weird how i sleep these days: either i'm sleeping late or i wake up early. it's like my whole sleep rhythm is still off-sync. today was a wake-up-early morning. to be honest, i would rather wake up early, have more of the day to do stuff. not that i had anything planned, but i like to keep my options open.

my options were selected for me when a package arrived via fedex. i greeted in the delivery guy in my underwear and a "good morning" despite the fact that it was already noon. inside the box was the cpu upgrade for my aging mac. i decided to upgrade rather than just buying a new computer, figuring i could squeeze a bit more life out of my machine (besides, it was also the cheaper option). after updating the boot rom (which can only be done in OS 9; thank god i still had that 20th century operating system installed on one of my partitions) and the firmware (that particular software came on a cd-rom) i cracked open the case and switched out the cpu chip. it was easy because i did it before earlier this year with my father's machine which got the same processor upgrade, an 1.8ghz G4 (versus my old 400mhz speed).

i fired up the newly modified machine to see the changes. i didn't notice any significant speed increase until i opened up a webpage with an embedded video. with my formerly slow machine i'd never been able to view videos successfully; most of the time the videos would chug so much i just gave up, figuring i'd be doomed to a live a life that didn't include moving pictures. all that changed today as i visited apple's quicktime trailer website and the ubiquitous youtube, spending some quality time binging on videos.

my body was in a state of pain all day, the aftermath of lifting my large air conditioner down to the basement for storage yesterday afternoon. it's one of those old school AC's, the kind that's all metal and looks like a piece of industrial equipment. i have pains in my arms, my thighs, as well as my lower back. some of this pain could also be from the bit of leaf raking i did yesterday as well.

in the evening i heated up a frozen chicken pot pie (a combination of microwave warming then using the toaster oven to brown the crust a bit) and ate it in the living room, watching several episodes of law & order, occasionally switching to the world series game to catch the score. i also caught a nova special on earth's magnetic field and how we're due for a polarity reversal, which will result in increased radiation exposure ("say hello to my little mutant friend!") as well as beautiful aurora borealis effect all over the globe. can't wait!