This is what I did for five hours today. It's finally done - after about a year and a half, lots of hours, and a bit of money - and it looks great.

So Jess went crazy last week and made BBQ week; it was amazing, and here are some of the results.

Cranberry glazed pork chops, with roasted garlic tomato polenta and garlic-sauted spinach:

Chinese-style bourbon glazed baby back ribs, coleslaw, rustic potato salad:

Chipotle bbq chicken with cilantro-lime aioli, fresh peas and tomato pasta salad, fresh garden salad with country mustard vinaigrette:

Andouille sausage and beef burgers with caramelized onions, spicy mayo, blue cheese and watercress; fries

Grilled new york strip steak with traditional chimichuri, lemon sautéed kale, and wild rice lentil pilaf

This week is Asian week.

I'm so spoiled.

I've spent close to a week with my T60 now and I'm confident that we have a nice relationship; we get each other's jokes, although the box certainly has less of a sense of humor than I do. Here are some of my thoughts after all the flirting calms down:

A pound is a lot. The T60 is a bit more than a pound heavier than my x31, and the difference is noticeable; it's most noticeable when dragging the thing around the house with the lid open, which is something I do quite often and probably shouldn't do ever.

A pound isn't that much. While the machine is heavier, it is still light enough to sit comfortably on my lap; I have no problem manipulating the thing, and it seems to put up with my shifting positions every ten minutes or so, which is something one with such an attention span is probably prone to doing. Not only that, the machine runs a hell of a lot cooler than the other box; I don't feel like I'm burning a hole in my crotch any more.

The screen is oh, oh so large. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the developer style resolution of my old a21p, as the x31 only had 1024x768. I have acres of screen space now, and I can actually run Photoshop, PSPad, and explorer at once and see all of them.

Core duo is amazing. The machine has no problem with Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, Excel, ITunes, and anything else I can throw at it, all running at once. This is by far the fastest machine I've ever had, and is also the most brute-force in terms of execution.

The finger print reader is cool, for about three minutes. I enjoyed that Lenovo recommends scanning two fingers, in case one is .. lost? Either way, the novel nature of that feature wore off quickly and I turned all of the associated drivers off.

The potential for Active Protection Shock Detection is cool, but it gets in the way of my workflow. I think the basic premise here is that, if I drop the computer, it senses the turbulence and shuts the hard drive off. I like to walk around the house with the computer on, and I usually hold it by its "seam" - the portion that connects the screen to the housing. This forces the machine to turn 90 degrees, and Active Protection thinks I've dropped it and turns the hard drive off. I still haven't decided if I like that or not.

The keyboard is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. The keys are a bit tappier, and a bit bigger, and everything is just where it's supposed to be (with the exception of the stupid windows key, but that's another story). Hoorah for Lenovo not killing the IBM traditional keyboards.

So I'm quite happy with my purchase. I'm half amused to find that I will actually miss the x31; I've built a relationship with a computer (and not just with the stuff on it), which is both strange to me and a bit disconcerting. I teach about the potential for relationships with products, but the only products I've ever actually formed a bond with were individual items of beauty - by definition, not mass produced. I've got to rethink some things about the nature of associative bonds between user and product - it makes sense, given that I spent about ten hours a day with the thing, every day, for two years.

My new computer's name is Wilson.

Jess and I went to see the monks today. They were making a sand painting. It was interesting, but the "on-display" nature of the whole thing seemed a bit out of place to me. Either way, I took some nice photographs. The monk that was there when we visited was "sanding" the orange outlines; as we were leaving, the rest of the monks returned with chinese food takeout. I wondered if the orange outline monk was like an intern; then I wondered if they were going to have General Tso's chicken.

I purchase a new laptop once every two and a half or three years. I buy a new machine because the warranty on the previous one is about to expire, or because technology has overwhelmed the capabilities of the previous one, or because I'm on vacation and end up with nothing to do but spend money. I'm good at spending money on vacation. Quite good at it.

Either way, I narrowed down my selection to two very different computers: The Panasonic Toughbook Y4 and the IBM, er, Lenovo, ThinkPad T60.

I actually purchased the Toughbook 9 days ago, but the website wouldn't behave. I was frustrated, so I called Panasonic. I called about eight times. The first few times, I was told that the system was down and would be back up the next day. The next five times, I was told that the "system was down and we don't know when it will be back up". After becoming fully anxiety ridden about this, I called to cancel the order. I purchased the ThinkPad instead, which has made its way from Hong Kong to Savannah in about three days. It's now sitting in a UPS truck somewhere in the ninety-five degree summer heat.

The moral of the story is that I'm terrible at waiting for things and that Panasonic lost a $2700 order (although I'm certain they don't care much, considering they have a blank check from the government for computer products) because a computer company couldn't get their computer to work.

I've been a fan of the IBM ThinkPad since working at Trilogy, so I'm hoping that Lenovo maintains the quality machinery that I've become accustomed to. I'm sure I'll take a barrage of photographs once the damn thing shows up.

The quarter's over, and the SCAD Industrial Design senior show was tonight; the show went well, and the work was - for the most part - well thought out and well articulated. I got a few blurry photos before being overwhelmed with parents:

Then J and I went out to dinner. It was yummy.