This season in technology was quite interesting, to say the least.

Initially, I was not thinking of getting anything at all. I just got a new laptop and the only things I could really improve on the computer front was the fact that my desktop had only 1 GB of RAM (which I could double-up to 2 GB, but would cost more because it was 184-pin stuff, not the current 240-pin stuff) and a single-core AMD Athlon 64 CPU (which would also be expensive because it was Socket 939, not the current AM2).

Then I did some looking around.. mainly at NCIX….

Like always, there was not any awesome stuff on outdated technology that my desktop runs on. No dual core Socket 939 CPUs. Surprisingly enough, there was 184-pin RAM on sale, but it wasn’t that great of a deal when you compare that with the sales for 240-pin RAM ($58 for 2×512 MB Corsair Value Select PC-3200 compared to $30 for 2×1 GB OCZ Value Series PC2-5400). However, if you take a look at tech pricing trends as proposed by of the tech staff at work, you will notice that prices start off expensive, dip down to quite low prices when they are mainstream, then go up again when it is past their time. To avoid getting shafted any more on RAM that would work for my desktop (it’s only a year or two old), I got the Corsair RAM.

However, when it was time to install it, the upgrade failed. After some trouble shooting, which involved borrowing stuff from people (thanks Benton for the PSU tester!) and Googling, it turned out that my PSU, although in working order, lacked the power to run the stuff, or something. What was strange about the situation was that even after removing the RAM, the motherboard still refused the power supply.

Replacing the power supply for my case, an Aspire (now Apevia) X-QPack, is a complete pain because the depth for the unit is 11.5cm. Your standard ATX power supplies are 14cm to 16cm deep (or long). After some measuring and experimentation, a 14cm depth PSU would fit, given some work, so I looked around for suitable power supplies.

Things somehow worked in my favour because my distant cousin who is studying down in the US came by to visit and my dad was going to drive her back down to Seattle (and also visit her sister because she could not come up due to unsigned papers; they are international students). Doing some research, Fry’s Electronics has a sale for the 550W Antec TruePower Trio for $60 USD (50% off) and since there is a Fry’s in Renton, I got myself that and made myself a happy camper.

Some further checks on my laptop, due to the 1 GB laptop RAM sales going on at NCIX, revealed that my spiffy new laptop has two slots for RAM and only one slot is used to get my 1 GB of RAM. NCIX has the RAM inside the computer available, but not on sale, so despite the fact it was not on sale, I ordered a stick for $26.28, which is a fairly decent price for a RAM upgrade for an already pretty cheap laptop.

On the audio-front, I was using my dad’s 1 GB MP3 player and a pair of gimped-up headphones (only one side works). The NCIX web-only Boxing Day sale had Sennheiser earbuds going for $18, so that’s been ordered (along with the previously mentioned laptop RAM). Haven’t got them yet, but should be awesome stuff. It just so happened that for the in-store NCIX sale on Boxing Day, they had 2 GB Creative MuVo T100s on sale for $0.99, so I managed to snag one of those as well. Of course, that meant an early morning for Boxing Day, but meh.

Boxing Day also saw a new game in my library – World in Conflict. If you are into the whole tactical strategy stuff, it is a game for you!

So a little bit of spending from me for the Boxing Day sales, although now that I have cleaned up a good portion of my room, it appears that I can actually go dual-monitor..

And I still have yet to procure a Nintendo DS.

Oh well, maybe some other time.

So after two long months of waiting, my laptop finally came in on Friday last week. However, since it was shipped via UPS and no one was home, I did not end up getting it till Monday.

So far, it has been pretty awesome. The X61 is an ultraportable, being somewhere around 3 lb. On the best settings (ie. wireless off, screen at lowest brightness, etc.) the laptop can last for somewhere in the range of 8-10 hours. Otherwise, I see the laptop work on battery for around 6-7 hours. This is pretty awesome. However, that’s only for Windows.

I also managed to install xubuntu, shortly after tweaking around the settings, repartitioning things, and even doing a system restore because my attempts to do a clean install failed and no OEM CDs exist anymore. It works well for the most part, save several issues:

• I can not get the brightness keys working.
• General laptop power management tools do not exist on the machine at the time of writing. I just do not know what to use or what is out there, but it will be something to look for over the weekend.
• Most of the Fn keys are not working.
• compiz-fusion runs quite slowly – maybe it is the X3100..
• I get these weird lines on the screen from time to time and have general unexpected display behaviour, such as parts of the screen not dimmed out when the password prompt appears when one runs a program which requires root access, like Synaptic.

Sure, there are some issues, but quite minor and will not make things difficult to work with in Linux, which is good since that will be my primary work environment in terms of Web development.

Work had a Christmas party yesterday and one of the things happening there, besides the free food and games, was a raffle draw, for which I bought six tickets for.

So a few draws later, I now have two white poinsettias, one sitting in my office, one at home. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket..

But yeah, there have been so many free things as of late it is not even funny. At the Network Support Group open house last week (they are the guys who run FASNet), through answering questions, I won a small football from Dell, a small bottle of hand sanitizer (also from Dell), and an Adaptec SCSI Card that is currently sitting in the office. Then sometime earlier this week, Brad came by and gave me a copy of NHL 08, which was left over from the ACM draw or something.

Yay free stuff!

Yes, the medium might not exactly be what a traditional rick roll would be on, but I think this still counts.

Usually in the car, my dad would have control over the radio and I just follow suit because I do not really care all too much, but today as I got in the car sometime in the late afternoon, my dad starts up the car and it was playing AM 1470, a Chinese radio station and they had this radio ad on their 70s/80s music program, with various songs playing and lo and behold, they closed it with Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up and started talking about the program (and you can still hear the song in the background).

Well played AM 1470. Well played.

Oh by the way, check out this new thing I found out.