Well, it was PaulZ’s (henceforth to be known as “TheMaltesePaulcon”) birthday yesterday, and JVL, Uli and I gave him his Canon Digital Rebel XT camera, his macro lens, photo printer and 2GB memory card. He is now ready to rock and roll. After having tried out his camera –just to make sure everything worked– and after checking in on Attila’s photo blog every day and seeing what he does with his admittedly superior Canon camera equipment, both and I are struggling with the desire to upgrade our photo gear. Not that we need to. Not that we’re going on some fabulous exotic vacation any time soon, or that we have kids to photograph, or that we have the time or energy to invest in learning art photography. No. The camera is just damn cool and it has revealed to us how pathetic our own little 3.0 megapixel portable point-and-shoots really are.

But we have other technical expenses to contend with. Once, we had four computers between the two of us – one laptop and one desktop each. Then, I gave my desktop to . It has since had a series of mouse and keyboard difficulties, which she is in the process of getting looked at. Then, my laptop started shutting down without warning, overheating, making nasty fan noises, etc. Rather than deal with it, I just sort of stopped using it, and was making use of JVL’s laptop and desktop. Then, JVL’s desktop started blacking out, taking a long time to start up and all that, and then one day about two weeks ago, stopped turning on altogether.

So now, we need to try to get the hard drive info out of the old desktop and possibly relocate it into a newer CPU with more RAM and a better fan. I need to either find someone to fix my laptop, or else buy a new one and sell the old one on Ebay. And JVL has become convinced that a 500GB external hard drive is the solution to all of these problems, because then we’d never have to worry about losing data again.

I’m hoping to have a house full of geekily-inclined boyz over the weekend, and my desperate hope is that their combined nerdy brainpower can somehow help us to overcome these not insignificant computer obstacles. Aaron has already started working on finding a solution to the desktop problem, bless his little cotton socks, so now I think the big issue for me is what the hell to do with my laptop. Is it a dead battery? Is the fan dirty/sticky/broken? We’ll find out soon enough.

Tonight? I hang out with my DLLC girls, and and we will have wine and fruit and cheese and wonder at the marvel that is Chrissy’s magnificent 120 horsepower desk.