Tag Archives: laptop

An edifying tale… with shiny things!

Wishlists, , , ,

In which I publicly admit to stealing resources* from my employer.

I’ve been running a little eBay side business from my desk this week. In between calls I’ve watched my auctions, printed shipping labels (with the work printer, on the work paper*), and packed Priority Mail cartons with old electronics (and taped them shut with work tape*).

I made $282.11 from four auctions. This amount is over half what I paid for the items originally, but that little bit of awesomeness isn’t even the point. The point is that if you write a good item description on eBay, you can sell ANYTHING. Even if it’s old and crappy!

The eBook sold for $101.11, which is about $15 less than a brand new one costs. (I under-quoted shipping, though, so I ended up having to spend an extra $4.55 to get the thing mailed off, making my net $96.56, which is still more than I expected to get.) One of the Pocket PCs, the e400, sold for $36 to a company that sells refurbished devices and I’m wondering if they’ll part it out or resell it on their website. The final Pocket PC sold for $99 to what sounds like a company name rather than an individual so it may find itself re-refurbished or parted out, too.

The best part of all this is that the money I got (plus $130 in Xmas money) has allowed me to order this:

[You are now hearing a very loud, angelic “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!,” btw.]

Asus Eee 900HA

Innit ADORABLE?!?!!? It’ll be here next Wednesday.

It’s an ASUS Eee 900HA 8.9″ notebook with a 160GB hard drive, a 1.6Ghz ATOM processor, and pre-installed XP Home. (I was going to order another gig of RAM too, but they were out, so that will have to wait until I can find it elsewhere.)

I also bought an external USB CD+DVD-RW drive because my new, tiny, adorable little ASUS laptopette doesn’t have a built-in drive. I don’t want to have to share a drive over my network just to watch a movie or burn a CD.

The moral of this story is that you can totally sell old junk on eBay, and use the proceeds to buy shiny new things!

Now, can somebody make it next week already so that I can start playing with my new notebook, plz? Kthxbai.

—
*I probably owe BMI about 6 minutes of unpaid work after all that rampant thievery.
**This public admission of unlawfulness is all part of my attempt to join my brother in his county jail weight loss regime.

Failwhale, damn it.

Music, ,

In which I’m your geek, baby.

After several months of letting it sit there and collect dust, I installed that new 120Gb HDD into my A30 laptop. Then a few days went by – days during which the laptop was in its carrying case – and then I decided it was time to set the bitch up and copy my files off of my original drive, format it, and then get my iTunes library off of that failing external drive (it fails to spin up sometimes, which is uber spooky) and get my data organized.

So I set up the laptop, and plugged it in (because the battery only holds a charge for 4 minutes – I need to replace it) and…

…no power. None. Won’t light up. Damn.

So either the AC adapter has failed, or there’s a connection problem inside the laptop itself.

Fuck!

I have no laptop. I need to get the adapter on a multitester and see if it’s putting power through, and if not take the laptop itself apart and see if I can fix it.

Not having a home computer is upsetting me mightily.

It’s as if the universe doesn’t want me to have my freakin’ data in one place! I’ve been trying to get my shit organized for over two years, and can’t seem to pull it off. You have no idea how hard it is to get content off of CDs and onto my iPod! And my play stats are hosed! And no scrobbling!

In other news, I’m playing the Roosevelt Wine & Wheels Festival with the Coyote Kings tomorrow.

Failure

Blurbs,

In which I do one thing in place of another.

I couldn’t install my new 120Gb hard drive because I need a hard drive caddy because I can’t get the one on my current hard drive OFF because of un-ideal tools and a lack of significant hand/wrist strength. This whole hard drive replacement project is one stupid thing after another. I went to eBay and bought a second caddy and also an Ultrabay caddy so I can have both damn hard drives in the machine at the same time.

Moral being that quite often, throwing money – in this case, about $27 – at something does make it all better.

On the subject of money, only two paydays between me and the Global Blogger Meetup in DC next month. I’m so excited! I’ve already purchased my tickets, and now I really should schedule a hair appointment.

Oh, anyway: yeah, with the hard drive project hung I installed a new WP template here on the ‘box instead. (I even tested it in Internet Exploder! Go me!)

Dorkiosity!

Geek, ,

In which I tell you about my plans for my weekend, but you find it boring. Because it is. Boring, I mean.

laptophdd1.jpgI’m working until six. After that, I’m going to type up some lyrics for my band book and organize some MP3s for band practice tomorrow afternoon. After that, I’ll probably stop for a quick cocktail and then head home…

…where I have a brand new hard drive and a Windows XP CD waiting for me. UPGRADE TO A BIGGER HARD DRIVE!!! YAY!!!

This really is terribly exciting. Really.

Drat.

Geek, ,

In which I’m foiled.

I was just about to install my new 120Gb hard drive into the laptop when the whole project was derailed before it could even get going.

I lack a 2.5mm Allen wrench, first of all. And my Windows XP installation disc is missing.

I could probably get the thing open anyway, but even if I did I have no operating system to install.

Well, that’s not true. I have Win98SE, Win2kPro, and Vista, but not only do I not want to install any of those operating systems, I don’t have drivers for them anyway.

I wonder what the hell I did with that XP disk.

*sigh*

Meaningless Drivel

Blurbs, , ,

In which there are a few things, and not a one of them is interesting.

I had my first review last Friday: apparently I’m doing a kick-ass job. I asked for an ergo keyboard and got one the same day. Yay!

Winter’s here this week. It’s about sixteen degrees below freezing. Today I’m wearing fleece-lined jeans, boots, and a fleece vest under my wool sweater. I’m so bulky I look like the Michelin tire baby, but at least I’m warm.

I thwacked my ankle on the wooden asana in front of my laptop at home, and now my whole ankle’s swollen and it hurts.

It took over fifteen hours to sync my iPod with my newly reassembled iTunes library. I have less than 3Gb of space remaining on the iPod, so next weekend I’m gonna prune the crap out of my music library. Yesterday I splurged and bought a new hard drive for my laptop, because the laptop’s drive is the same size as the iPod (30Gb) and that’s just stupid. Plus it was way cheap on eBay.

I made payments to the surgeon and the dentist yesterday, and now I have barely enough lunch money to get me through until next payday. To stave off the feeling of poverty, I finally spent the $100 Amazon.com gift certificate I got from my uncle, Dangerous, so next week I’ll have a nice box of books to cheer my broke ass up.

My life is boring. All I do is work and sleep and play with electronic gadgets. Thank God I have such lovely electronic devices or I’d be lost, I tell you, utterly lost.