Today my life took a huge leap forward as the pieces I needed to reassemble my computer arrived and now I finally can do something productive with my days. It has been a rough couple of weeks with no computer and weather so cold I don't feel like heading out. Luckily, I found some good Michener books at the Salvation Army store and have had something to do with all my time. Yesterday I built in a desk and shelf, and the landlady (well more like land girl, I think she is younger than me) has been doing some work around the place, so things are slooowly normalizing. I can finally start catching up with my online stuff, including get to some old e-mails, and start working on some of these projects I have mentioned.

The computer came together *pretty* easily once all the parts arrived. I treated myself to a nice 17" flat panel monitor, the kind I have been drooling over for so many years since I had to buy a monitor anyways. I got it for $350 on Outpost.com which is a really great website. Go to the "Hottest Deals" link on the bottom right of the page and scroll through those to see the best deals. When I was putting the motherboard into the case, I accidentally scraped the motherboard with my screwdriver and actually knocked off a capacitor which was so small I could not even find it. So when the computer wouldn't turn on the first 20 times I tried, I was seriously worried. I tried everything I could though to make sure the problem didn't lie elsewhere and it turned out to be the VGA card, of which, fortunately, I had 2 spares. So anyways, that pretty much wraps up all the excitement here, except that because of new terrorist warnings, I have to worry that the subway is going to be bombed by terrorists while I am on it. Great.