pwnt.be

A 2-hour game of Settlers just wouldn’t be the same without winning. It kicked my rating up like a hundred points as well. Awesome. Bad news is, I desparately need to get cracking on Oracle assignments now.

It may be hard to believe, but I actually ordered my new lappy yesterday, over at ALB. It’ll take a while until I receive it—the money needs to be wired, then I need to allow two or three days for assembly, and finally, it needs to be shipped. I guess it’ll arrive sometime after New Year’s. It’s worth the wait. Just a quick round-up of the specs: black MSI MegaBook S260, Pentium M 740 (1.73GHz), 2 × 512MB PC-400, 60GB 5400rpm, DVD +/− DL 8× (LG GCA-4080N), French AZERTY keyboard, 8-cell battery, bag. The bag was only €10, so I decided to order it, but what I’d really like sometime soon is a Skivvy 15 in this color. But, of course, this is Belgium, and we only get the leftovers. I e-mailed them though; we’ll see.
And, for the record, I’m not going to wish you a merry Christmas. But I will tell you I won another game of Settlers today.

Blake is the funniest. I would make hot sweet lovin’ to him instantly.

It’s not that big a deal, but … Yay for me! My first Settlers win ever!

So I can’t get any decent black MSI S260? On the contrary! Belgium just sucks. Apparently, thanks to “zee Germans”, I can even configure it myself to some extent and it’ll still be dirt cheap, even with (a mere) €22.50 shipping. And their affordable pick-up warranty covers Belgium and everything. I e-mailed them just to be sure, since my German is a bit subpar. If all goes well and they get back to me in time, I’ll be able to order one before my parents leave for France for four days, and maybe then, I’ll even have it before New Year’s. That’d be fucking awesome. And yes, I’m willing to live with a QWERTY keyboard. Real men use QWERTY. But where does that leave me? Still, I could just pick up a Belgian AZERTY one over here somewhere. I’m assuming they’ll at least have that.

Words cannot express how much I hate Oracle’s “Forms Designer”. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s this steaming pile of shit my school decided to use for the exercise sessions of my 4GL course. It loosely resembles Microsoft Access forms, except that it presents them in a Web environment, using an extension of applets—for which you need to install a separate application first—and servlets. Really now. The UI’s even less intuitive than Access’s; it doesn’t distinguish between frontend and backend at all; it’s pretty much impossible to keep track of program flow; don’t try to get it to produce a portable or even decent layout—it can’t. And even if it was a decent product, how on Earth is using a proprietary drag-and-drop wizardry thingamajig that rarely involves writing PL/SQL yourself going to teach you anything about databases?! “BBME Greatest Hits”, coming to a theater near you soon. For fuck’s sake.

You know, I never linked to this beauty. I think it was Shady who pointed me to it, and if it wasn’t, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?

Right, well, I’ve decided on the MSI S260, with any CPU as long as it’s a Pentium M (there’s a Celeron M version) and at least half a gig of RAM, and—here’s the tricky part—in black, because something tells me the white case would turn a nasty shade in a matter of days. So far, the only black ones I’ve found had a Celeron M. I should be able to dig up a satisfactory one though. Once I’ve done so, I should have it within a matter of days. Especially since the financial matters have been arranged already. Yes, it’s supposed to sound dodgy.

Well, looks like the M1006W is a lot like MSI’s Megabook S200’s. MSI does offer a wider range. Time to check out the reviews. Again.

I’m looking into the Pointer Systems M1006W now, seeing as how it’s dirt cheap and seems to be pretty much exactly what I’m looking for. Unless the actual components are dirt cheap, which is the first thing I’ve wanted to avoid all along.