Today, when I went to the post office during my lunch hour, I learned a very important lesson: Whether or not you get your package depends very heavily upon which clerk you happen to deal with. Today, I got a good clerk. Efficient, helpful, and quite apologetic when I explained the whole ordeal. Brought the box out immediately, said it had been right where it was supposed to, and attempted to muse how somebody could have missed it. I left that post office with big box in my arms and a very big smile on my face. :)

Stopped by the Taco Bell drivethru on the way back to work, had adventures in debugging wierd mysterious routing errors for the afternoon activity (which eventually turned out to be completely out of my sphere of control or responsibility, but I did learn a few things about ipchains in the process that I hadn't known before). Fun for the whole family.

Coming home, took an alternate route, which -- while less direct -- I thought it might be slightly less annoyance in the way of traffic jams. No luck there. In fact, I think it took a fair degree longer, cause not only was the distance greater, but there were cars backed up anyway. (I usually take the road whose name I cannot pronounce because it changes every two blocks or so.) I don't even want to think about how nasty it's going to get when that new mall opens in just over a week. Insane. The search for an efficient way to get from Broomfield to Louisville during rush hour continues. But I digress... :)

Got home. Opened the box. Took things out, part by part, checking them off against the list of my order, taking time to salivate over each piece object which emerged from the pink styrofoam padding. Everything here, sent exactly as ordered. :)

[Bitscape contemplates posting the entire text of the order verbatum. Decides doing so would be easy, since it's just a matter of cutting and pasting text from the email and beautifying it into html.]

Aw, to Redmond with it. I sucked it in, and started formatting stuff into a table, but that's too much manual laber, especially for somebody who's anxious to get back to the fun stuff. :)

Here's the text soup (I'll be nice and at least put in <br>s where appropriate): ...On second thought, I'll do it as a pre block. I normally hate doing those, cause it can screw up the proportions on things, but what the hell. Exceptions can be made.

Qty  Description                                       Unit      Amount
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (msc001) Enlight 7237 mid-tower/Enermax 350W      $84.95    $84.95
       * Weight: 30.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (brd001) ASUS K7V for AMD Athlon, Retail          $172.95   $172.95
       * Weight: 3.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (cpu1033) AMD Athlon 750Mhz                       $229.95   $229.95
       * Weight: 0.50 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (mem1) 128MB, 7.5NS PC133 SDRAM, Micron Generic   $169.95   $169.95
       * Weight: 0.20 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (col010) GlobalWin Athlon cooler                  $15.95    $15.95
       * Weight: 1.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (col2) Case fan, 80MM ball bearing, 3 pin         $9.95     $9.95
       * Weight: 0.50 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (vid14) Matrox G400, 16MB AGP                     $107.95   $107.95
       * Weight: 1.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (hdv71) Maxtor 40GB ata66                         $263.95   $263.95
       * Weight: 2.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (col91) Hard drive cooler, heavy duty IDE         $16.95    $16.95
       * Weight: 1.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (col3) Graphics chip cooler                       $11.95    $11.95
       * Weight: 0.50 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (snd4) Creative SB Live! Value                    $59.95    $59.95
       * Weight: 1.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (cdr11) Mitsumi 1.44MB floppy drive               $17.95    $17.95
       * Weight: 2.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (lan2) D-Link DFE-530TX 10/100 PCI network adapter$25.95    $25.95
       * Weight: 1.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 (cdr101) Pioneer 16X/40x slot-load DVD drive, IDE $149.95   $149.95
       * Weight: 3.00 lbs each

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Total Shipment Weight: 46.70 lbs   Subtotal:                $1338.30
                                        Shipping & Handling:     $50.35
                                        Total:                   $1388.65

Order placed at: Sat Jul 15 15:49:52 2000

So anyway, I checked off each item, and then began planning the steps. Performed the rtfm function on the motherboard, looked at the section on each jumper setting and dip switches, and concluded that all the defaults were right for me. (Am I boring or what?) Stuck the memory in, and proceeded to press the glorious Athlon into its slot.

(All of that took significantly longer to do than it did to type, mostly because I just like to savor these sorts of moments, and hold onto them as long as possible.

It then occurred to me that I was getting hungry, but I decided to ramble and update everybody on the current status of things, despite the fact that this rambling probably won't go public for at least another twenty four hours due to the status of my DSL line. Oh well.

Speaking of my DSL line, today proved to be an interesting day of phone tag between me, my parents, and the representative of RMI. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever actually get to have a conversation with any of them to find out what's going on. Hopefully tomorrow...

I am also well aware that this is the first day of a new month, meaning that it's time to make a rambling about a topic all the regular readers are well familiar with by now. I'll get to it. Really, I will. Just not right now.

I gotta eat (I'm thinking spaghetti), and then it'll be time to proceed with inserting the motherboard into the case, followed by the cards, connecting cables, etc etc etc. Then power up, BIOS config, followed by distro installation fun (which I'm guessing will almost certainly be wiped, repartitioned, and restarted over before the week is out, but ya gotta do it for the joy!)

I need to either find a place around here that sells Quake 3 (I was unsuccessful when I looked at the Boulder CompUSA a week and a half ago), or order it from some online dealer. Mwahahahaha!

Of course, the real benchmark will be how many complicated 3d objects I can dream up, and have that happy little Matrox card, render for me in Blender. Mwahahahahaha!

Ok, I'm hyped. But I will get to that thing until the end of the day. Honest. (Like anybody's ever going to know if I write it tomorrow and then forge the time stamp. But I'd never do that. Never. ;)

Off to supper, and then back for more fun. Woohoo!