Totally rad.

So over the sales tax holiday, Hilary and I invested in my company in the form of a new editing machine. We shopped our good friends at Monarch Computer while they were knocking out the tax and also had rebates for just about everything we wanted. If the sales tax and rebates weren't there, I don't think I would have been able to buy such a boss machine.

I do feel like I had to scrap a couple of the things that I wanted to get on this machine just to bring the price down, but nothing integral...the machine will still run faster than any machine I've ever layed hands on. However, I did want 2GB of RAM (settled for 1GB) and I also wanted more storage (wanted 2 more of the 250GB SATAII drives to set up a RAID 5). Both of those things are easy upgrades though, and not very pricey either, so they will come in the near future. I really needed to get a fast, reliable motherboard, though, so I got the best one (and apparently one of the more pricey) I could find. It'll allow for processor upgrading in the long run, to keep this thing making money for a long time. For now, I got a nice fast processor from Intel that will maintain its value for a few years.

And of course I had to get the awesome case with the window and glowing lights (see links below for pics). Nice and roomy, making sure my new machine doesn't burn itself up from the massive heat it's gonna generate. Here's the general specs (most females and all non-techie males need not apply):

• Case: Thermaltake Tsunami Dream
  
• Power Supply: OCZ 520 watt ModStream
  
• Motherboard: Asus P5WD2 Premium
  
• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 640 (Hyper-Threaded) 3.2Ghz 2MB L2 Cache
  
• Memory: OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 (533Mhz) 1GB (2x512)
  
• System Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATAII (8MB Cache)
  
• Storage Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATAII (16MB Cache)
  
• Video: eVGA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB DDR3
  
• Optical: Pioneer DVR-109BK (OEM)
  
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional w/SP2
  

I should probably also tell you not to bother trying to figure out how much I spent, because we got a TON of money knocked off of that thing. I think it could have been cheaper if we stole it.

I still have the "old" machine (little over 3 years old) to help with more multi-tasking as well as any and all office-related tasks (spreadsheets, e-mail, web, etc)...however, now I gotta find a KVM switch.

Now that I've bored everyone to tears (except, of course, me....and all the techie gearheads)......I should say that I'm getting buried under all sorts of projects right now....slide shows, weddings, even a beauty pageant....all needing edits. Hopefully business won't slow down....ever....but at the same time, between that and my day job and just getting stuff done around the house, I am wishing for more free time. I think a wise man once said something to the extent of "you can sleep when you're dead."