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Last night while I was playing World of Warcraft, my mouse was acting wonky. This is nothing new as it has been on its last leg for quite some time now. However, last night it got really bad. There were times when the mouse simply would not go to the right, and it was disconnect and reconnect every few minutes. I was forced into something I had been avoiding for a few months now — I needed a new mouse.

Why is this such a big deal? Well, I love my mouse. I’ve had it for almost 7 years now. It is a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer USB 1.0. Here’s an official product pic.

I searched and found that someone on Amazon.com was selling a new one in the box for $45 shipped. I serisouly considered just getting a new one and being set for the next 7 years, but then I decided to look around for a bit.

After searching online with JP for about a good 45 minutes, my mind was made up to buy a Razer mouse. These suckers have a very high dpi and are made for gaming. So, I went out this morning set on getting me a Razer.

Although I had shopped it out online the night before, there were several stores that I wanted to hit since some would not tell me online if they did indeed carried Razer. First stop @ 9:30am was Office Depot. They had no Razers. Next was Sam’s Club. Nope. Next was Radio Shack and Sears. Nadda. Although, while I was at the mall I did have a nice Aunt Annie’s cinnamon and sugar pretzel for breakfast. After that, it was Staples. Again, nothing. Best Buy? Yes! Although I hate Best Buy (sorry JP), so I went to Circuit City. They has more Razer mice there, but they were really beat up. Not sure if I wanted to trust them. Plus, they were on average $10 more. My last stop was Target, mostly because it’s right next door to Circuit City, and they had nothing as well.

So, I went back to Best Buy and picked up a Razer Copperhead 2000dpi mouse. Here’s another nice product pic for you to enjoy.

So far it’s a really nice mouse, although I have to admit that it takes some time getting used to the sensitivity of a 2000dpi mouse. Sure, I could turn it down, but what’s the point of buying a nice high end mouse if you’re going to make it feel like a $10 mouse?

There’s a lot more pictures of he setup and whatnot over on my Flickr page.

For now, I think it’s time to test this bad-boy out in some World of Warcraft. Later…

It sucks to be sick

Jess has been sick for the past week with a nasty flu, and now she has been kind enough to pass it on to me. I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat, that by lunchtime, was full blown nausea and body aches. I went home after work, and had to shuffle some cars between my parent’s house, sister’s work place, home, and the mechanic’s. After that, I had a web conference call I had to be on at 6pm for a potential new job. I got so sick during the conference call (and no way I was taking the job), I cut it short and was asleep in bed by 7pm. I finally got out of bed at 11am this morning. That’s right, I slept 16 hours. The only time I got up was once at 3am to go to the bathroom, and then again at 5:45am to call off from work.

Now, I am sick, so you would expect that I would like nothing more than to lay down on the couch and maybe watch some TV right? Wrong. I woke up to nothing less that 3 voicemails this morning. After that, I had some emails I needed to return for i/o Computers, and in answering those emails, received 3 more voicemails. You see, I was sick and didn’t want to be bothered, but at the same time, I am one of those people who just can’t seem to shut off their cell phone. So, I just put it on silent mode when I don’t want to be disturbed. So, after answering those voicemails and creating a new email account for a client and ordering them 2 more domains, I was finally able to lay down and rest. NOPE! Jess came home and I was eager to see her since she is going away to New York this weekend. So, we sat there for while and talked, and then she made us a very nice dinner. Very nice at the time since I hadn’t eaten anything in over 24 hours, but now my stomach is making me seriously question my judgment to go back for seconds. Anyhow, after dinner Jess watched a movie, took a nap, woke up, took a bath, and she is now in bed. I am here in the living room with Loki sleeping on me, trying to decide if the pains in my stomach are nausea or hunger. Could be both actually. Plus my fever just broke. Yay!

I’m going to try and go into work tomorrow as I would really frown upon losing another day of work. I have to more days to go since we started Saturday rotations again this weekend. I’m really hoping that I don’t have to miss anymore time. Plus I really want to get better for this weekend since a bunch of us are going out for eats and drinks on Saturday night.

On other totally unrelated stuff, I think spring may have sprung. Even though it go up to almost 80 degrees on Tuesday, the forecast foe the next 5 days looks good with temps in the 50s and 60s. This is really good since I really want to get out of the house and be more active. I never renewed my membership to the gym because
A) I wasn’t going as often as I wanted to
2) Spring was coming and I wanted to do a lot more outside and spend less time inside

I was really considering going back and re-opening my membership with the way the weather was going the past 3 weeks. But, it looks like the weather may be in my favor to get some good walks in with my iPod.

As for me right now, I’m going to try and maybe watch some TiVo to try and get myself tired and get a few hours of sleep before I have to wake up at 4:45am to get my ass ready for work.

I got a hold of a copy of the new Trillian instant messenger client tonight called Astra. The copy I have is Build 37.

My first impressions with the client is that it’s small, yet has all the features of Trillian 3.1. I’m a big Trillian fan and have been using Trillian 3.1 Pro since it came out many moons ago.

Although I’ve yet to really put it through the paces, I have to say that I am impressed with the client. The memory footprint is rather low (8.8mb), and the load time is a much needed improvement over 3.1.

Although writing this sadly reminds me of the time I got a BETA version of AIM Triton. I was excited about it when it was in BETA, and when I installed the final release version, I couldn’t uninstall it fast enough *argh*

Anyway, here’s a screen cap of what Astra looks like. I have to admit, it looks very nice with Vista.

See if you can snag a copy for yourself and give it a try!

I’m sitting here in the living room this morning checking my email on my laptop with the windows open, and I’m actually hearing birds outside. That is such a nice sound to hear.

Granted, we didn’t really have much of a winter this year, and the winter we did have was short, late, and very condensed. I mean, come on, we got almost 24 inches of snow in a 3 week span when before that, we got maybe a dusting. Plus, once it finally did turn cold this year, it got freakin’ Eskimo cold on us. I’m all for the cold weather, but don’t make it to the point that when I go outside in the morning, my face and hands actually hurt. That’s just cruel and unusual punishment if you ask me.

After today, I have but only 2 days left of vacation. I have to say that even though this turned into a mostly working vacation for i/o Computers, it was a good one nonetheless. I went back to my old sleeping habits for a few days (up till 4am, sleep till 11am), worked on getting the entire i/o Computers Server to about 85% (started at o% on Monday), got to go see ‘300’ with Jess, saw Marmalade have her kittens, and even got to relax a bit here and there. Tomorrow’s plans are to take Kyla to go see ‘TMNT’, a movie I know I will enjoy even if she doesn’t. Other than that, not much else is planned for the weekend. I think I may take the next few days off from working on i/o Computers stuff and do come more of my stuff like World of Warcraft – a game I have literally loaded up for about a minute and a half my whole vacation. It was my goal originally on this vacation to reach level 20 with my Undead Warlock and to finish reading at least one book. It’s now Friday and neither are done. I can say with some certainty that the whole book thing won’t get done. And I’m also pretty sure that level 20 may not be a reality. However, do believe that the later half of level 16 is totally within my grasp. We’ll find out a little later when I go into my computer room, fire up WoW, and give it a go.

One one last high note, I did manage to get a killer deal last night at Hot Topic. They are running a 50% off clearance sale, and I got 2 cool shirts for $5. Not $5 a piece, but $5 total. That’s awesome for Hot Topic swag!

Ok, first off, sorry for not posting sooner. It’s amazing the shit that can happen when you’re on vacation. Anyway, here’s the big update.

First off, Marmalade of having kittens fame had her 2nd litter of kittens early Sunday morning. She had 5 kittens between 1am and 3am. She had 1 black kitten, and a set of orange twins and s set of white twins. Pictures can be found over at Flickr.

I was hoping to have some 2nd news here, but that may have to wait until tomorrow, since it is not complete yet. It is a new project JP and I have been working on for a few weeks now, but it’s still not complete.

I know, we suck.

In other cool new, i/o Computers has expanded by opening up a shop in Hanover (a.k.a., my house). We broke the shop up between the 2 locations so that we can each work on computers, even if the other person is unavailable. There are also pictures of the new setup over on Flickr.

That’s about it for me right now. I’ve got lots I want to get done today, so I think it’s time to get my ass in gear and get moving. Later…

Big update tomorrow.

I was reading online tonight that March 14th was the 10th anniversary of the theatrical release of “Return of The Jedi: Special Edition”. This makes me feel old. I can remember very vividly going to all of the Special Edition premieres. In fact, my life was very much all about Star Wars back then. My girlfriend at the time and I were just really to start getting into prop collecting, and within a few months, we would actually be in business with a guy from Baltimore, Maryland going from convention to convention selling prop replicas and also making a pretty good penny on a newly opened website called eBay.

I can remember that each time we went to the theater we would stop at Aunt Annie’s Pretzels and grab about 6 cinnamon and sugar pretzels and I would stuff them in my jacket and we would eat them during the movie. In fact, to this day, I cannot eat one of those pretzels without thinking about Star Wars.

It was a very interesting and fun time in my life. I was in my second (and last) semester in college, only a few weeks from dropping out. (the college I was going to didn’t offer what I wanted at the time) My girlfriend at the time was a senior in high school, and my life was starting to change with the prospect of leaving school and getting my first real, full time job . We did a lot of traveling back then as well, which was something that was also new to me. I can remember almost every time we went to see the Special Editions, and most of the circumstances around those viewings. We would almost always go to the same theater, which was the old Steamtown Theater in Scranton. The theater itself is still there physically, but it is now under a different name, and from what I have been told, totally remodeled on the interior. I should make an effort one day to go see a movie there and see how much it really has changed.

I miss those times.