Falling In Love With A New Computer. . .

. . . is such an easy thing!!! It's official, despite the mediocre DVD playback, I do love my new laptop after all. Being back on land, my internet connection has been back to normal, the problem was with the cruise ship's connection (and the fact that they charged 55 cents a minute I'm sure did not give them any incentive to provide fast service), not McAfee screwing with my connection speed as it did when I first set it up. Fortunately, my McAfee trial is almost up and I will be switching to the tried and trusted ZoneAlarm anti-virus instead, putting any potential future neuroticism (over this aspect anyways) to rest. I upgraded the memory last night from 2 GB to 4 GB, and that clinched the deal for me. It was fast before, but it was flawless last night. And, it was easy enough to do. I've been wanting to do it since MLK day a couple weeks ago, but ran into a roadblock when it turns out we didn't have a small screwdriver in the house, and the regular sized one we did have was way too big and wouldn't work. So, I went to Sears the next day and got a small screwdriver, and while it unscrewed 2 of the four screws on the memory compartment cover, it still was too big for the other two, which I found odd. So, instead of continuing to buy tools and taking them to the computer, I thought it would be easier to take the computer to the biggest tool warehouse I know of and see what would work, and that warehouse was my dad's basement. I had to go home anyways to pick up the rum I had sent home with my parents (they were driving back from the cruise and I felt it would be safer to send most of the rum with them instead of trying to pack it all in my suitcase and risking them all breaking while being handled by the airlines), so I made the trip out last weekend to get rum and a screwdriver (and not the fun kind of screwdriver I like to get whenever I'm at a bar). My dad took a look at it, played around with a couple screwdrivers, found one that worked, let me borrow it, and voila, last night I got upgraded memory. Now I just have to not loose it and remember to take it back the next time I go out there. While I was out there I stopped at the library and copied I Do! I Do!, Big River, and Do I Hear A Waltz, all excellent recordings. I also hooked up to my parents' wireless and logged into emusic (which, BTW, when I installed it on the new computer, it gave me the choice if I wanted the old download manager or the newer emusic remote, so of course I chose the download manager and so far, knock on wood, it hasn't forced me to upgrade), and finished getting Christine Ebersole & Billy Stritch's In Your Dreams, Victoria Clark's Fifteen Seconds of Grace, and started the Seesaw cast recording. That's right, while they still didn't have 2 of the tracks available for download, amazonmp3.com now offers the entire CD for download at $.99 a track, so I bought the two that emusic does not offer and got and additional 8 tracks before I hit my limit. Next month I'll finish it up and start on Lauren Kennedy and Andrea Burns. Now, if they could just offer the one track from Grey Gardens or if amazonmp3 would add the GG cast recording, I'd be ecstatic. Then, after upgrading the memory last night, I hooked the laptop up to my printer/scanner and scanned the pictures I bought on the cruise (I know, they're so tourist-trappy, but they turned out really good and I'm usually not particularly photogenic, so I sprung for them). I'll get those posted hopefully tomorrow night, as you may recall, I can only post via email at work due to the internet filters (of course, in order to combat people fucking around online during work time, it probably would have been better for them to actually give us stuff to do rather then spend a buttload of money on internet filters, but that's what a functional employer would do, and mine is anything but). The email posting though does not support pictures, I actually have to log in to the Blogspot interface to do that, which I'll do when I'm at my private practice office tomorrow night. I really don't want to do it from home because with my dialup connection, or even the cell phone modem connection, it would take forever to upload the files, the office has wireless so I'll do it there. Look for them soon. Anyways, the other big thing I did yesterday was to go to Target during lunch and pick up Sarah Brightman's and Idina Menzel's new CD's. It's funny, after I just wrote about how Sarah hasn't done anything anywhere near as good as Fly (although Harem does come close) just a couple months ago, here she is with something that finally is in Fly's league. Fly is still a little better (it's just a little more rock-based, giving it such an eclectic, undefinable sound), but Symphony is close, and the if the booklet artwork is any indication, this is going to be a kick-ass tour. Hopefully I can finally get to see her. She came through twice on the Harem tour, and for some reason, which I can't really remember, I wasn't able to go to either show. They did sell out though, which means she's got enough of an audience that touring should be worth her while, so hopefully she'll be back and this will be the tour to see. The CD definitely starts 2008 out right. Idina's was also good, but definitely had a little more of a crunchy folk element that I was hoping she'd avoid, although it's not nearly as bad as Heather Headley's R&B impulses on her solo work. However, it's short, so it doesn't wear out its welcome and on most of the tracks she really does shine. I am surprised that Target actually had it, and even was promoting it with a sticker on the cover that says "Tony Winning Star of Rent and Wicked!". How crazy is that? Do they really think anyone is going to care besides me? Still, it's so much more respect than any other Tony winner has gotten with a solo CD in years, even Audra can't make it onto the Target CD rack. In addition to that, I got the last copy of Sarah's CD, so I expect to see her on the Billboard chart next week. After spending the rest of the day at work, I went home and (in addition to upgrading the laptop memory), I found a letter from Circuit City in my mailbox. Curious to see what they had to say, I opened it, and found a letter from their corporate council stating that they were replying to the complaint I filed with the Virginia Department of Consumer Affairs (Virginia being the state they're incorporated in), which I had cancelled two days after filing since they finally refunded my money. Funny how they responded to that one but have yet to respond to the letter I mailed them on the same day as I mailed the complaint to the Virginia Attorney General. Basically it said that they apologize (but still offered no explanation), they refunded my money (duh) and were willing to show their appreciation for my understanding with a $25 gift card, but I have to contact them to get it. Since I'm not planning on shopping with them again, and I really didn't complain in order to profit (I'm still somewhat guilt-ridden about the Banana Republic card I got, but then my experience redeeming it helped me get over that, I so deserved that card), I have no intention of contacting them. I just want nothing more to do with them, and in fact I haven't even looked at their weekly ad in the Sunday paper since this whole debacle. I'm a little curious to see though if they'll send me another letter in a couple weeks responding to the complaint I filed with the Illinois Attorney General (and again cancelled, but only after they forwarded it to Circuit City) and see if they up the offer, although I still won't take it. I'm just done. Lastly, while I'm still a little miffed at the Academy for ignoring the 3 best movies of the year (actually 4 best, I saw Harry Potter over the weekend and how it didn't get any nominations for special effects or an acting nomination at least for Imelda Staunton is completely beyond me), I read an interesting article on msnbc.com that they're planning 2 shows for Oscar night, one that they'll do if the strike isn't settled and they don't get a waiver, and the regular show. They said the replacement show is the one they don't want to do and the regular show is the one they want to, but is it just me, or does the replacement show actually sound way better than the usual drivel they put on every year? They're planning a dignified (although their definition of dignified and mine are very, very different) look at the past 79 winners, film history, and other historical stuff while interspersing announcements of this year's winners over about 2-3 hours, but only if the strike is still on and they don't get a waiver (although since the Grammy's finally got one, there's a good chance now that the Academy will). I think this sounds far more interesting and much more in the spirit of the Oscars than a special effects choir, contortionists, bland musical performances, and unfunny monologues. Who's with me? Let's start a letter writing campaign and see if we can't convince the Academy to go with their second choice no matter what happens. Anyways, it's about time to go, we're getting a blizzard moving in and I'm leaving early so that I can get home at my normal time. If they're not going to give me anything to do here at work, I'm certainly not staying when it means getting home late. See you all later.