decidedlyodd

So today has been, well, fairly unproductive. Kendra is making me blog more though, so you all get to hear about my unproductive day.

After being up all last night/this morning working on polycalc and other such nonsense, I didn’t go to be until pretty late (about 7am), which of course meant I woke up late today (about 3pm). I talked to Beth a couple times today over IM and she’s been all crazy busy with end of the semester stuff at school. Her computer has been spontaneously shutting down after extended periods of use for a while now, but it’s finally looking like she’s going to get a new computer.

All this talk of new computers of course has reawakened the idea that maybe I’ll buy a new computer. The last time I bought a laptop was around November 2000, so I can rationalize that I’m due for a new one. I never use the old one for a number of reasons. 1) It’s too slow compared to the desktop I bought in Feb 2003, both processor-wise (650MHz P3 Celeron vs. Dual Athlon 1666MHz) and 3D graphics-wise (no acceleration vs. nVidia GeForce4-Ti4200). 2) At 7.3 pounds (according to the user manual I found online), it’s too heavy to carry around. 3) The screen is tiny (13.3″ vs. 19″ CRT). The 15″ Apple Powerbooks are looking really nice and after running through my finances, I can afford one so long as I buy it in the US (the prices in Europe are obscene even correcting for taxes). And that’s ignoring any of the money I’ll make this summer working, but includes the money it’s gonna to find a place to live in Chapel Hill, co-op rent, and student loan payments.

So, perhaps I’ll order one before I leave here and it will be waiting for me when I get to my parents’ house on May 24th. My desktop isn’t going to be working when it arrives stateside anyways. The damn power supply only works on European power, so I’ll leave it here. I’ll probably take the hard drives out too and bring them with me on the plane. Who knows how long it’ll take for it to clear customs or how much in duties I’ll have to pay since the entire thing is built from parts bought in the EU.

Also I ate dinner today (fried fish… mmmm…) and am doing laundry as I write this. Laundry is interesting. There’s always one “limiting reagent” in everybody’s wardrobe. For a while mine was socks, but I bought a ton of cheap ones at C&A and now it’s shirts. This is particularly annoying because I’ve attempted to remedy the situation by buying more shirts, but everything I’ve ended up buying here requires ironing. Haven’t Germans heard of wash and wear? Then again, there always must be some limiting category of clothing, so it might as well be shirts.