Dual Core Goodness, The Office Fansite, Adolescent Beatdowns, Sat Navs Turned Evil, and Chores

- I opened up the newspaper this morning to see the following deals at Fry's:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ & ECS K8M890-M motherboard for $99.99
• 300GB Seagate SATA Hard Drive for $79.99
• EVGA 7600GS 256MB PCI-E Graphics Card for $69.99 AR

Somebody needs to remind me that my wallet is still bleeding from the purchase of my laptop.

(Speaking of my laptop, Dell finally completed the build, and it's going to be shipped Next Business Day via Fedex. Of course, since Fedex doesn't deliver on the weekends, except in certain situations, I won't be getting my laptop until Monday, or a full two weeks after I initially placed the order.)

Oh man, the motherboard has two IDE connectors--I no longer need to buy a new HDD--and integrated graphics--I don't really feel like/can't afford a graphics card now! With the plumetting prices of DDR2 memory, and the fact that I have a crisp, new 600W power supply en route, I'm having a real tough time passing up this deal. Argh!

- I just stumbled upon this Office fansite, and I gotta say, I love the content! I've gone ahead and added a link to this blog in my "Links" section (which has been re-done, for my pleasure). Speaking of The Office, last night's super-sized episode was, IMHO, the best episode of the season.

(spoiler alert) Michael's line to Stanley about moving to the back of the bus, and Stanley's reaction, were both absolutely priceless, as was Stanley's face when he ran over Jim in the Sumo Wrestling competition. However, nothing beat Toby's reaction when he handed Pam his sunscreen, and Pam mentioned that she was wearing a two-piece swimsuit. I nearly spit water all over my laptop when I saw Toby's face!

EDIT 5/13: How the hell did I leave out the scene where Michael is being interviewed, and you can see Andy floating away in the distance?

Now that Jim, Karen, and Michael are all vying for the corporate job, and now that Pam has finally told Jim about what caused Pam to break off her marriage with Roy, I can't wait for the season finale--an hour long episode, 8pm on Thursday!

(end spoiler alert)

- A 10-year-old boy was convicted of beating up a homeless Army veteran. The kid, another 10-year-old, and a 17-year-old were all involved in injuring the 58-year-old veteran, John D'Amico, with a concrete block and (presumably) punches and kicks. Feel free to chalk this up as example #10,000,000,000 of why our society is going to hell in a handbasket. It'll be interesting to see what the punishments are for each kid in the attack; it wouldn't surprise me if the 17-year-old got the worst of it.

- A 20-year-old woman was going to visit her boyfriend, when a satellite navigation system she borrowed from a school mate somehow led her onto train tracks. Quoted from the article:

She was trying to cross the line in the dark when she heard a train horn, realised [sic] she was on the track, and the train smashed into the car.

Fortunately, the woman was not in the car when the train crashed into her car; she had left her car to open a gate to cross the tracks, and got out again to close the gate when the train arrived.

I gotta ask one question: how did the woman not realize she was on train tracks the second she got out of the car to close the gates? I understand that it was probably pitch-black at the time--why wasn't the railway lit, by the way?--but I would imagine her car would have given off enough light to illuminate the train track that her car was sitting on.

Once again, technology is great, until it screws us over.

- Today's IMBC Topic of the Day interested me, so I think I will respond to it.

What chore do you absolutely hate?

My least favorite chore is dish washing, and cleaning the bathroom is a distant second. I'm a fairly big and tall guy, and every sink I've ever used forces me to lean over quite a bit in order to avoid splashing water all over myself and the countertop. Not to mention, I'm the only one in the family that requires a pair of XL latex gloves to wash dishes; for some reason, everyone else in the family can fit a M-sized pair. So when it's time to replace the gloves, my family buys M-sized gloves, and I have to go buy my own pair (yeah, I know, I could always wash dishes sans gloves).

I should mention that both of my parents are in the mid-five-feet range in height, and I'm nearly six feet tall. I must have an overacting pituitary gland, or something.

Next time: more Google Analytics fun!

(Hey! I went sports-free without even thinking about it!)