Happy New Year....

• WAS gonna spend a 4-day weekend at The Oregon Coast last weekend, but given that everything that I needed for the weekend in the hotel room (smoking, Internet access, a fireplace, and an Ocean view out the window) had places charging (at the lowest) $165-plus per night......thought better of that idea....




• MIGHT have something to do wiff the fact that I tried to book this three days before the New Year's Weekend......




• So.....went on Priceline forra laff, and tried to book a flight to Western New York to see my family. The flight sticker priced on all travel websites at $810 for Saturday through Tuesday (the 29th through the 1st). On Friday Night the 28th of December, I tossed Priceline $330 grand total (incd. taxes, fees and all that shit)........




• ...they fell for it. Eight hours later, I was on a plane departing PDX.

Was nice to see my family and friends again, and I was a bit too generous to myself this holiday season....

• Was getting pretty tired of Cingular's (AT&T?) shit, and saw a killer offer from T-Mobile that cost the same as my monthly Cingular bill.....YET, ALSO INCLUDED unlimited Internet access, and free Wi-Fi for my laptop at T-Mobile hotspots (like, most airports, Starbucks, and about 9,000 other places around the United States, etc. etc.). So I go to AT&T/Cingular CORPORATE stores in both Portland and Buffalo....
  

"Yeah, I've been a Cingular customer for five-plus years now........T-Mobile's offering me this shit. What can you do for me??"

"Uhhh.....well...uhhh.....let's look at out pamphlet and see our plans and......"

"No. What MORE can you offer me for the rate that I'm paying you now....or can you not offer me anything additional, but chop my bill a fair bit?"
.

"Uhhh....naw, sorry. I'm not authorised to do that. But we can look at our plans that we offer, and....."

"OK....cool...let's hava look....."

"Errmm......dude?? The plans in this Cingular pamphlet are more expensive than what I pay Cingular now.....????????"

"Oh. Oh well...."

"OK, well, I'll cancel my account and go with T-Mobile and......"

"Cool....whatever. But, I mean, like, I've worked for all the carriers, and, like, there isn't much difference, and....."

"Errmm....OK.....I'll see ya."

• Funny shit...and at T-Mobile CORPORATE stores (not an "authorised reseller" or some shit like that) in both, Portlandia and Buffalo, they were overjoyed that I was signing up! Shit, Cingular didn't even try to fight to keep me as a 5-year+ customer! PLUS, T-Mobile knocked off a hundred bucks and gave me this thing for free!!!!!
  


• It launches space shuttles!! It makes cookies!! It's gotta 192-page tech manual.....I don't even yet know how to do HALF of the things it's capable of...



• STILL trying to figure out all the things I can do wiff this device........
  
  

Bought a new laptop the other day. Did this forra couple of reasons....

• Now, about four years ago (an ice age ago in terms of laptop technology), the Seneca Nation made a Governmental Purchase contract wiff DELL Computers, Inc. to supply all Nation members who are attending college with a free laptop. One Laptop Per Injun', I guess......



• Cool, I'm not bitching (free laptop? Wahay!), but man, could the Nation have shopped around.......



• I knew I HAD TO replace or supplement said DELL antique laptop. It's an Inspiron 1150, which, literally and seriously, was a steaming piece of shit directly when it left the factory assembly line. Now, four years on, it is just intolerable! Between the built-in Wi-Fi 801.11 b/g antenna that can't (nor ever could) latch onto a Wi-Fi network more than 150 feet from the laptop, the fact that it has KNOWN motherboard design flaws (I had my mainboard replaced TWICE) and the pure rubbish customer service....all factors put together, it pretty much sealed the deal that I'll never buy another DELL ever again.



• Was gonna get a cheap laptop that was on sale for about $499 (NOW at $599) that could launch space shuttles (the one that was on sale for $499 had an AMD Turion dual-core [FUCK Intel], TWO gigs of RAM, etc.) but after I had found out about this ultra-portable (literally 'bout the dimensions of a hardcover book) that came out on the U.S market about five minutes ago (OK....two months ago) that came with upgrades, and one-year replacement warranty, yet ended up going for less than five bills, and especially after I had had enuff after just ONE SINGLE EXPERIENCE working on Windows Vista (can’t even count how many bad things I’ve read and heard from other people about Vista), all of those factors sealed the deal for what I ended up buying that is gonna be shipped to me on Tuesday.



• I mean, when traveling, this Inspiron 1150 I have now is as large as a briefcase, and it weighs a fucking TON!! That Acer I mentioned above that WorstBuy offered doesn't look much more convenient to carry around......

So I got this.....

(what I got was the Asus EEE PC, NOT the girl on the beach).

Weird......

• WTF?????? NO hard drive??

Nope....got 4 gigs internal memory, and a slot to add a 4 gig SD card (think the thing you stuck into your digital camera), and you have 8-gig storage laptop.

• Uhhhhh........what's "LINUX"? Is that a skin disease found in sub-Saharan Africa?

Errmmm....I've NEVER played with LINUX in my life. So to learn, I got a $25 setup of Xandros LINUX (the same exact one my EEE pc uses).....gonna set it up on my home desktop computer and try to learn it (Christ....wish me luck!). This EEE pc CAN and DOES take an installation of Windows XP......but, hey.....change is good! I'll try the LINUX forra laff.....

• Mozilla?? Huh....? Whassat?? Didn't Mothra kick his ass?

.....and it took Internet Explorer HOW long to discover the novel idea of "tabbed browsing"??


According to several actual user reviews, it has a wi-fi internal antenna that locks onto a wi-fi signal a football field (900 feet) away from the source. And it's fairly difficult to find (and, seriously, you've HAVE to click this link) anything negative written about this laptop anywhere on the Web, soooo......

Well, I is running away to the Ocean next weekend with all four prerequisites (smoking, Internet access, Ocean view windows and a fireplace) for eighty buxx a night. The EEE pc is going wiff me.....I'll let you know how it goes.....

-E-