A Good Day.

Today, for once, was an all-round really good day.

Our plan for today was the same as every Tuesday. Get up, go get Sunny’s check cashed, the go pay bills, and probably stop for a burger or something on the way home.

However, today, when we checked the mail, we found a tax refund check sitting in the mail box. A check we weren’t expecting because we have outstanding medical bills. (For the non-Americans in the audience, usually, unpaid hospital bills come out of your federal refund).

Suddenly, we found ourselves with a wad of disposable wonga!

This led to a fun day all around, because Sunny had an opticians appointment this afternoon, and with the extra money, finally got some glasses with those “transitions lenses” she’s wanted since forever.

My fun, however, began when we arrived in Circuit City.

Do you know how good it feels when you haven’t had any of your own disposable income for about three years, and suddenly you’re a geek in an electronics store with a couple hundred dollars in your pocket?

It feels great, I tells ya!

So many possibilities, but in the end, I decided on buying the things we more or less need, rather than the stuff I just want. (For example, I really want a Zune…after spending two hours sitting in the optician’s waiting room with only a two year old entertainment weekly to read, the idea of being able to carry around every episode of Diggnation ever made, with room left over for a couple Twit podcasts and some music is very attractive.)

In the end, however, I settled on a new keyboard (My old one has most of the letters worn off the keys), a new mouse (Also almost worn out, with the left click getting less responsive with every passing day), and a new DVD writer. (Regular readers will know the problems I was having with my old one).

However, this is found money, so you can’t be completely and totally practical with it, so I went with the pimped-out versions of the above.

The DVD drive is just a plain vanilla DVDRW drive. I love it anyway, because I can finally watch DVD’s on my widescreen. It also relieved a ton of frustration as I don’t have to constantly tinker with the old one, refusing to accept that it is, in fact, jiggered.

The only downside to the new drive is my machine has one of those “ergonomic” curved fronts, meaning that the drive sits too far back into the machine when it’s installed. On the upside, it’s only a ¼” gap, and will probably do more good than harm, leaving another space open for cooling.

The new mouse, I absolutely adore. Not only is it super-ergonomic and all space age looking, it has extra context-sensitive buttons, a tilt-wheel, and best of all, it isn’t just an optical mouse…it’s a laser mouse.

Apparently, this means it’s more sensitive and accurate, but let’s be completely honest, who the fuck cares? It’s got an honest to god laser in it, and everyone knows lasers are cool.

There should be lasers in everything. If they released an over-sized walrus polishing kit, and it ran off lasers…I’d buy it. Why? Because lasers are, in fact, the shiznit.

The absolute best though, was the new keyboard. It’s a standard multimedia keyboard (all the usual features plus a volume control, play, pause, skip etc), but here’s the best part:

The keyboard is backlit.

Not only does this cast a cool glow on your desk, adding that sci-fi “hackers” look, it also means you can type with accuracy in the dark. There’s also a selection of colors you can choose from, namely blue red and purple…but not regular blue red and purple…but Lightsaber-style blue red and purple. Your choice, you either have Darth Vader’s, Luke Skywalker’s or Mace Windu’s keyboard.

Know how they did it? LED’s and laser-etched keys.

See? Lasers! There’s not a damn thing they can’t do!

Just because I had to, here’s a picture:

(Sorry about the poor quality of the pic, but I had to take it in the dark with the flash off so you could actually see what I’m talking about, and getting zero camera-shake with a 1.5 second exposure time is nigh on impossible without a tripod…but you get the idea.)

The best part is I also have plenty of money left over to finally buy Sunny a real birthday present!

Woot!