Various

Couple weeks back... actually, on St. Paddy's day, Dell ran a special on a laptop I couldn't pass up. Been saving since Xmas to get a new one. I wanted something smaller than what we have now. I was aiming for the Inspiron 13, but kitted out the way I wanted, it was going to be $599.

But when they ran a special for this for $479, I couldn't pass it up. It's got 3gb of ram, a 320gb hdd and a Core 2 Duo processor T6400. It's piano black, which looks really nice, but the fingerprints suxxorz.

Messing around with Vista... honestly, I don't see the reason for all the hate. Yeah, it's probably a little bit of a resource hog, but it's not like it doesn't work. There're some tweaks to locations and functions of some things from XP, and it looks a lot different, but it's not so bad.

Then again, all I do with a laptop is either surf or write. That's it. I don't game. I don't watch movies. Sometimes I make graphics, but I don't have photoshop on the lappy at home, so that's a non-issue, too. I have no doubt it could run PS. It has better specs than my work laptop, and it'll run PS no problem.

Anyway, it's pretty cool. Wider than I wanted, but fuckit. It's not too heavy and I have nice big screen.

Kaia
Okay, so she's walking. Not just a few steps, but all over the place, sometimes carrying things. She's still not what I'd call stable. Nor fast. But it's walking. She's still working on getting her knees involved. And she doesn't crawl much anymore. Very cool. Kind of scary though.

In conjunction with the walking, she's figured out if she puts her weight behind her arms and pushes, she can move the end table that anchors one edge of the baby fence and spring herself from baby prison. She actually made it to the promised land -- Fletcher's water dish -- and proceeded to splash in it like she was taking a bath.

She'd actually escaped from baby prison before, but it was more cunning than brute force. The last time, she figured out she could move the fence slightly, get in behind the red chair, then follow the wall to freedom.

The last time she did that, the way "out" was blocked with some of mom's clear plastic tubs. I came out from the kitchen and she was just gone. I started to freak out. Then I heard this noise, not quite a whimper, and looked down. This little face with wide eyes stared up at me, not making a sound.

Something else she's doing. If steph and i are in the living room, but not paying specific attention to Kaia, she goes over to the speaker wire next to the front door and plays at pulling it off the wall. She giggles the whole time because we both start telling her no, and she knows that if she keeps doing it, we'll come pick her up and away. She thinks it's a game. It is pretty cute, actually, but I'm going to have to move the wiring. If I ever build a house, I'm wiring it for speakers like Bloyd did.

She's also starting to imitate us a lot more. We've recently taught her how to blow kisses and she's actually clapping her hands and saying, "Yay" all the time. And we taught her how to turn the pages of the books when we read at night.

What else? Oh, now when she wants something, particularly if it's somethign she's excited about, like a drink of water from the glass I have in my hand, she sticks out both her arms and doing this whole "gimmie" routine. It's pretty funny. We'll try to catch it on vid for you guys.

That's all for now. Out.