New Computer!

My new computer came yesterday, and when I got home from the Haven around 7:30-ish, Dad was working on Kayla's (he'd bought one each for me, Kayla and Jason). The computer is a Compaq Presario CQ60-211DX Notebook PC.

I brought it to work with me this morning so that I could put some stuff on it from my external hard drive (which I also brought to work) like my iTunes library and a shortcut to my journal file, and later while I'm at the Haven I'm going to get some programs online that I usually use--like Gmail Notifier and Firefox.

Dad also bought an XBox 360 and a Wii. The console we played Anna's Rock Band 2 on the other night was actually Dad's. Last night, we played Wii Sports, and Dad also bought Wii Fit.

w00t!

Last night after I got home from class, I was talking to my mom in her room and my dad came in. He asked me what kind of computer it was that we'd looked at as my "dream computer," and how long it would take me to save up for it.

I told him it was some tablet-type PC, and it would take me 10-12 months. Then he showed me a print-out with a laptop (not tablet) and its configuration specs, that had the price blacked out. He told me that he would be willing to buy that computer for me in a week if I wanted it.

He must've gotten a really good income tax return, because he was talking about buying a new refridgerator for the pantry and a new computer for Jason (my brother, not any of the other Jasons I know) as well.

Considering I was not looking forward to keeping my current laptop (which takes at least 20 minutes just to boot up enough so that I can use it for browsing the internet) for another year, I agreed. This will also allow me to save up for other things, such as flight school at The Frederick Flight Center.

I've been looking into getting a private pilot's certificate, and I think I'd like to finance my flight training and ground school, but think I should at least save up some for the first few lessons and such. I'd eventually like to own my own four-seater plane too.

I won't start flight school until this summer at the earliest--got to finish out the semester at FCC at least. But when I do, I'll be going for my private certificate, and then I can go on to train on planes with two engines, and get instrumentation training so I can fly in bad weather. Eventually, I want to get a commercial license so that I can do charter flights.

So, instead of saving up for a computer, I'll be saving up for flight school.

Faster computation, here I come!

FINALLY!

Well, I got to watch the Smallville episode.

I had to go to my parents' house before it finished downloading (it had about half an hour left), but after dinner, Anna drove me back to my place so we could pick up the hard drive.

Then, she got an S-cable to hook up her computer to her 27-inch TV which she got from Scott. But the silly girl thought that her mouse port was her S-cable connection (she and I have the same type of laptop).

So, she went downstairs and got the laptop Aunt Tammy got rid of, which Dad was going to give to Anna anyway. Only thing was, the screen on that one wasn't working.

So, we hooked up the hard drive to Anna's original laptop again and saved a copy of the episode on the network. Then, Anna got Dad's laptop and hooked up the S-cable. The problem with that was, we couldn't get Dad's laptop to read the network drive that we'd saved the episode onto!

We finally discovered that Anna's laptop (and, by extension, my laptop as well) has a TV video jack in the side! D'oh! We hooked up the video, then Anna hooked up the audio through the speaker jack with this cable she has that can connect to it as well as to the audio plugs on a TV.

A couple Ctrl+F4's, and we were good to go--television on the computer on the television!

When I got home later and looked in my desk, I realized that, with my camcorder, I'd gotten the exact same cables I'd need to do the same thing at my place with my laptop!

So Patrick J. is coming over after work today to watch the episode, since he didn't get to see it either.