I have temporarily turned off commenting because I got on some asshole spammers' list and got about a hundred spam comments in twelve hours. Leaving the comments off for a few days usually deters them (until the next bunch comes along). May their servers crash when all their spam messages get bounced back. Comments will be enabled again during the week sometime.

While in the city this weekend I went to Best Buy and picked out a new laptop on Saturday night but the price of it was over our debit card's daily spending limit so we agreed I'd go back up there today with cash. I did and, to my great delight, discovered that the laptop had gone on sale Sunday so I ended up getting it for almost $200 less than we had expected to pay!

Now I'm sitting here catching up with all my online stuff, having spent the last hour customizing it and getting all my bookmarks and such set up. The first thing I did was download Firefox.

It's a lovely HP Pavilion Entertainment PC, which means it's got a really good video card and a cute little remote to control the media stuff. Wireless internet, of course, and Windows Vista. I am worried about changing to Vista but, I will admit, it's very, very pretty. And since I'm scarcely above the intellectual level of a seagull, in that I'm fascinated by shiny objects, I am impressed with Vista so far. If you haven't seen it, you can put different modules right on your desktop. I have a clock, a slide show of all the pictures on the computer, a feed of the top headlines and a little notepad for jotting things down.

The keyboard is also a little wider than my former laptop so it's more comfortable to use. Also the touchpad has the little area on the right edge of it that you can slide your finger down to scroll down the page. The first laptop I ever used (borrowed) had that and when I got miy former one I was disappointed that it didn't have that feature.

Ooh, I've got a built in webcam, too! I'll probably never use it but I am incurably gadget-obsessed and like knowing it's there, whether it's actually useful or not (this also applies to Robert, come to think of it).

Also, as part of my commitment to taking tip-top care of my new baby I purchased a laptop cooling pad. It has a built-in fan which keeps both my lap and the computer cool. A most excellent invention, I must say.

Now I must be off, for I have a moral dilemma which I need to ponder: would it be untoward of me to sleep with my new laptop under my pillow?

Check out my shiny new Flickr badge over there on the left, underneath "Photos." Freakin' awesome, if I do say so. You can click on it to be taken to the album that contains all the pictures for a closer look.

Oh, by the way, The Baby is five months old today and those pictures were snapped this morning in honor of the occasion. She weighs 18 lbs., and is 27.5" tall which is actually half an inch taller than Madalyn (the Amazon Queen) at this age. WTH is up with that?

This just in: I've updated my entire sidebar, top to bottom. I even updated my BlogRoll. I pruned all the no-longer-active blogs and added some new ones -- friends whom I have been shamefully slow to acknowledge. I changed my Timewasters (will endeavor to do that more frequently now, so keep an eye on it) and added a link to a neat t-shirt-making website in the Other Links section. As if that weren't enough I finally figured out how to add a link to my online photo albums under the long-blank Photos header (it was not as easy as it sounds; it involved adding a module to my template and blah blah blah technical crap that I had no idea how to do but figured out all on my own). At some point I am going to start a Flickr account and put it up there but, for now, there's at least a working link there for people to check out, and the pictures on it are current.

So, not to sound insufferably self-satisfied, but I'm pretty proud of myself. Behold the awesomeness of my updated sidebar, will you?

I have temporarily disabled comments on the site after getting slammed with about forty spam comments last night. Will re-enable them when the asshole spammers have been discouraged.

I sincerely doubt that this is possible, but if there's anyone who still doesn't have a Gmail account, and would like one, or who already has one and would like another, give me a shout. I have many invitations to share. Leave a comment with your email address in it that you would like the invitation sent.

I had been using Internet Explorer for years without ever wondering if there was anything better out there. A couple months ago I was unable to save some animated gifs and was told the problem was IE. The person who told me that recommended Firefox so I downloaded it. Can I just say....it doth rock?

I haven't had any of the problems I had with IE since I started using Firefox. I got my animated gifs with no problem. When I installed it, it imported all my bookmarks and history from IE so I didn't have to start from scratch. This was a big bonus because I have TONS of bookmarks. If Firefox hadn't imported them for me I'd probably still be using IE most of the time, because I am THAT lazy.

Another cool feature is you can put a certain number of bookmarks right on your toolbar, so for the ultra lazy, like myself, there's no pesky pulling down of menus and scrolling to the desired address. Just a click on the tool bar and off you go.

Oh, and have I mentioned the search engine right in the tool bar? There's a little window to which you can add numerous different search engines. Type in what you are looking for, pull down the menu, select the search engine, and bang -- off you go. I have Google, Amazon, Ebay, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, IMDb and Ask Jeeves on mine. It is so stinkin' handy I can't even stand it.

And then there's the fact that you can change Firefox's skin. For someone like me, who spends most of her waking hours staring at the computer screen, this is a big plus. I currently have a theme called "Pimpzilla" going. The buttons? Look like bling. Big, shiny, gold-and-diamond bling that sparkle when you run your cursor over them. It is tres cool.

The only downside I can think of is that some things do not support Firefox. But that can be easily remedied by keeping IE for those times when you find something that Firefox can't view. These things are few and far between, from what I've been able to ascertain.

So, are you sold yet? If you want to get Firefox, or just want to learn more, I invite you to please do so by clicking the handy little Firefox button over on the right of the page, under "Links" or go here: Get Firefox.