rec

Amazon.com has a Black Friday page. You can sit at home, avoid the Best Buy lines, and get the same types of bargains. Alas, there's not much that I want--until the combined HD DVD/BlueRaty players come out. rec

Hate crimes are thought crimes--nothing but. I have real trouble ascribing a crime to what they think. The crime should be the action--assault, murder--but to call it a crime because you hate someone seems to me a clear violation of our basic freedoms. Whether or not Matthew Shepard was killed because of hate or for some other reason is immaterial. He was murdered, and the perpetrators should be brought to justice--on murder charges. I cannot undertand why the person who threw a Koran in the toilet at Pace University should be charged with a felony because of what he thought and the artist who did Piss Christ should be rewarded by the National Endowment for the Arts because what he thought didn't offend someone is beyond me to understand. To me, the crime is the action against person or property, not the thought behind it. rec

Do have a happy birthday. Drink a lot of wine or beer or Coke or whatever, and eat a lot of cake. rec

I think they should have ended it, of course, with the photos of the young men hanged for being gay. Saturday Night Dead. rec

Over at awesomedude.com forums, there is a section called Best of Nifty Forums. Pinned at the top are top-story recommendations from a number of authors an editors, some of which have been cited here. Take a look. rec

I hate to always plug a single story, but the best FanFic / Slash story ever is Alone/Together. It is not together anywhere, and it's really two stories in a single novel--a love story and a coming-of-age-and-maturity story. Beautifully written. Here's where to find the story: Alone Together

I would add Sugar to this list--with Andre Noble (now deceased) and Brendan Fehr. It's a darker movie, much like Mysterious Skin, but very good.

Generally, it should start up again after you close and reopen it. You may have to press on the start button again. To change the hibernation options, just go the the power-management option section (if it's a Windows machine, and decide when or if you want to have it go into hibernation at all.) rec

Sharon, I've been using an HP laptop with an AMD 64 processor and 1GB of memory for the past two years--with great satisfaction. I notice from a Fry's ad that there are two better and cheaper (alas) HP laptops for $999. The one that I think is marginally better has an AMD64X2 processor, 2GB of memory, a 160 GB hard drive, built in wireless, a DVD read/write drive, a 15.4" screen and Windows Vista Home Premium. The other has the same price and has a slightly better Intel Centrino Duo Core processor, has 1GB less of memory, but it has Windows Vista Business, which may be a bit overkill on the operating system. Both these machines would be excellent purchases, and with the Student Version of Office 2007, would last a long time. I would go with the first because of the extra memory. The processor speeds are ample for just about anything. I don't know if there's a Fry's in your area, but the prices and models would be indicative of other places (where you might bargain), or you could order through frys.com. rec

I'd strongly recommend some very positive stories about gay youth from Driver Nine at http://www.storiesbydriver.net/ In particular, Falling Off a Log and Summer Storm are good introductions to his series of stories. It's too bad that Everyday Love is no longer officially available, because it is a wonderful coming-of-age and gay-acceptance story. After those, I would recommend Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and Plan D. rec

I see that the fanfiction site is registered to www.tucows.com, which is a much larger site that provides Windows shareware and may be legitimate. I'd suggest that people notify Tucows about the plagiarism; if they don't know about it, they may be willing to yank the fanfiction site. If they do, they should have a serious problem on their hands. rec

It depends. The extra battery life is a real boon, but I don't go on long plane trips, and most of the time I have AC power nearby, so I rarely use my battery that much. I think you can upgrade later to the more-cell battery, if the cost is too much now. And having two batteries is nice. rec

I had serious problems with my Toshiba Satellite laptop, so, at the moment, I won't buy another Toshiba machine, even though I liked the computer for the first year or so that I had it. What happened is that the battery would be used up even when the machine was plugged into AC power until the computer turned itself off for lack of battery capability. Only then would it accept a recharge. The problem apparently existed with other users, because there were posts on some of the computer advice sites asking for fixes to the same problem. Toshiba was unhelpful; their site had no information on a problem that existed with a least a number of users. So I junked the Toshiba and bought a Compaq (HP) Turion 64 bit laptop a year ago and have been extremely happy with it. I had one mechanical problem that required a return to the factory. HP had my computer picked up by UPS on Monday afternoon, and it was back in my hands on Wednesday morning, all repaired--and with a new BIOS installed--at no charge. They won my business for a good long time with that kind of service. rec

Compaq/HP has one hell of a buy at Best Buy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1153997317199 It has the Turion X 2 chip, a gig of memory, an 80 gig hard drive, etc. All for $799 on their Wednesday sale, and it may be that HP will pay the shipping. Anyway, that's a good price for what you can get. rec

and now we are 5--at least i am

love them

Happy B'Day

Do get built-in wi-fi capabilty. Do not get less than 512 MB of memory--better 1 gig. Get the higher end processor chips--Athlon not turion, and various Intel chips not Celeron Expect to pay $800 or more.

Lots and lots of water.