Dial-up Dell

Hello, Bloggies! I'm writing from Providence, RI using my mom's new Dell and a 56k modem. I bought her a refurbished Dimension L933r. Great deal and the quality reaffirms my belief in Dell. They just make great, reliable stuff. Even though it's "refurbished" I can't see any signs of prior use. I added a new Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card (it was a corporate PC with no sound) and moved her old Zip drive over. The Dell even had two extra rails clipped in under the bezel for adding drives. I love the no screws case - very easy to get into. I put Windows 2000 on it so it doesn't crash on mom, and added all her applications. It's running very nicely. I'm going to make a Ghost image of the setup so she can restore it if something gets messed up. I'm also putting pcAnywhere on it, so I can dial in and work on it from California if necessary. She was using an old TigerDirect Cyrix 200-based PC with a 1.6 GB drive and 32 MB of RAM. This has a Pentium III 933 with a 20 GB drive and 128 MB of RAM, so it should be a much nicer machine for her. Things went well in Cherry Hill. We didn't have to turn anyone away (sorry Eve's friend. You should have come!) although it was standing room only for the speeches. They expanded the room to double width so I think we seated about 500 people. The presentations went pretty well considering the difficulties we had getting there. Pat gave his speech after flying all night. To make things worse, when he arrived at the hotel at 9am they had given up his room! Poor guy. But he did great. My plane from Providence to Philly on Saturday night was cancelled due to thunderstorms, so I rented a car and drove the 300 miles. It took about five hours and was surprisingly pleasant. My only mistake was buying a McDonald's "cappucino" on the way. I don't know what's in it, but it ain't coffee. Tasted more like a hot vanilla milkshake. I'm not blaming the coffee, but my speech fell apart about halfway through. My train of thought left the track and I couldn't get it back on. I guess I'll have to break down and create a Powerpoint presentation just to keep organized. But we had fun and I got some great questions, so it went OK. I prefer dialogue to monologue, anyway. Afterwards Pat and I signed autographs right up until we had to leave for the airport. I think we got everyone. Abby and Henry and I are having a great time in Providence. We went to the beach yesterday and had clam cakes. Something I haven't done since I was a kid. Meanwhile Jennifer is at home hard at work packing for the move. We'll come back to help on Friday. Moving day is July 5!