The "WOW" Finally Arrived At My Door!

Any long-time readers as well as friends and family will likely recall the post I made in November:

And That's All She Wrote!

Regarding Bits from Bill: Vista Countdown:

"Like me, most of my Blogger friends took it easy this long weekend. I know I had more than my share of turkey and cranberry sauce. There was one exception. I can only guess they opened up a new Starbucks across the street from Corinne at the Security Garden. She’s been writing like crazy and has lots of news to share."

There was a purpose behind the madness. Some day I may explain but can assure you there is no Starbucks across the street from me.

I can finally explain. Last fall, I competed with other Microsoft MVP's in a BlogRocker contest. The post linked above was made the day after the contest ended.

Being a new blogger, the contest seemed like a nice way to break the ice. As it turned out, in addition to blogging, various points were applied for other activities, including forum help, which I was very busy with at the time and, as a result, accrued a lot of points.

Since this was the first BlogRocker contest, there was a lot of confusion. In fact, except for the "grand prize winner", positions shifted toward the end of the contest. However, when the final tally was announced, I had come in second place, winning "first prize".

So, why has it taken me all these months to explain? Because of uncontrollable events, the prize arrived today:

Voodoo ENVY Hu:709 Notebook*

For my personal computers, I've only had AMD and this is an Athlon 64 bit dual core processor with 2GB Crucial DDR RAM. I think the 100 GB 7200 RPM SATA Voodoo drive will suit me quite nicely, as will the 512 MB nVidia GF 7950 video card and 17" LCD monitor.

So, except those days when I have time before work, during lunch, etc., I expect blogging and other online activities will be taking second place as I spend much of my "play time" poking around this incredible new machine. It has been quite a few years since I have had a new computer to set up. One nice thing I have already discovered, there are no "trials" and extra goodies that I need to remove.

First priority is getting Eset NOD32 antivirus software, WinPatrol Plus and Office 2007 installed. The Windows Vista firewall is already activated. After I get my connection set up on that machine, there will be quite a few security updates to install and firewall rules to deal with. Rather than blindly transferring everything from the old machine, I plan on being selective. Its a good opportunity to do a bit of records management.

*There seems to have been some changes in the Notebook availability as I no longer see the 709 in the options at VoodooPC. I guess things changed since my order was placed 4 months ago.