I bought a "refurbished" mini-HD from Geeks.com. I was curious whether by "refurbished" they meant it was factory refurbished, in which case the drive should have been clean, or just "used and returned to us," in which case there were probably a lot of deleted files still on the drive. I decided before trying autopsy/sleuth, I'd try magicrescue. I found about 840MB of data -- mostly mathematical graphs and such and some other files that support my theory that the previous owner was quite the nerd.

I finished fully disassembling and then reassembling my laptop and somehow I have four screws left over. I wonder if I'm going to be screwed as a result...

Update: I disassembled it again and upon reassembling this time I was able to put all screws back in place (including those four previously forgotten screws).

The Compaq Presario R3000 is an awesome laptop. Why? It has good hardware and was has lasted me well -- taking no damage -- despite the fact that I keep dropping it accidentally.

I bought myself a refurbished 60GB black iPod video (5th gen.) for $229 (plus tax) at the Apple store. I decided to buy one for my wife for her upcoming birthday; unfortunately, it appears that they're all sold out now.

I bought a Fuji FinePix E900 today. I had wanted a FinePix F30, however, someone on Craigslist had posted their E900 for sale for $175. Given the price, I simply couldn't resist despite the bulkier look, limit at ISO 800 (vs. the F30's 3200 -- although above 400 it's pretty noisy), etc. I've been playing with it and the image quality is excellent and I love it.

Specifications summarized: 9MP, 4x Optical Zoom, full manual controls, ISO 80 to 800 with good quality up to ISO 400, JPEG or RAW, AVI or Motion JPEG, xD Card, 2 AA NiMH, 4.0 x 2.5 x 1.4 in.

I decided to replace my IBM ThinkPad T22 with a Dell Latitude C610.

I bought an Olympus Stylus 710 impulsively without checking its reviews, and soon I shall be returning it. Why? Because the image quality is simply garbage.

I got an older IBM ThinkPad T22 to run FreeBSD on and possibly take with me when I deploy.

I got new hardware: Cisco uBR924, Catalyst 1900, and a Reflex 30.

I now have OpenBSD installed on my Sun Blade.