Last week sometime, Prairie surprised me by mentioning what she’d been thinking about for my birthday present this year. Really surprised me, too — it was far and beyond anything I’d expected her to do.

When we went online and checked prices, we found that there was a 20% off sale going on right then…and that it would be over in just a couple days. Since waiting and paying more money didn’t make sense, Prairie went ahead and ordered the present for me.

It came in today. Old, dying 17 inch CRT

This is my desk, with the setup I’ve been working with for the past few years. I’d been grumbling off and on about the fact that the old 17” CRT I was using was on its last legs: still useable, but definitely not performing as well as it should be. It was too dark, calibration and tweaking couldn’t push it up to where it was supposed to be, and I could only set the resolution so high (a decidedly non-standard 1152x870), as any higher and text became unreadable.

This is my desk with the new birthday present:

20 inch Dell 2005FPW LCD

A brand-new, bright and shiny Dell 2005FPW 20” 16:10 widescreen LCD display! So, so, so much nicer! Colors that don’t make dark areas look like a muddy mess! A huge amount of workspace! And it even pivots, though I don’t think that’s something I’ll be doing terribly often.

Best. Girl. Ever.

(Of course, she was the Best. Girl. Ever. long before she got me this as a present…this is just one more reason.)

iTunes “Are You Receiving” by Killing Joke from the album Wilful Days (1979, 4:59).

[See also: Prairie’s birthday | Happy Birthday Lon! | Just a quickie | Almost perfect | Happy Birthday Royce! ]

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