So here I sit at my new desktop, the first desktop I have owned and used on a regular basis since 2003. The keys feel odd and clunky; they must be spaced further apart than on a laptop because I’m tending to make more typing mistakes than usual. She is a Dell Dimension 5150c and has a rather adorable little 15″ flat panel monitor (I couldn’t bare the idea of going back to a CRT monitor, that poxy flickering drives me nuts). She currently goes by the name of “Lola”. [Ok, here’s the point where you all creep out the woodwork in droves to tell me that Dell is a load of old pony, well sorry, but they had really good deals on and I ended up doubling my RAM and hard drive capacity for no extra cost and I got free delivery. 
Yes, I am a sucker for the sales.]
I chose the 5150c model over the one sans the “c”, as the base unit was smaller (and distinctly more silver), and to say I’m a bit short on space is a painful understatement. The privilege of a cute/swish base unit obviously pushed the price tag up though, and I’ll probably end up paying for it in more ways than one when the summer months hit and the bastard thing decides to overheat and die on me… But at least it looks good — and it has a little door that “magically” springs open and slides itself back when the catch is released to reveal the panel containing disc drives and USB ports — it’s so beautiful. If I had given birth to it, I would be the proudest mother, ever. The base unit is presently on its side (in its “horizontal” position) as opposed to upright in a “tower” fashion, as what with it being so slim, it seemed a little wobbly and I was frightened I was going to knock it over, what with being the most ham-fisted person on the planet, and all. Which, in hindsight, defeats my space-conserving objective, but hey, it’s still pretty. 
Lola…Excuse the wires, I haven’t tarted her up yet…
Well, now I’ve made myself sound like the most shallow and dizzy “little woman” on the planet that should, in no event ever, be allowed near a computer, I will continue on with this post. (I won’t bore you to tears with the spec unless someone ask specifically — it’s not fandangly, after all I’m on a tight budget and it was partly funded by a student grant, but it’s sufficient for its intended purpose.)
Today I submitted my rather dubious attempt at the first eTMA for A171. Having plummeted back down to a level 1 course after sitting three rather intense level 3 courses, I’m having a hard time adjusting to the mark-scheme. Apparently, writing 4 50-word “welcome messages” aimed at 4 different audiences and a couple of Emails warrants about 70 marks – my last course wanted a 3000 word report on server performance, management and tuning – complete with additional tables, graphs, full projective Transaction Cost Analysis, headers, footnotes and references/bibliography, for about that! Talk about culture-shock. Oddly enough, I think such a drastic change has actually made this “simple” exercise a real challenge… It will be interesting to see where I fare when the marks roll-out in a fortnight’s time.
Meanwhile, I’ve been practicing the art of being a domestic goddess, getting used to finding ways around certain tasks and generally attempting to be a bit more independent while folks are out. I have come to the conclusion that I will leave such matters to the likes of Anthea Turner as it’s clear that inanimate kitchen-based objects do not like me. (In fact, I’ve realized that the only things that do like me around the house are computers and home entertainment equipment, but I digress.)
There I was in the kitchen on a mission to make a cup of tea. Now, it’s worth mentioning at this junction that although I am addicted to tea, I can seldom make it well. In fact, I can seldom make it suitable for human consumption. Quite how my combining of identical ingredients in the same order (and roughly the same proportions) each time can produce such wildly varying results, is unclear. All I know is one day I’ll merrily make myself a stunning cup of tea in all its sweet and milky goodness, and thoroughly enjoy it and the next day, produce a liquid so bitter and vile in nature, it induces involuntary gurning, swiftly followed by a trip to tip the lot down the sink.
As a result, despite owning my very own “Claire Kettle” [a small, travel-sized affair that’s easy for me to hold and pour, purchased exclusively for my own usage], I now have a tendency to construct (sometimes wildly elaborate, sometimes plain pathetic) scenarios that involve enlisting someone else to do the honors so that I may be “risk free” from having to endure another foul beverage of my own making.
However, I was without company today and had to (grudgingly) make do with my own attempt. The Tea Gods were however displeased with my past disregard of the lovingly purchased “Claire Kettle” and the defiling of their sacred brew and subsequently rained down heavily on my head the ceramic implements of torture as I opened the kitchen cupboard.
The Gods’ sacrificial rite ended in two or three casualties (the carnage meant that precise body counts could not be reckoned upon), their broken bodies and shattered handles were all that remained, strewn in splinters upon the tiled floor. (One of the casualties can be seen in its glory days in the “Lora” photo.) Nothing lasts on that bloody floor; it’s sudden and certain death to anything that falls towards it either from great height or force, or in this case, both. We like to play a fun game in this house called “let’s see how precariously we can stack breakables in cupboards that open above Claire’s head height before one day when no-one is home, the whole bastard lot land on her” Oh, and what a fun game it was!
The best-part of half an hour was spent on the clean up operation and what with their being no long-handled dust-pan in the vicinity, my back and hips were none too chuffed from all the bending down and stretching over. Why is it although I’ve only been on the planet a mere 21 years, my body is convinced it’s been here about half a century longer?
A full-time wheelchair user since 1998, Claire lives in an adapted bungalow in England with her Partner of 10 years and their two dogs: 
Hi Claire,
Dell’s are good machines, there are no worries there. We have 2000 of them here at work and the number of problems are low. Id buy one but Iv spent the last week building my own out of bits because my old box was tuned for maximum smoke. Not exactly state-of –the-art but still good for £0. Working in IT has some benafits!
I missed my morning coffee as i ran out of milk. Im making up for it now drinking some proper coffee from beans and becoming more and more HYPER!
I think i will go back to tea. Its less psychedelic.
Thanks for the reassurance Danny, its much appreciated
)
LOL, I have to admit that in this house we’re pretty big tea and coffee lovers, I’m forever ordering coffee beans from Whittard of Chelsea (also got an adorable bean grinder for K (at Xmas) from there — a little Russell Hobbs one, I can thouroughly recommend it — also, their Costa Rica and Mocha beans are great when blended together
K tends to also drink an Instant coffee called “Rocket Fuel” — apparently, alongside stacks of caffeine, it also contains natural Guarana extract. According to K, it gives you wings that dwarf those of the Red Bull variety!
Oopsie…I would say a womans place is in the kitchen..but…heh..I know where you’re coming from. You’d hate our new kettle…it’s chunky silver effect glass, neon lit, and heavy as hell. My mother has issues with it, and I normally can’t pour heavy things at all safely due to the dreaded “muscle shake”. As to feeling like you’re old before your time, muscle wise…if I’m here past..ooh,..5.30pm, I ache like a..well..I can sympathise. Bending and straightening more than 3–4 times hurts.
Like the new rig by the way..we have hundreds of black Dell GX series here. Not bad machines at all. My poor workstation is thrashed daily, and it’s still running. We have the same TFTs as you as well. Easy maintenance, decent performance, quiet and good value..but I wouldn’t have one personally, as I like AMD processors and Dell don’t..yet.
As to overheating..if it’s like the GX series design — you’ll be lucky..:) Even our “encyclopedia size” super-slimline dell PCs don’t overheat…and their fans whine like tired children on a summers day in our glass sided, wood clad library. It gets too hot in their for humans to be honest, but the PCs couldn’t care less.
Ours stand “on end”, but I do concur with you-they wobble to a degree.
Well, I must admit to being relieved at these good reports.
I’ve never had a Dell before — like you Karl, I have always favoured AMD processors (which is what my last machine, Katie, had)…but like I said, the deal seemed too good to pass up… I was going to pay more for a PC with an AMD out of principal, until I thought about it properly and realised that vendors only accept £‘s and not principals as a valid method of payment. 
Oh, they do good deals…when we said “We want 70 ASAP..give us a good deal”, they were only too pleased to help..:) We have 70 Celeron D 2200/512/40 machines, and 35 whopping great 4 ghz/256mb/60gb CAD systems with 256mb graphics cards..they did us the 70 stations for the same price as the 35 CAD ones..
Not bad economics, really..and in 5 years time they’ll all be “end of life”, and I might just look at the “book PC“‘s for a quiet life..
Still, chin up..Dell are rumoured to be examining AMD as a future provider…
Sounds like a v.good deal to me…
[ “Dell are rumoured to be examining AMD as a future provider…” ]
Really? That’s interesting to note, thanks for that
Hi Claire — Yes it’s my first time with the OU and I’m quite nervous. I’m really looking forward to it though — I had no idea there were other OU students online!! Thankyou for the words of encouragement! I’m sure I’ll like it now!
:-)
Francesca
xx
lol! that sounds great! I know that part of my course is a project that can either be done at residential school, or through online conferencing — I’m looking forward to that part! :-)
Thanks for all the encouragement!!
Francesca
My sympathies for your loss. *sends huggles* Maybe one day you’ll be able to move on and replace your mugs.
I’m so jealous of people studying IT. I know that sounds bizarre, but rather than *usually* finding my way around my PC and getting it to do what I want, doing so *deliberately* would be pretty cool. I’m clearly meant to do this kind of thing, for I’m one of those people who is indeed interested in the PC spec.
Sexy little machine, btw. My new PC is cool as fuck, but with a big tower and a 17″ TFT, it’s certainly not sweet!
V xx
I think I’ll recover eventually
)
As for the courses, are you contemplating going back to study/the OU? I can recommend it (and all of the courses I have taken so far [e.g. the six that make up this qualification and so far, the first half of this qualification and my current “on-the-side” short-course.]…wow, doing a lot of OU promo this weekend, I should work on commission or something
EDIT: Forgot to add the spec
Proc: Intel Pentium 4 Processor 640 (3.20GHz,800FSB,2MB cache)
HDD: 160 GB
RAM: 1024 MB
Happy now?
Wayhey..you got a room heater..
J/K..it’s about the spec of the home-brew machine I sit next to, except that this one has twin 250Gb SATA drives and a CCTV card.. 
i’ve actually got a pic of the chaos that is my desk..want a few more PCs? You can have some of my dells from here!! I’ve got to call Dell again..2 more expired power units. (Don’t worry-I think it was a bad batch of machines).
Room heater?!
lol… As for Dell, I’ve been trying to get a “proper” invoice from them for about a fortnight (I have to send it to my uni, what with the student grant and all that), haven’t been very successful so far — will contact the uni and see if any of the paperwork I have here is sufficient “proof” *rolls eyes*
Thanks for the course info.
I finished my Masters Degree two years ago and am currently studying Japanese, so I’m not sure if I can a) fit it in and b) be arsed.
Buuuuuut … man, it’s so tempting to learn properly how this stuff all works! Keep me posted on the course, okay? 
V xx
Sure thing