First, I’m sorry about your grandfather Chris. Hope the trip goes okay.

I am going to The Education Arcade which is holding a conference May 9-11 down in LA, happening right before E3. I *might* be able to fenagle a pass to E3 out of it… dunno.

Anyway, I have a ton of work to do and most of it has to be done on a computer (designing modules for Neverwinter Nights), so I just ordered a laptop yesterday. It’s the Acer Travelmate 8003LMi. My first laptop… and, unfortunately, my requirements are such that I needed a relatively high end one, being a gamer and all and needing the laptop to demo games and test game playing and making games and all… So it was quite pricey.

I told the company I ordered it from (buy.com) to send it overnight, thinking I’d get it today, and then I went to school for the day. Later I got an email from them saying that they wanted me to fax them a copy of my driver’s license and credit card. It sounded fishy so I did some snooping on the fax number they provided and I emailed customer support asking if this was standard procedure… Meanwhile, I could see on the order tracking page that its status was listed as “processing.” Their (un)helpful guide showed “processing” to mean they are verifying my credentials.

I figured since it was still in “processing” after hours since my order, they were likely waiting for the fax. Also, the number seemed legit (same area code as their corporate headquarters) and I didn’t want to wait for their email, so I went ahead and faxed them the stuff from Kinko’s last night around 10pm. This morning, its status is now “sent to warehouse” meaning it finished the “processing” and is waiting to be completed by the warehouse workers.

Whew. It still seems strange to me that they would need a photocopy of that stuff, but I dunno… I’ve never spent that much in one go on the web before… about $2400.

Get this, though… I am slightly thinking that after the conference I’ll just return it… 🙂

But maybe I’ll like it so much to keep it…