So hey, meet Banjo.

I had priced out a bunch of machines at several different vendors, but everything was insanely expensive. It looked like I was going to have to go through Dell and use their evil financing program to get a halfway decent laptop, but the relatively debt-free rebel in me refused to pay $80 a month for four years for something that would be obsolete within 2.

Then I went to Future Shop to pick up a video game. Out of sheer curiosity, I went over to look at the laptop selection. Hey, these are pretty neat. Hey, these have the same specs as what I’ve been eyeballing online. Hey, these laptops are $500-900 less than what I priced out ..

I went home and did a bunch of research, and then went back out and bought the laptop linked above. His name is Banjo. I spent most of last night removing HP bloatware and trying to get Vista to look and behave as much like XP as possible. If I ever find XP drivers, I’m wiping it and starting fresh. In fact, the whole setup process was completely alien to me – I *never* use a machine right out of the box; I always wipe the HD completely and install something that doesn’t suck. Okay, I guess I didn’t do that with my MacBook, but you get the picture. Formatting things is awesome.

It’ll take me a couple days to have everything setup properly (both the machine and my desk), but I rather like Banjo’s shiny newness already. Plus: fingerprint scanner. All my secrets, safe at last (until someone cuts off my right index finger to use the scanner and get at my unmentionables)!

It’s good that I drove into the office today only to have the torrential rains dry up an hour later. It’s also good that the bank machine made scary noises and spit out a message saying “this transaction cannot be completed; please try again later” yet on the statement, it had already taken the money from my account. It’s super duper good that the assholes across the street are busy creating another abused yard dog, and that no one in a 3-block radius got any sleep last night because the poor thing was howling and barking all night long, so much so that the cops had to be called and yet animal control will not do anything because they’re on reserve land and therefore have a free pass to abuse animals and/or the law.

Yes. Good.