Ex Peed

That's my rather rude way of saying that I've now been, as it were, XP'd.

Yes, folks, as you can tell by the giant "L" on my forehead, I've been dabbling in the world of computers this weekend.

Friday night I finally broke down and bought, after needing one for months, a new mouse. I almost went for the trackball, but when using other folks' I've always had a tough time maneuvering. And since there are still a few computer card games I play occasionally where speed comes into play, I gave that a pass, and went for a cute compact silverish number.

When I got it installed on Saturday morning, I really really liked it. It moves so easily, like gliding along on ice. I was telling Mr M about it, and just happened to mention, oh, that's why it moves so nicely, it doesn't have a ball in the bottom of it. And he was all, "Ooooh! You got an optical mouse? Touch you!"

Yes, I did get an optical mouse. So touch me. Even though I have no idea what an optical mouse is, when I bought the thing, and even now. I caught Stennie online and mentioned to her my new mouse didn't have a ball (actually, instead of typing "it doesn't have a ball" I typed "i doesn't have a ball," which she jumped right on), she also did the "Ooooh, optical mouse" thing, and mentioned the lights on it. So apparently these lights on my mouse are part of it being optical. I thought it was for show, like when toddlers have lights on their little tennis shoes.

I ended the weekend by installing my Windows XP upgrade. Took a long time, and I lost Norton Anti-Virus in the process, but it's here. Nothing blew up. It's all blue, and the icons are cheerier, and other than that, I don't know much if I like it or not. I mean, I've not really seen any differences yet. Which is a good thing, I guess. I don't guess it would be that great if I put it in and it was a different language or something.

Anyway, I can now have both iTunes and Napster, and I downloaded both, but haven't had much of a chance to look at either of them for the getting everything else in place. I did do a couple of quick searches on each of them, and it looks like the dearth of stuff that was on the old Napster is but a faint dreamy memory. We'll apparently never see those days again. The paying I don't mind. I mean, 99 cents a tune is a veritable bargain. But the reason I always loved Napster was the wealth of choice.

Oh well, what are you gonna do, right?

In between those bouts of geekiness, Mr M and I went to see "Master and Commander," the new Russell Crowe flick, and it rated a solid three stars. It was the living embodiment of three stars on my Movie List star guide: "Not Bad."

After the movie we went to Barnes & Noble and browsed around, I bought the Jet "Get Born" album (catchy as hell), and the new REM video dvd. Then we went out to eat at Zeppoli's, one of my two favorite restaurants in B'burg. I ended up asleep around midnight, probably the earliest I've been asleep in weeks. And I slept well.

There you have it. Weekend of the gods. No, wait. Weekend of the pods.