Post-Christmas

Well it's been a while since my last post and...(drum roll please)...this is my first post from my new computer. This thing has been years in the making. Friends, how long have I been dreaming about a new computer? Since I was a freshman at OU. That's almost seven years ago. So now it's finally happened. Is it all I hoped for? Well, for the most part yes. Thing is, I'm realizing now that I don't do much that requires 3.4 GHz of processing power, besides the occasional video. But at least they're not all choppy any more. And MS Office doesn't take 20 minutes to start up. That's a plus.

So, how was Christmas? I spent a lot of time at church - 10:00 PM on Christmas Eve (we don't have a true midnight mass any more so this was our "midnight" mass) and 10:30 AM on Christmas day. Yeah, I was holy. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go again today (yes, us Catholics are still supposed to go today even though we just went yesterday) but I had to work 9-3. One of the downsides of taking the Asst. Manager job but the pros definitely outweigh the cons (see my $120 bonus next month).

Spent the day yesterday (after church) at my adoptive family's house - the Bennett's. Had a wonderful dinner and even better desserts and watched Blazing Saddles. It was my first time seeing the movie all the way through and although highly irreverent, it's damn funny. Also watched a bit of the Christmas standards: It's A Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music, and of course the 007 marathon on Spike TV. It's not Christmas without Bond!

Today I worked (as previously mentioned) and got home around 3:30. I promptly made a pot of coffee (which I'm still working on) and sat down at the computer. Guess I haven't moved. Other than Christmas, there's a few other things going on of a more technical nature.

First, while my new computer is great, Dell definitely sucks. Since I ordered a media center computer (a Dimension 8400 MCE to be exact), I expected everything I ordered to work with Media Center 2005. Well, since I was unable to order my system online (couldn't get the price to match the sales flier from the Sunday Tribune), I had to order over the phone. They gave me a slightly different package on an 8400 MCE which was okay with me except it didn't come with a TV tuner and remote control, which are essential for a media center PC to function as designed. So, I added one on. They sent me an ATI TV Wonder Pro Remote Control Edition which I had to install myself (card and all). Everything worked fine with the ATI software installed - I hooked it up to my cable connection and was able to watch TV and even control it with the remote. However, when I started up Media Center and attempted to get it set up to watch and record TV, it said I didn't have a TV tuner installed. So...I was perplexed. I did a little research, and while slightly dubious, I discovered that the TV Wonder Pro is not compatible with Media Center 2005. So now I'm in the process of going back and forth with Dell about the tuner and remote. Apparently they're stupid (big surprise) so they have no idea what I'm talking about. The last e-mail I got from them said to go through some Radeon X300 troubleshooting tips - only problem is that the X300 is my video card, not my TV tuner. Sheesh. Soooo...I'm going to respond again and see where it gets me. This e-mailing may be slightly ineffective, but it sure beats waiting on hold for two hours to talk to someone who doesn't even speak English.

The other technical difficulty is with my cell phone. I'm an AT&T customer and they have been purchased by Cingular. In order to "upgrade" my phone, I have to switch over to a Cingular account and calling plan. That's fine. So, I ordered a nice new Sony Ericsson Z500a. It came on Wednesday and I found it at my front door after a few hours of shopping. I was pretty excited and immediately ripped the thing open. I read the brief instructions and quickly plugged the thing in. The book said that it may take up to 30 minutes before the batter indicator shows up. Well, I I plugged it in the screen went blue and nothing else happened. Thinking this was normal, I waited the 30 minutes and went back to check on the phone. Now, the book said that if the screen goes black to press any key and the battery icon should reappear. So, noticing that the screen had gone black, I pressed any button and...blue. Weird. So I waited the four hours that the Sony Ericsson book suggested (as opposed to Cingular's generalized 8) and looked at it again. Still blue. I turned it on. Blue. I pressed buttons and heard sounds...still blue. Okay, so it's defective. Great. And it's Christmastime. Double great. So it's Sunday and I still have a new phone with a blue screen. At least I didn't activate it yet and lose my old phone service. So I'm planning on hitting a Cingular store on my lunch break tomorrow and see what that have to say. I'm expecting a "well, sir, you ordered it online so you'll need to talk to them" which will require me to ship the thing back. But, I'm hoping in this modern age, a brick-and-mortar store will have no problem exchanging a defective product purchased online for a functioning one. Hey, if Best Buy and Target can do it, why not Cingular? Well, Cingular sucks, I know, but still....