That's right, I've left the stone age behind, FINALLY!! I had a lot of help from my own personal pit bull, Nemmy, who had the salesman from Best Buy about to crawl into a corner and pee on himself.

He had us looking at the really expensive Hewlett Packard desktops, but Nemmy found a superior (and much cheaper) computer in a Gateway DX4200, which has an AMD Phenom 9550 Quad Core processor, 6GB of memory, a 640 GB Hard Drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 3450 video card. It might be factory built, but this baby can FLY! (Download times haven't improved, but I can finally say that it's because of internet speed or the webpages.)

Did I mention that Nemmy also let me get the 22" HDMI monitor with 1680x1050 dpi? I CAN SEE FOR-EVER! WHOO HOO!! I got the higher end monitor because if we spent more than $1000 I wouldn't have to pay interest on it for two years. (My payments are only like $40 a month, which my weekend drills will pay for.) At first she wanted to get a new vacuum, which we desperately need, but she decided to let me get the monitor instead. (She didn't see one she wanted AND she knew she could find a better one for cheaper at some place like Target.) Some might say, "Hey, it's your money. You should get whatever you want with it." I say, after being with someone for seven years and being the main bread winner (until Miss Moneybags starts rolling in the big bucks)that any money I make is OUR money. Spending that much on something was a big decision I wasn't about to make alone. Besides, this computer was for BOTH of us. Okay, I'll admit that it was primarily for me, but she gets to use it whenever she wants.

Okay, so once we got home, Nemmy was only trying to be helpful, but Oh So Special Me didn't listen, and I tried to hook up the monitor to the wrong place for like two hours. I got frustrated and called Gateway's customer care line, who were completely useless, making me even more frustrated. I finally had a break through and looked at the back of the tower to see if I was missing something (*smacks forehead and beats brains out on desk*). This is when I realized that there was a 'correct' place to hook the monitor up to. I should probably mention that I was being a complete butt towards Nemmy while I was trying to start a fire with wet matches, and I am currently still trying to make amends (*hangs head in complete and utter shame*).

After the monitor fiasco, I went and bought an Easy Transfer Cable and within thirty minutes I had all of the stuff that I wanted from my old computer on my new one. (I highly recommend that if you purchase a new computer, go ahead and purchase the transfer cable, because it will save you TONS of time. It was worth the money I spent.) I also bought an HDMI cable to connect the flatscreen to my CPU. (After the hell I went through with the VGA cable I was ready to destroy it.) Let me tell you, there was a VERY noticeable difference between the HDMI and the VGA cable (*smiles stupidly and drools like Homer Simpson at the high definition-y goodness*). I also bought a box of those cable tie/band thingies (whatever the heck you call them) that help you make less of a mess out of your cords by tying them together. Now I have plenty of leg room to go along with the vast amount of desk space.

So in short...YAY for ME!!!!