We have a new baby at The Hellhole!

A year or so ago Alan’s iBook died, and instead of replacing it with another laptop he bought the Mac Mini. Since then, we’ve discussed getting another laptop but for one reason and another, haven’t done so. With the wedding expenses and the trip to Las Vegas (next week, wheeee!) it’s not a particularly opportune time to make a big expenditure, but the trip to Vegas and our honeymoon trip were exactly the situations for which we wanted a laptop - so we could stay plugged in to the internet, check e-mail, I could blog and post pictures as events happened instead of weeks later, etc. Discussions intensified but there was a bit of good-natured disagreement in the household about which laptop to get; I want a G4 Powerbook like our friend Mark’s, while Alan wants an iBook like Bo’s and Nancy’s. He had all sorts of stupid reasons like larger screen, more affordable, more durable, blah blah blah, to which Bo added, “Mine goes to eleven!” but of course they missed the point entirely. The Powerbook is wee and shiny and titanium. It’s cuter.

A compromise was reached and I began looking for a used G4 Powerbook on eBay. I placed bids on several different laptops but on each auction, the price got bid up so high that it rather negated the point of buying used, hassling with eBay, risk of ripoff or damage in shipping, etc. With prices at or near the two-grand mark, we might as well buy a brand-new one from the Apple store. Next Alan suggested looking at Overstock.com. I’d never bought anything from them, mainly because I am annoyed by the sexual overtones of their “all about the O” commercials, but I figured what the hell.

We decided to further compromise and save money by going with a Window$ laptop, because of all the computers at The Hellhole, which is a dozen or so, not a single one of them runs Window$. Okay, “dozen” is an exaggeration that’s unfair to my computer-geek fiancé. There are actually only...seven, I make it seven, plus spare parts enough for three more. Anyway, they run things like Unix and Red Hat and beta versions of Linux and various Mac OS’s like panthers and tigers and wyverns oh my, but no Window$. And although it’s the foulest OS from the armpit of Satan, most of the world uses it so occasionally one does need Window$ or Office or something. We found the cutest little IBM ThinkPad with a Pentium IV 1.8 GHz processor, internal Centrino wireless, DVD, 20 gig hard drive - not the biggest, fastest, fanciest thing on the market but totally adequate for our purposes and - get this - five hundred and fifty bucks. Can I get a ‘hell yeah’?!?

It arrived last night and, oh joy of Window$, I spent about an hour letting it self-extract and self-install all the files and customizations and crapola it needed to work, and reboot itself incessantly, and go through all sorts of rigamarole. The first thing I did, once it let me actually DO something, was get online to download Mozilla’s Firefox, because Window$ or not, there was no way in hell I was using Internet Exploder. Right then was when we ran into our first problem. Web pages would not display properly. For example, at mozilla.org we got the blue header with the Mozilla logo, but the rest was a blank white page, no links to other pages or text or anything.

Alan felt that the correct fix was that old Window$ standby, “shut up and reboot” but immediately I saw the real problem and rushed to get a razor blade. While he did that useless “reboot” thing, I razored off the offensive Window$ metal/sticker with the stupid XP logo and replaced it with a Ferrari sticker that has a prancing pony. Right away the improvement was palpable! It ran much faster (as I expected) and the web pages finished loading all the way. I knew they’d finish once they were badged Ferrari! [<— that was a Kimi Raikkonen diss just for Bo] Best of all, there was no fuckwittage with our wireless router - the new computer recognized it, it’s wireless connector-thingy functioned (impressed by my technical terminology?). Heady with success, I went out to warchalk our house but Alan stopped me. Killjoy.

It was with great reluctance and heavy heart that I left the new baby home alone and came to the office. But the big news is, we have an IBM ThinkPad and it works and it’s spiffy and I’m happy.