Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The "N" key on my Macbook keyboard cracked.

The "N" key on my 3.75 year old Macbook cracked a few days ago. Today I ordered a replacement key from an ebay seller.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Today I am volunteering in computer refurbishing.

I am helping with getting a computer refurbishing non profit off the ground. We have been going for a little more than a year now. We have a workshop now and a number of committed and knowledgeable volunteers. We install Edubuntu on older computers we receive as donations and then in turn donate these computers to community groups.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The next Dell puchase is a Green 22 inch monitor.

I could not fit my LG 19 inch wide screen monitor on the dual arm monitor mount because the mounting holes on the LG are 35 mm X 75 mm. So I bought a new monitor from Dell on credit. Credit seems to be easy with Dell and I have probably now over extended myself with Dell Financing. At first they would not approve credit on a new monitor. I was trying to buy two so they would both be on the dual mount arm and by buying two the purchase total price would be high enough for a loan rather than revolving credit and that would mean a more favorable interest rate on the credit. I seem to have been denied that more favorable rate now and am about 3,000 dollars in debit to Dell Financing on these 19% loans. Instead, in the end, they approved a single monitor purchase at 30% interest. So far, as of today before the monitor has been charged I have fully paid off this 30% interest account. I have fully paid for an e-book I got because it was easy credit and a Linux based OS. Then I got with this second laptop tray for the dual arm mount and have now fully paid that off too. Now I must pay off this new monitor soon. The new M11X laptop is on a 6 months no interest loan plan at 19% interest and I have a plan in place to save up the money to fully pay it off in four months. Then if both of these repayment plans work and nothing new is purchased I will owe less than 2000$ at the 19% interest rate. I will save close to 500$ by paying the loan off for the laptop. The new monitor is here http://accessories.dell.com/sna/products/Displays/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=320-7958

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

I have the new laptop working now with lots of software.

I installed Office XP, Office 2007 student version for productivity suites and have used these already for school related work. For games I installed Eve Online, Eve Monitor, and Second Life and updated World of WarCraft which I do not actually play yet. For Internet software I installed Firefox 3. For statistical work I installed SAS, SAS Enterprise Guide, and JMP.