I love it when a

I love it when a plan comes together. My favorite Houston computer shop, Directron has Saturday clearance sales periodically, and I always go just to check out the goodies. Every time, I find something cheap and neat to play with, and yesterday’s sale was certainly no exception. They offer an assortment of open-box motherboards for $40, among which I found a few really good boards. I scored a Gigabyte dual-P3 motherboard that’s perfect for my home server upgrade. The web site you’re looking at is currently hosted by an old P3-800 BX motherboard (in my home office closet, no less) and soon the Gigabyte board will take its place with a pair of P3-800’s. Not like you care, but it’s fun for me, anyway.

Polished off a couple of reviews for Epinions, a great online resource for end user reviews on just about everything on the planet. Posted my thoughts on my new Motorola T720 phone (junk) and Erika’s Jetta (awesome). In case you’ve ever wondered how Epinions’ business model works, the review writers basically get paid $.01 for every person who rates their review as helpful. I don’t do it for the money, that’s for sure, but just to give something back to the site that has helped me with quite a few purchase decisions.

And yesterday, finally, Erika and I found the perfect coffee table, as pictured here, at Bombay Company in the Houston Galleria, on sale for $200. What a no-brainer. Then we haul it home and unpack the box only to find out it’d been returned before, and it was all scratched up. Had to order another one. Worth the wait, though, because we’ve been searching for a coffee table for so long.