I was spurred tonight to take a slow wander through Lenovo's web site (nee www.pc.ibm.com). I have been holding out for a Core 2 Duo X series Stinkpad and learned that they're available as of today.

So, I wander through and configure a system. I wasn't actually expecting to buy tonight, I tend to configure and then stew about it for some time before hitting "buy". Usually at cdw.com. I see no reason to change my behavior after my wander through the Lenovo site.

For starters, it still represents the best web based configuration tool IBM's PC division could come up with in 1999. Sadly, I believe the current year is 2006.

Click.
Update.
Submit form.
Wait.
Wait how?
Wait, patiently.
Add another option
Repeat meditation on patience
Recall a funny story, probably still considered IBM confidential, about the rush to launch a PC online store the day before Thanksgiving 1998. Lucky for me, then, I had GSAL on speed-dial.
Read page.
Click "add to shopping cart" and receive the following tabular data:

Quantity		Part No.		Description		Availability		Item price		Line total
ThinkPad X60
		1709H3U		ThinkPad X60 Customize		Ships within 1-5 bus. days				$2,294.00
				1GB PC2-5300 CL5 NP DDR2 SDRAM SODIMM		Ships within 3-4 weeks
				100GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive		Ships within 8-10 bus. days
				ThinkPad X60 Series 4 Cell Enhanced Capacity Battery		Ships within 1-5 bus. days
				Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Mini-PCI Express Adapter		Ships within 3-4 weeks
				ThinkPad X6 UltraBase		Ships within 1-5 bus. days
				Genuine Windows XP Professional		Ships within 1-5 bus. days
				Warranty service upgrade; 3 year onsite repair 9x5/next business day		Ships within 1-5 bus. days
				Asset Tag		Ships within 1-5 bus. days
				Save 10% on the ThinkPad 90W AC Adapter with PC purchase		Ships within 8-10 bus. days
		40Y7003		ThinkPad X60 Series 8 Cell High Capacity Battery		Ships within 8-10 bus. days		$179.00		$179.00

	Your savings		$282.00
	Subtotal  (update)		$2,473.00*

3-4 weeks to add a standard 1Gb stick of RAM, and 3-4 weeks to add what should be a relatively standard, in stock, WiFi adapter? And I know from my past ordering experience, 3-4 weeks is an optimal estimate and in no way a commitment to actually ship the system to you in 3-4 weeks.

So, I'll likely wait awhile, again, and end up buying from CDW.com, again.

PS: I through in a bit of invalid markup to get the style right for the table. I discovered, in doing so, that a comment immediately after the <style type="text/css"> tag consisting of <!-- Klaus...a sekrit message to Klaus --> causes the styling to be ignored in Firefox 2.0. If you strip the comment down to <!-- --> then the styling works. If you move the comment, including the secret message, after the CSS then the styling takes hold. I am certain there is meaning hidden deep in there somewhere.

In other news…

I sent out an evite for my 0x28^th birthday next year. I'm not sure if that link works if you are not logged into evite. I started with 40 people (a totally coincidental number), I didn't intend to slight anyone by not inviting as the choice of location for the party may well cause many people to decline to attend (there's many other reasons to decline to attend, but this one is acceptable to me).

I was challenged over the summer to come up with an interesting place for my birthday. Being the egocentric, egotistical jerk that I am, I chose a place which is elegant, tasteful, stunning in its surroundings, and a bit remote from Brooklyn.

The party is scheduled to take place at 41, at Chifley Tower in Sydney, Australia. A bit eccentric, perhaps insane even, but it should be fun. The plan around the party in brief is that we (Lisa & I) will coordinate various festive activities (to the best of our normally anti-social abilities) for the days leading up to the party.

I am not throwing open the invite list to everyone in the world, not even everyone in the ibm.com world, but if you'd like to be on the invite list, even as a lark, send me a note at myStupidBirthday@epcostello.net (if you don't like that address, try edsStupidBirthday@epcostello.net. And yes, I fully expect to do a thing here in New York and probably Chicago as well some time around the August-September 2007 timeframe.

Alas, there will likely be a blog, or wiki, or some other web 2.0 endorsed messaging framework when I get around to it.

I certainly hope the day and location of this party turns out better than the date and location of my 30^th 0x1e^th party.

…

I spent the afternoon at the Palisades Center Mall after lunch with Pete Fiorese. The damage tally: a Sirius "executive" desktop dock (on clearance), a 16 port 1Gbit switch, 2 10/100 USB adaptors for the Tivoim, a bunch of cleaning supplies for the house, a baseboard heater for the front room (when you hit 0x27 you lose that natural Hey, I like it being 50° in here attitude), a kit to make a keyboard tray for my desk (it won't be used as a keyboard tray, but as a USB switch / hard drive tray), and a bunch of other stuff too trivial for me to remember at the moment. I wanted to buy a CPU cooler but could not find one that fits my office PC (Socket "A" apparently is rare or something).

We are spending Thanksgiving next week somewhere in Westchester, followed by a weekend in Amagansett. The following weekend we are flying to Paris for our friend Lisa's 0x28^th birthday (see, it's a trend, there's a business idea in there somewhere). Then, the following weekend I'm returning to Austin, TX for some more work on my super-secret project. I think that, for now, the weekend after that we'll just be in New York. Then to Florida for Christmas. Then back to New York. Some time in the next six weeks I'd like to get to Chicago to see my family but I haven't figured out when to squeeze that in.

Other than that nothing is up. Other than my being sick all weekend last weekend (as in: I forced Lisa to walk Frisket multiple times) and I'm under the weather again tonight.