dance, WDVD was my former employer, before they threw me out a little over a year ago.) Much thanks to Ron for getting us in free. Saw Vertical for the first time in quite awhile, and found out that he is soon to be a Dad. Had a pretty good time as about 15-20 friends showed up, making it quite the event. Unfortunately, drinks were only 75 cents before 11PM. This caused a buying frenzy at 10:59, including some irrational decisions - some of which led to my lovely girlfriend spending Saturday alternately on the couch and in bed. The most interesting aspect of Sevin is that a) there were "cage dancers" and b) it was 80's night. Most of the night was spent staring alternately at the dancers and one of our waitresses. The waitresses were dressed in faux 80's fashion and ours had either a weird skirt or bizzarre anatomical proportions. Her skirt was at the most - 4 inches long (I have indepedent confirmation on this estimation). Now that is clearly not enough material to cover up any regular sized derriere, but in her defense - she was a very small woman. Even more troubling was the observation that her midriff was bare, clearly leaving her unable to hide any crack in a shirt tail - this despite the fact that the skirt covered everything on the bottom side with over an inch to spare. Now, do the math. If there was nothing showing either above or below, it was four inches long and there was one inch to spare = her butt was only three inches in the vertical dimension! I didn't think that this was humanly possible! (For reference, my estimates place my butt height at around 8 inches.) How does one attempt to go to the bathroom with such small proportions? There are no toilet seats manufactured (training seats excepted) that could prevent her from falling in! She therefore must have legs of steel to allow her to squat for such extended periods of time. It's all about the hovering for her.