we are experiencing technical difficulties. please stand by.

today was pretty busy in the world of technology.

1. called apple's online store customer service to get an RMA for the speakers that i ordered and then found on amazon for cheaper. tomorrow when they arrive, i will ship them back out. my amazon ones should arrive on thursday.
2. called the bellevue square apple store to get a status on adam's laptop repair then went to pick it up
3. called comcast to ask about faster cable boxes then went to go swap out the old box for a newer model

now, that doesn't seem bad. however, there was much computer drama to be had over the weekend. we decided to move the media center into the bedroom. that's all well and good, but the shuttle case is so small that it has to run its fans at higher speeds and such to keep cool. the noise just doesn't make for a good sleeping environment, so a trip to computerstop solved that. we bought a new case, mobo, and processor for the "new" MCE box. i took the old shuttle case and gutted my emachine. i had hard drive problems which required several clean installs (at least several attempts). adam had big issues with the MCE box. some of the hardware swaps caused big issues with his desktop machine as well. in the end, after 8 hours of work, many system crashes, several clean installs, several hardware swaps, and some lost sanity later, it works. the best part is that it is really quiet.

i think the weirdest thing today was part of a conversation that i had with my dad. he was like uh, did you hear that dell bought alienware? i was like yeah. he said uh, i hope that they don't screw it up (dell messing up the good reputation, smart design, and general coolness of alienware that is). HAH!