I recently ordered two more cases for my server rack - the Athenatech A100SC Micro ATX cases - from Amazon.com. They had the best prices after shipping (free) and well, you just know you won't have a problem with Amazon. Until now...

My last order from them contained a DVD that was unplayable - which they PAID for me to ship back to them and sent me a replacement for - no worries.

But this one came with one case and one box of...well...memory card readers. A whole box full of them. Not quite sure why they were in that box, and I doubt they're really worth any more than the case itself, and, I really don't have any use for them. I could actually use one of the card readers, but I can get those for free at Frys, and to sell the rest on eBay would be a pain.

So, I've printed out a return label, I'm sending it back, and Amazon will ship me another one. They're actually the best at this and I'm quite impressed. But for those who are curious - here's what I got:





URL: Amazon.com: Athenatech A100SC Micro Atx 200W Silver: Electronics

Today, nVidia released a brand new graphics card chipset - the 7900 in a couple of flavors - the GT and GTX with 256 and 512 megabytes of RAM respectively. While just reading about the cards, I learned of the eVGA Step-Up program. Wherein, if you bought a graphics card from them in the past 90 days, you can trade it in for a newer graphics card and only pay the difference in price.

So, since I paid $310 for my graphics card on January 24th, I can turn it in to eVGA and they'll send me the graphics card of my choice and I just pay the difference - so since I selected the eVGA 256-P2-N565-AX Geforce 7900GT CO Superclocked 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card priced at $369, I just have to pay the $59 difference plus $10 for shipping.

It's an absolutely great deal. For just $70, I get the latest and greatest video card. And to top it off, I get a credit for what I paid. Not what my card is currently worth. I'm absolutely amazed by this awesome service. Sure, they'll resell my card and I'll be without a good graphics card for a week or so while I wait for the new one, but it's worth it.

URL: EVGA | Support | Step-Up Program

A great read.

The brave guy in Hollywood will be the one who says that this is a fabulously great country where we treat gays, blacks, and everyone else as equal. The courageous writer in Hollywood will be the one who says the oil companies do their best in a very hostile world to bring us energy cheaply and efficiently and with a minimum of corruption. The producer who really has guts will be the one who says that Wall Street, despite its flaws, has done the best job of democratizing wealth ever in the history of mankind.

No doubt the men and women who came to the Oscars in gowns that cost more than an Army Sergeant makes in a year, in limousines with champagne in the back seat, think they are working class heroes to attack America -- which has made it all possible for them. They are not. They would be heroes if they said that Moslem extremists are the worst threat to human decency since Hitler and Stalin. But someone might yell at them or even attack them with a knife if they said that, so they never will.

URL: The American Spectator