This is my favorite time of year. Halloween and Fall are finally upon us. There’s a crispness in the air, the darkening of leaves and the shortening of the day. I’ve always been fascinated with fall and Halloween. It’s without a doubt my favorite holiday. So I’m a little morose. I love horror films and the band Type O Negative and I anxiously wait 356 days of the year for the AMC Fearfest. I can’t help myself.

Maybe that’s what got me scouring the depths of the web this year for something unique and different to do this Autumn. What I found was an incredible artist named Len Peralta from Cleveland. He runs a few sites but without doubt his bread and butter is Monster by Mail. What he does is hand draw a 4×6 original piece of art based off the name you give him. Of course for the sake of research I sent him The HiTechRedneck. We’ll get back to that though.

Len basically offers four packages right now; It’s $25 just for the art, $35 for the art and a time-lapsed YouTube video of him creating it, and so on. I’ll let you check out all the specifics for yourself. I opened my email this afternoon to find a nice message saying my monster was complete and on the way. Plus it had a link to my video. It turned out fantastic. Take a look and see what ya think – but I couldn’t be any happier with it.

If you love Halloween as much as I do you owe it to yourself to get one of these made. Maybe you’re looking for a unique one-of-a-kind gift or perhaps you just want some incredible art; no matter the case check out Len’s work. You can follow him on Twitter, subscribe to his Youtube channel or check out his blog.

I hope you’re all having as special, creepy and scarily fun Fall as I am. Carve the pumpkins, hand out the treats and always remember – using garlic against a vampire is just a myth… I think.

Sweet skins for your electronic devices!

I found a really cool site the other day I want to tell everyone about  – GelaSkins. They sell artist-designed removable skins for laptops, cellphones (iPhones and RAZR’s), iPods, Sony PSP’s, Nintendo DS’s and more. While these things can get a little pricey, they quality and look are awesome. Again, these are artist designed. You want ‘Starry, Starry Night’ to cover your laptop? Done.

They have a ton of modern art from up and coming artists in several mediums – modern, digital, even tattoo artist. They also have some of the classics for you to choose from – Monet, M.C. Escher, Munch and Van Gogh. This is a really sweet way to spruce up an otherwise visually boring device. I’m trying to decide on what to get for my new laptop I just ordered.

Since I mentioned my new laptop (which I got from TigerDirect), let me give everyone who’s not an uber-geek like me a tip. Go to the two big Internet dealers for computer parts, Tiger Direct and NewEgg, and take a look around. These are great technology companies that buy and sell in bulk so you can get GREAT prices. Plus, in most states there’s no tax. (I feel obligated to point out that when filling out your state taxes they DO ask you to list all Internet purchases so you can be taxed on them at that point. Just covering my bases here.)

My new laptop - I am SO stoked!

I got my laptop, a Gateway M-1625 for less than $500. It runs Windows Vista Home Premium  with an AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 2.0GHz processor, 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory, and a 250GB 5400RPM SATA hard drive. For the geeks out there it also boasts an 8X multi-format dual layer DVDRW with DVD-RAM and Labelflash™ drive, WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT display, 802.11g wireless LAN, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, 5-in-1 memory card reader, three USB 2.0 ports, and a HDMI connector.

Why so cheap? It’s a refurbished computer. That means that it is still under warranty and the internal workings of the CPU are fine. Someone simply mailed it back due to a cosmetic flaw. That knocked $250 off of the retail price. There are bargains out there. Tiger Direct sells Gateway’s refurbs, Dell sells there own at the Dell Outlet, and Compaq and HP are on NewEgg and Tiger Direct. Take a look around the sites, there are a ton of good deals to be had. We all need them in a timed where our dollar gets less and less.

So give me a shout and let me know if you find any great deals or if you can help me decide which GelaSkin to get!