Factor The First: Lil’ & Geoffrey’s computer DFO‘d in a bizarre and decidedly terminal fashion. Their budget wasn’t ideal for a full replacement rig, but there was no guarantee that going on a part-by-part replacement binge would solve the problem.

Factor The Second: My “stimulus” check from Uncle Dubya, however misguided a gesture it may be, is still money in my pocket. It’s hard to turn down money in my pocket.

Factor The Third: The so-called “gaming computer” was getting a bit long in the tooth, though with upgrades over the years I’ve kept it nearly up to the desired spec. (Basically: “Can it play City of Heroes and Heroes of Might and Magic?”)

Throw these three factors together with a flash of inspiration on the part of your humble journal writer and you end up with a solution which everybody can more-or-less afford. They get my old gaming rig, and I use the (quite reasonable) money I charged for it and some of the “stimulus” money to buy parts for a whole new gaming rig. Mind you, it’s not as powerful or neat-o-keen as the big HP workstation that I picked up last year… but it’s not meant to be. Its job is to play a couple of games when I have company over. With its Core 2 Duo and the 2 GB of RAM and the modest (but modern) video card, I’m quite certain that it’ll do the job nicely.

Amusing side note: I walked out the door early Sunday afternoon with a black Antec Sonata case in my arms. I walked back in the door Sunday evening with the newer version black Antec Sonata case in my arms. Hopefully I won’t have any annoying problems with this Antec purchase…

Now all I have to do is finish putting the thing together and slap an operating system on it. Well, I have ’til the weekend. Plenty of time.

Operating under the assumption that a change is as good as a rest, I’ve swapped the computers in my room. Now the computer I spend 99% of my time on is situated at the desk which features actual legroom. Oh, and the monitor is now much, much closer to my face so I’m not leaning across the desk all the time just so I can read.

Mind you, I’ll still use the other desk when I have company over for computer gaming. This means, yes, that guests will now be enjoying the badass compy instead of the slightly gimpy “gaming” compy.

I should have done this months ago.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try out Unreal Tournament.

Afterward I plan to work on a 3.5 gigabyte collection of my favorite songs so I can load up my Insignia Pilot portable player. This way I’ll be able to just switch it on, tell it to play everything, turn on “random” mode and hear a whole bunch of songs I like all the way to work and back. The previous plan (selecting some of my favorite albums and swapping them out from time to time because there isn’t enough room for all of them) left me agonizing over what to listen to each time I fired up the player, and skipping songs because very few albums are completely perfect, and hopping from album to album periodically, and… yeah. Screw it. Nothing but songs I love, as many as I can fit in, and I should be golden.

First, though: UT. Yeah.

Every week in the bathroom at the office there’s a new brand and/or scent of handsoap. I don’t normally pay too much attention to the labels, but today’s new bottle decal startled me a bit by claiming that the contained product is non-comedogenic.

I’m sorry, what was that? Are you telling me that washing my hands with your product won’t make me laugh? Is The Joker involved in the handsoap industry somehow?

It turns out that non-comedogenic means that the product won’t block pores. I suppose that acne could be considered funny under certain circumstances, eh?