Warning: Doing the Impossible Takes Time

I've had nothing but trouble with this project.

• First of all, my wife is upset over the idea of no land line phone. She will go with the cellphone only idea, but isn't too happy. Thus, we are not going with the cellphone only idea.
  
  There were several options I discussed with my son. We could get a cellphone base station like the dock-n-talk. When you dock your cellphone onto this device, calls are routed to landline phones connected to this device. We have a cordless phone with three extensions, so plugging that into this device would allow us to have three regular house phones. Someone would call my wife's cellphone, and we could answer the cordless phone. We can also dial out of the cordless phones, and the calls would go through the cellphone.
  
  Since my wife has a BlueTooth phone, she wouldn't have to plug her phone into this device. It would automatically connect to her cellphone whenever she's home. Disadvantage is that we're talking about a $200 device. Plus, I'd have to buy a new cordless phone set. We have one cordless phone with three extentions, but we have six phones in the house.
  
  We decided to go with the T-Mobile@Home service. I previously talked about the fact that we can't have more than five lines on our Family Plan, and this would count as one of the lines. We talked about making my oldest son pay for his, but that was silly. It would simply push the cost elsewhere.
  
  Instead, we are going to move my wife's cellphone to my parent's T-Mobile Family Plan. They currently only have three people on their plan, so they have room. Plus, my wife's cellphone usage is minimal, so my parents won't need more minutes. And, my wife doesn't use text messaging, so they don't have to add a text messaging plan to their service.
  
  I've talked to T-Mobile and my parents about this, and they are both okay with this.
  

• The $300 computer is now costing me over $500. We bought a $299 Ispiron 530s from Dell which started out at $299. It has a 2Ghz processor and a 320Gb hard drive, and 3Gb of memory, so it really does match our requirements. However, by the time I added the TV tuner card, the upgraded ATI video card, tax, and shipping, it is now over $500.
  
  Even worse, Dell won't let us put in the TV Tuner card unless we first upgrade to Vista Home Premium. Considering we will be wiping the OS off of this computer, and then installing Mythbuntu, it seemed kind of silly. I explained what I wanted, but Dell is unable to override the order, so the TV tuner card is coming out. Drats.
  
  Doesn't matter. There's a big computer expo in Secaucus this weekend, so I'll stop by there and pick up a TV Tuner card.