Joy

There is no greater joy than indulging in pleasant addictions. I got to do just that this weekend when Massachusetts suspended the sales tax for two shopping days. Items under $2500.00 were not taxed. Sales of homes, cars, boats did not qualify, but computer equipment did.

Himself had been a tad upset when he went to print some work and couldn't get the printer going. The Young One has been using my machine to play Sims and You Tube and who knows what else. I was able to get his work printed and then the discussion turned to maybe we should upgrade to a new computer especially since we'd save on the state tax.

That's all he had to say to me. I surfed Circuit City and found the machine I...er...we wanted. A Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Media Center. I've had two HPs and have had good luck with them. Off we went Sunday morning. We ended up going for a slightly larger machine as it was only $100 more than the one I had seen. Fine by me. We can make it bigger, better, faster. In under an hour, I bought the computer and a 22" monitor.

Oh, that new computer smell when we opened the box. Bliss! Himself toted, hefted, connected cables, and then left me to see about getting la machine up and running. Things hummed along nicely. The new HAL runs Vista and that's taking some time to get used to.

Most of the others Windows incarnations looked pretty much alike. My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures. This has changed in Vista and I found myself searching with the thought, "If I was a computer geek, what would I call this?" Had no problems downloading important programs like chat. Quicken went down smoothly and my backup imported like a dream. The only disappointment I've had so far is Mozilla Firefox 3 wouldn't download Shockwave and my fairly new Palm Z22 doesn't interface. (I'll leave that on the old machine.)

So, if I'm not around very much, I'm down in the bunker playing with new HAL