pandora internet radio

there are definite benefits to living in america. access to stuff on the internet is one of the major ones. before pandora radio got blocked in ireland (around 2005, i think), i used listen to it a lot. it was one of the things i was looking forward to about getting here. and it hasn't disappointed.
pandora is very cool because it tags each song with things like 'electric rock instrumentation,' 'subtle use of paired vocal harmony,' 'repetitive melodic phrasing,' 'heavy syncopation,' and 'minor key tonality.' i have no idea what some of these mean (syncopation?) but it's cool, because it means that when i like a song it makes a note of that on my profile and uses the collected information from the songs i like to pick songs it thinks i will like in the future. it takes a little while to build up a proper profile of what you like, but once it does it is amazing.
it is choosing songs i have on my itunes, but the songs it chooses are my favorites from whatever album. for example, it just played a song by team sleep. the song was 'ever,' and that is my favourite team sleep song. and that wasn't a once off thing. it's done it with a perfect circle, muse, ian archer. and the songs i haven't heard before i generally like. it's great. and the awful thing is that you can't get it in ireland.

i bought a laptop today. it was a bit of hassle - getting the money through from ireland was a bit of a pain. first i had to reactivate my internet banking, then get all the details to transfer the money. transferring the money took 3 days, and today i finally got to order it. it's a dell xps 15 laptop. the 15 stands for 15", which should be a good size. it's an i5 processor, nvidia GT 420M 1GB gpu, 4gb ram, 500gb hd, backlit keyboard (which i'm a little excited about). it should be here by the 16th. yes, that is a terribly long wait, but at least i'll have it for christmas. and because it's coming up to christmas and dell want to encourage people to buy early or something, there was $50 off. so dell paid for the sales tax, excellent.
of course, once i get it i will be wiping the drive and reinstalling windows with just windows. i can't stand all the extra junk they put on new computers. i don't need an antivirus chosen for me, or any software to help me get online, or any other random program dell has decided i need. really, the xps systems are for advanced users, dell should know better.