I'm sorry to hear that -- we're not really supposed to either, but I always give the mail guys nice holiday gifts of liquor, so they seem really pleased to bring me my stuff all year. Yeah, I bribe, but it works!

About the only thing I collect is Asimov and there was a certain period in his career when he was doing a fair amount of short story publishing in the gentlemen's magazine.

Ebay was a godsend for someone interest in a very select bunch of specific issues without having to go to some fairly grungy places (seriously, I'm buying just for one of the articles). Unfortunately where we lived at the time was a place where packages absolutely could not be delivered so I had everything shipped to me at work.

I was an administrative assistant at the time, one of two in the office, so half the time I did the mail. Plus I instructed that the envelopes be marked personal so that they wouldn't be opened (we opened everybody's mail and put it in their boxes).

You can guess what happened. Fortunately my fellow admin took it reasonably well though I'm not sure she really bought why I was having a Penthouse from the 1970s mailed to me at work.

The next day I went and got acquainted with our local Mailboxes Etc. and have been leery of having things shipped to work since.

Well, UPS has gone up a notch in my book. Not only have they extended their regular business hours at the distribution center to stay open until 7, they actually then reopen from 8-8:30 in case your package is on a straggler truck that didn't quite make it back in time.

It lives! Well, it's got a heartbeat at any rate and nothing is smoking. Tomorrow begins setup and OS install. Laptop also arrives tomorrow.

Kinda wishing I'd thought to buy a black floppy drive.

Congrats on the new system, GD! It sounds realy cool!

Good luck getting it all going. May it go together smooth a silk.

Aaaargh. Just opened the last component, the new wireless-n router.

It rattles. I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to rattle, I did not request the "Deluxe Tambourine Upgrade Package". :(

Vista installed without a hitch, even on a SATA drive, and it's good to go. Just some infrastructure work left to do.

Oh, I wouldn't worry... the rattling just comes from the security system, ensuring that absolutely no one will be able to connect to your internet.