The boyfriend bought a new computer today (sales ftw!) and I am jealous :(

His laptop (3 years old, like mine) started playing up ages ago and he really wanted to play graphic-intensive games and as any hardcore gamer (i.e. not me) knows, you need the latest graphics card for that. Something that a three-year-old laptop will not have. Anyway, we ordered it yesterday and picked it up today... And it is drool-worthy. It's a Packard Bell (we didn't go based on brands. As long as it works, we're happy) that comes with the following goodies:

• 19 inch widescreen flat panel monitor
• 2.8GHz processor (same as the old laptop's...) with 800 MHz Front Side Bus and 2MB cache
• 1GB RAM
• 512MB nVidia GeForce 7300LE graphics
• DVD writer, 200GB hard drive, build in 8-in-1 media card reader, etc. etc. etc.

So much better than my poor old laptop... 14.1" monitor (not widescreen), 64MB Intel something-or-other graphics, 30GB hard drive, blah blah blah. The old laptop has now become our print server, though we're hoping to do away with having a computer as a print server soon enough. That laptop can't stay on all the time (it's noisy, it overheats like mad [and yes, we did clean it and the fans were working properly], etc.) so another solution will be needed.

All this comes after I got a DVD writer for Christmas... Now we have two of them, heh.

I want that computer. Hmph.

Why are there so many idiots on the internet today?
/rant

Woo, I'm going home today. Been here at my parents' for a bit, helping them set up their new PC (as you may recall, their last one was a bit dodgy) and stuff. I'm jealous - its specs outdo my three-year-old laptop's by a mile :( Oh well, not complaing much - my laptop still works and I don't know what I'd do without it. Probably a lot more active stuff, actually. :P

I rejigged my error pages and site access rules a bit. If you find yourself locked out from any page on this site, let me know - apparently lots of people were being blocked for no reason a few days ago.

The reason I think most of this is happening is because people have very strict firewalls and adblocking software that blocks HTTP referrer headers. Most of my site relies on the referrer being sent (especially for images), so please check any programs you might have for such settings. I know for a fact that ZoneAlarm Pro and Norton Personal Firewall/Norton Internet Security love to block a load of stuff thinking it's ads, or that your privacy will be breached. Rest assured that there are no ads on this site and I'm not about to spam you or steal your personal information. I better things to do, to be honest.

I've got most of my computer back now, by the way. Still upset at losing over 500 photos though - nothing could bring them back. Karl very kindly lent me a file recovery program (recovers deleted files off a drive), but unfortunately that couldn't get them back either :( Oh well.

Oh, and I know why Windows crashed the other day - because of Norton AntiVirus. Seriously, I have been screwed over too many times by that program. I was into the 7th month of my 4th version of the thing - all previous 3 versions having either crashed Windows/my computer or simply stopped working. One version (Norton Internet Security 2005 - DO NOT GO NEAR NIS, IT IS SUCH A BAD PRODUCT!) told me one day that I needed to buy 106 years' worth of subscriptions because it decided that it had expired in 1899. No amount of reinstalling would fix that, and Symantec, creators of the software were as unhelpful as usual, claiming they no longer supported the software and that I had to purchase the 2006 version. Let me tell you that this happened every time - I contacted Symantec saying something had gone wrong with a product I bought from them and they told me they didn't support it any more and that I had to buy the next version. RARGH! Anyway, I'm sick of them. Jem's been telling me to get rid of that stupid program for ages now and I've finally listened and gone for a better (and free!) solution that is so far working out great. Yah boo to you, Symantec. Greedy money-guzzlers... I could rant about them for ages, I really could.

Hmmm, how ironic that I titled this "just quickly" when this is the longest entry I've written for a while. :P

Edit: Is anyone else getting errors when they try to post a comment and/or manage their comment subscriptions? I get it on and off and I'm trying to work out what's causing it. It says something like: duplicate column in table comment_subscribed enum('Y','N')... If you could let me know if and when you get it, that would be great. :)