Gotta have faith, faith, faith

Mom called grandma again at the end of last week, and got more details from her. Apparently — Cookie’s stroke happened back in October, and she forgot to tell us! And none of the cousins called us to tell us either. I also forgot to mention in the last post that, when my mom called her father at the end of October for his birthday, she found out that her mother had had a very minor stroke. Very very minor, but again — no one bothered to tell us. Nana said she didn’t tell mom about her stroke because “she didn’t want to worry her since it was nothing” and we’re so far away. And sure, it might not have been anything to worry about – but it would just be nice if people actually told us these things!

This weekend, mom and I went to an International Christmas Bazaar at a local church. They had tons of items that were hand-crafted in various third world countries, and all the money they earned from the sales went back to the artisians. They also had various charities there that so you could donate. Mom and I bought a flock of chicks for a family in need via the Heifer Project International. The Maua Methodist Hospital in Kenya was also represented at the Bazaar, and we donated to them as well. Mom paid for immunizations, and I purchased a round of antiretroviral treatments for a person with AIDS.

It looks like I’m going to get a new computer. I know that I could just replace the old dying hard drive – but I’m a little worried about transfering Windows over from one drive to another, especially since the bad sectors contain parts of the operating system. I’m also afraid I’d screw it up and end up with two unusuable drives. Getting a new computer might be a little more expensive than just a new hard drive, but it would be easier than trasnfering, plus I know that the system would be up-to-date. For this month at least. 😉 Right now I’m debating between a HP Pavilion a1630n Minitower and a Dell Dimension E521 desktop that I customized myself. There is about a $200 difference in the two (although, the price of the Dell does have warranty added on, and I’d have to buy that seperately for the HP, so the price difference isn’t really that much) and I’m somewhat torn between them.

The stats on the HP are: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, 250GB Hard Drive, 16X LightScribe Double Layer DVD+/-RW Drive. THe video card is an NVIDIA GeForce 6150LE; along with a basic sound card.

The Dell stats are: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ 2.2 GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, 300GB Hard Drive, 16X DVD ROM Drive and 48X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drives. It has a 256MB NVIDIA Geforce 7300LE TurboCache video card and an Integrated Sound Blaster®Audigy™ sound card.

The HP processor is better, but the video and sound cards in the Dell are better. The Dell also comes with a free upgrade to Windows Vista; I’d have to purchase the upgrade myself if I went with the HP. (I’ll fully admit, though, that I’m in absolutely no rush to get Vista. I’m going to wait at least a few months after it’s released before I change my system over. I want to wait until there’s at least one service pack released for it.) Also — I can pick up the HP now, the Dell I have to wait for them to make it and ship it. Now I just have to figure out which I want more. A big chunk of the price will be coming from my Christmas money this year, and then I can pay off the rest of it over a couple of months. I hate making choices. Haha.

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