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Today we're going to talk about northwest Indiana (as in Chicago suburbs - I'm like 10 miles from the Illinois border). Anyway, I'm going to talk about weather, but mainly in contrast to what I've known most of my life (Ohio). So the phrase I'd like to use in reference to what I encountered last night on my way back to the hotel from the bar is.... Holy Fucking Shit, Batman!

When we talk about a white out in a snow storm in Ohio, it holds no candle to what the wind can do up here near Chicago. It was so cold with the wind chill... no words to describe it. And it was so much of a white out, that I couldn't see two cars ahead of me in traffic - even while sitting still at the red light (of which there are many). It took me nearly 40 minutes to go from Crown Point to Schererville (in contrast to before the storm I got there in 20).

So, there you have it! Only visit this place in the summer. ;)

I'm grinning from ear to ear on this deal I got on eBay. Found a Toshiba Satellite P105 series laptop for half the price of a new one, and it is only 13 months old. (With proof - the original receipt was in the box the seller shipped it in!). The original owner paid $1894 + S&H in December 2006 from Amazon.com. I got it for $830 + S&H. Most of the used ones on eBay like it were still selling for $1,200+.

So anyway, I mainly bought it to take with me as I travel (those who read my entries know I am on the road 75% of the time). I used to be an active gamer, but don't do it that often due to travel (when I get home on the weekends, I'm just usually not into sitting in front of the computer.) I bought this one so I can game on the road. So what kind of gaming can you do on a $830 laptop? Well in this case - pretty good. It is a 17" widescreen laptop w/ full keyboard, and is equipped with an nvidia 7900GS discrete graphics "card" (with it's own 256MB of memory). And to round it out, it has an Intel "Centrino" Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, 2GB of RAM, and a 200GB hard disk. The owner left 3Dmark03 on it, so I ran it. It gets in excess of 14,000 marks. I should try 3Dmark06 on it some time. It runs Call of Duty 4 acceptably, so that's all that really matters to me. Well that and Battlefield 2142 (which runs almost maxed out with no hangups).

So far my only dislikes about the laptop are the glossy screen and the 4,200rpm spindle speed of the hard drive. The glossy screen picks up too much reflection from bright lights. The slow spindle speed of the hard drive causes hangups in games when a lot of data needs to be loaded. The system will pause for a split second while the drive catches up with the rest of the system. I'm not going to complain too loudly, however. I got it for a raping-low price, so it's all good! :D

- Steve