I just sold my Wii, so I had money to burn. I was looking at ultraportable notebooks a few months ago (and by ultraportable notebooks, I really meant netbooks; the cheap linux based gutless systems, not the 8x-the-price fully fledged systems like the Macbook Air), and I ended up scrapping the idea, but recently I’ve been thinking of nice it might be to be able to take a netbook places, even just in the house. Sure I use a notebook already, but it’s even a hassle to disassemble it and move it around the house. I’d never take it from my living room to the bedroom, for instance, because it’s too much work to haul everything.

So, I just purchased what I would consider to be a very slick deal, a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook. The price was right,
$249 base
- $50 instant for EPP
- 7% for EPP
+ 9.99 for shipping
- 9.99 shipping discount for EPP
Final price: $185.07

Configured thusly:
Black chassis
Intel Atom Processor N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache)
512MB DDR2 at 533MHz
8GB Solid State Drive
Glossy 8.9 inch LED display (1024×600)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
Wireless 802.11g Mini Card
32WHr Battery (4 cell)
Ubuntu Linux version 8.04.1
1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service

It’s not expected to arrive for about a month, but I’m pretty stoked. I plan to upgrade it and hax it out pretty heavily, and maybe even get hackintosh up and running on it (this is the only fully hackintoshable netbook).

A friend of mine was playing some Call of Duty 4 with me, and since he didn’t own the game, I decided to let him play online for awhile with my cd-key. To change the CD-Key of an already installed Call of Duty 4 installation, follow these steps:

1. Open Call of Duty 4
2. Go to Options
3. Go to Multiplayer Options
4. Click Enter Key Code

And it worked, after a short period of “activation”. It really should be that easy for every game, kudos for the makers of CoD4.

And to my surprise, we were actually both able to play for a few hours on the same LAN using the same CD-Key. I wonder if that’s intended…

Namaste, is the (only?) best Indian Cuisine all you can eat buffet in Vancouver, Washington. That is all.

So I was checking out Mint.com recently — a site with which I am very impressed — and once I was all setup I came across a figure that somewhat dumbfounded me.

Wait, that CAN’T be right. After all, I have no credit card bills, no student loans, no loans otherwise… … …oh wait, my house. That’s right, after having already paid $22,000 on my house, I still owe over $30,000 more than it’s worth, according to CyberHomes. Having a house is nice, but nice enough to put me in that kind of debt. I’d rather be renting! I guess I’m screwed for awhile.

So if the question is “what’s a man worth?”, the answer, in this economy for homeowners, is not much.