Wednesday Weirdness + Dudes~ I'm Gettin' a Dell! + Why the Toaster Poll?

Five things you always have in your refrigerator:
1.) Butter
2.) Soy milk (vanilla)
3.) Parmesan cheese
4.) Cow milk
5.) Heinz Ketchup


Five actresses/actors that you think are over-rated:
1.) Tom Cruise
2.) John Travolta
3.) Keira Knightley
4.) Ashton Kutcher
5.) Mike Myers


Five things around the house that you hate doing:
1.) Picking up
2.) Dusting
3.) Dishes
4.) Laundry
5.) Paying bills


Five of your favorite movies:
1.) The Princess Bride
2.) In Bruges
3.) Double Indemnity
4.) A Christmas Story
5.) Big Night


Five businesses/stores (IE Circuit City, Kohls, Hollister, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, etc) you would love to win a $2,000 gift card to:
1.) Dell
2.) Lowe's
3.) Best Buy
4.) Pottery Barn
5.) Restoration Hardware

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Dudes, I'm gettin' a Dell!

Okay, so I already had a Dell, but I'm getting another one! Almost same processor I have currently (P4, 2.4Ghz currently, new one is P4 2.8Ghz) but more RAM (3G!), bigger HD (and it's SATA vs my current ATA), DVD-RW, and, most importantly, more physical space to upgrade. My current 'puter is a slimline Optiplex with no extra drive bays or anything and only a CD-RW. Also it keeps frying hard drives - I suspect the small space is part of the problem - overheating. Apparently it's been a problem with these slimline cases that the hard drives fry pretty easy. I'm going to run Windows XP Pro on the new puppy, but that was a bit of a battle. They want to ship everything with Vista these days and I do not want Vista. It's a memory hog with no appreciable improvement over XP. No thank you. Microsoft has stopped producing XP in order to force people over to Vista, but you just know the manufacturers still have a nice inventory of XP. It's a matter of having a hissy fit to get it.

I do feel a little bit like I'm abandoning my open-source principles, but I will use Open Office on the new machine so that makes me feel a little better. I will still run Edubuntu on the old machine for the kids to use it.
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Why the Toaster Poll?

Here's the deal: Everytime we stay with my in-laws, I am amazed at the anal-retentive cleaning routines. I'm jealous of their cleanliness and efficiency, but don't think even with serious "re-training" I could ever even approach that level of spotlessness.

Anyway, one of their practices is to empty the toaster crumb tray (that little door in the bottom of the toaster) after each time the toaster is used. They really clean it out and keep the toaster looking brand-freaking-new at all times. I grew up in a less fastidious household and it just never occurred to me to clean the toaster after every use.

My siblings-in-law also clean the toaster after every use and are amazed and shocked that I don't and grew up in a household where this did not take place. This made me curious as to how often other people clean the crumbs from the toaster. They almost had me convinced that the majority of people do empty the crumb tray after every use and that my family were incredibly unhygienic lazy pigs. Lazy definitely applies to me, but I really strive to avoid unhygienic.