After finishing my 8 AM exam (yes, on a Saturday; and yes, it went well, thanks for asking), then having breakfast with Maria@Google and company, I had to run an errand which inadvertently (ok, it was advertent) turned into a four-store electronics shopping marathon. I don’t mean to brag, but I find it amusing how I only ended up buying one thing from each store. Let’s reiterate the journey.

1. Hard Drive: 320GB SATA2 Seagate @ PCCanada

   The story: I built a computer for someone last year, and their 120GB hard drive died. I had to get them to RMA the drive, but due to the recent Maxtor acquisition by Seagate, there were complications and it took 4 weeks. So, not to let the poor guy suffer a month without a computer, I bit the bullet and bought a 320GB drive for him to use until his comes back. Today, his came back, so I had to go down there and grab it. Effectively, I was getting my 320GB.

   From here, I went to look for a nice flat-key keyboard at BestBuy since PCCanada was out of stock.

2. Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution @ BestBuy

   The story: This mouse has been eluding me for months, ever since Dell put it up for $77 a few months ago — original price: $139. I missed the opportunity to buy it for that awesome price, and I’ve been regretting it ever since (curse you, Andrew@IBM, for not convincing me). I’ve been using my original Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer since 1998, when I bought it for $139 as well. I’ve had it replaced 3 times by Microsoft since then, but the warranty finally ran out and it’s near death again. Finally, I hunted it down for $79 at BestBuy, completely by accident. Alas, no decent keyboards in sight.

   Next stop, TigerDirect to look for a keyboard…

3. Hard Drive Enclosure: Vantec NexStar 3 @ TigerDirect

   The story: As I was walking through the store, I remembered that I don’t have any more SATA ports for the new hard drive and it looks like I wont be able to build my new computer as soon as I thought. I can’t let the 320GB hard drive just sit there… So I grabbed a nice SATA hard drive enclosure with eSATA and USB2 ports, to insure eternal-ish usefulness.

   Much to my dismay, TigerDirect was also out of flat-key keyboard stock. Off to CanadaComputers.

4. Keyboard: ENERMAX Aluminum Keyboard @ CanadaComputers

   The story: Last week I was eating cereal at my computer and in a lapse of judgement I let my hand control itself for a while — this is when it decided to drop the bowl and have milk go all over my keyboard. After some fun of trying to type on a sticky keyboard surrounded by cereal and milk, it short circuited which effectively made some of the keys permanently pressed. I had a spare plain cube-keyed keyboard to type on for a while, but I couldn’t live without my laptop-ish flat keys. Since the cheaper Logitech UltraX was sold out everywhere, I had to spill an extra $35 for the deliciously sexy brushed aluminum Enermax keyboard. Oh, it’s so sexy. And the keys feel great. I love this thing.

Moral of the story: Don’t go shopping for electronics after getting rejected by Google… again. All these are my birthday presents to myself. *Shifty eyes*