All Night Long

Emily showed me this today, I guess she heard it on KDWB.

A night at the movies.

So last night Emily and I decided that we would go out and catch a late movie, we decided to see Iron Man since I was able to talk her into it. We invited Kendrick and Lindsay to go with us but due to some family dance stuff they were busy and in Coon Rapids. The original plan was to go to the 9pm showing at the AMC in Rosedale but we quickly found out, once we got there of course, that it was sold out. The 10pm show seemed a bit too late for us so we decided to head home. Ironically Iron Man was also showing at our local theater which is only a few blocks from our apartment. We decided to go see that one since it was showing, or at least I thought it was showing, at 9:45 which was a bit better. Turns out that the show time was not till 9:55, but we decided to see it anyway. So we in line to buy our tickets and when we get to the counter we find out that its cash only, which we conveniently forgot since our last visit (we saw The other Boelin Girl there, terrible movie), so we began the few block trek to the Wells Fargo so we could save ourselves the ATM fees. Anyway we walk there and back and on our return find a line out the door. After waiting in line for a good long while and finally getting our tickets we headed into the theater. When we got our seats the closing credits were playing and we quickly found out that we did not want to be in the theater yet because Iron Man has one of those after the credits scenes so we rushed out hoping to not have any of the movie ruined for us. Emily left her coat on our seats though to save them and after heading back into the theater we discovered that we could not find our seats because her coat was no longer there. She grabbed us some new ones and I went to try and find out if anyone from the theater had grabbed her coat. After waiting to talk to someone and finding out that the theater was short staffed so no one was cleaning the theater between showings, making it improbable that anyone from the theater would have taken the coat, I went back to inform my wife that her coat was probably stolen.

Anyway, we watched the movie and it was great, and RDJr. did an amazing job as Tony Stark, I hope there is a sequel just so that I can see him play the role again. Anyway we sat through the credits and saw the scene that we ran from 2 hours earlier and left the theater. On the way out we talked to the last theater worker we could find and found out that they did indeed have the coat, I guess someone turned it in because they thought it was left behind.

Moral of the story find out movie times ahead of time, know if you need cash or not, and do not leave your coat behind when you flee a theater.

With regard to Dell.

Okay, so I wrote my last post about how I ordered through Dell for my new PC; well I meant to include this conversation that I had through their web chat thing. I just find it funny:

Connected with XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian
10:18:49 PM Eric Peterson Hello
10:18:58 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Welcome to Dell's XPS Sales Chat! I hope you are doing well and thank you for waiting. My name is Brian and I'll be your personal sales agent. How may I help you with your purchase today?
10:19:13 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Hello Eric.
10:19:25 PM Eric Peterson I wish to know if the Windows Vista on the XPS I am going to buy is 32bit or 64bit 10:20:23 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian We only offer 32-bit OS here at Home and Home Office section since most programs formatted for home usage is engineered on 32 bit only and will run slow on a 64 bit OS.
10:21:13 PM Eric Peterson I have a question then; why do you offer 4gb of ram if a 32bit Vista does not read over 3gb?
10:22:13 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian A 32 bit OS can only see up to 32 numbers at once. When you translate the amount of memory into binary, the largest number that fits into 32 digits is about 3.5 GB. So the OS can only see that much memory. Supposedly the 0.5 gig's power will be used to run its own system and hardware for even better performance.
10:23:18 PM Eric Peterson I see, but there is no guarantee that the full 4gb is being used though?
10:23:53 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian It's 4 GB that is used on the system.
10:24:08 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Are you planning to purchase a system today?
10:24:52 PM Eric Peterson I actually purchased one yesterday and wanted to know about which bit my windows vista would be since i could not find it in the system specs
10:25:08 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Oh okay.
10:25:18 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian Is there anything else I can assist you with regarding your concern?
10:25:31 PM Eric Peterson no there is not, thank you for your help Brian
10:25:43 PM XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian
10:25:48 PM System XPS_AMB_Rep_Brian has left this session!
10:25:48 PM System The session has ended!


I think it is strange that he told me that the excess memory is not for sure used and then told me that it is... It does not change my mind about ordering through Dell; I just think its funny is all. Oh and I only ordered 3gb of ram anyway.

New PC.

It has been a while since my last post regarding Jelly Belly jelly beans so I thought, with some encouragement from Emily, that it was time for a new post.

Spring break has just started for Emily and I and we are looking forward to relaxing a bit which will be nice coming out of a very stressful midterm week. Not really sure how to seg-way into this so I will just say it; Emily bought me a new computer because she is a great wife.

I ordered a new Dell PC the other day, after some trouble making the actual purchase, and it will be coming on Easter Monday. The trouble was that I had mis entered some number on the back of my card when attempting to buy it which did not let Dell run my information. After talking to the bank and finding out what error I had made I had to recall Dell. At this point I was informed that my account could not be used at the current time prompting me to call the bank again and find out that my card had been locked down due to perceived fraud. A long series of questions ensued and I was finally able to call Dell and authorize the purchase of my new computer. Moral of that story... when you see *** in front of you on the screen make sure you know what those damned asterisks are hiding.

Some of you might be asking why I decided to buy a PC from Dell instead of making one myself. The answer is simple. I went to Dell and built the perfect PC for me which cost like $1500, mind you this is not the PC I purchased. I then went to different online stores and after making my computer I found out that if I ordered all of the parts to make the same computer Dell would make for $1500 that it would have cost me $1350. In my mind the extra $150 would be worth the hassle of me not having to assemble my new computer and also having a warranty for it. This discovery made me realize that unless your really die hard about your computer buying a pre-made machine is not really that bad of an idea.

For those of you who may be interested below are my system specifications:

Quantity Item Number Description
1 223-2365 XPS 420, Intel Core2 processorQ6600 (2.40Ghz,1066FSB) w/QuadCore Technology and 8MB cache
1 311-7873 3GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
1 310-7963 Dell USB Keyboard
1 320-6189 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
1 341-5334 320GB NCQ Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM) w/ 16MB DataBurst Cache
1 313-5656 Dell Resource DVD with Application Backup
1 420-6718 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, English
1 420-7622 DELL SUPPORT CENTER 2.0
1 412-1054 Turbine Lord of the Rings Online,XPS
1 310-8030 Dell 2-Button USB Optical Mouse
1 420-7468 ADOBE ACROBAT READER 8.1 DIM/INSP
1 313-5829 16X DVD+R/RW
1 420-7616 Roxio Creator Premier for Inspiron/Dimension/XPS
1 313-2758 Integrated Audio (I have a sound card that I intend to move)
1 410-1184 McAfee SecurityCenter 15-month
1 412-0912 MS WORKS 8.5
1 950-3337 1 Year Limited Warranty
1 988-2217 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
1 983-9470 Type 3- Third Party At Home Service, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year
1 960-8700 Warranty Support,Initial Year
1 310-8626 You have chosen a Windows Vista Premium System
1 420-7285 Datasafe Online 10GB,1 Year Free
1 420-7649 Adobe Premier Elements Photoshop Elements, and Soundbooth Software

Jelly Belly

Ok, in the grocery store there is an entire line of Jelly Belly containers, they are priced at like $5/lb. and there are a multitude of different kinds available. That is the background, now the question, is it okay to sample (sample meaning one or two jelly beans) one or two different kinds in order to discover which kind you wish to purchase?