Cliffhanger

Remember that fellowship I applied for? Yeah, well, found out today that I didn't get it. Gotta love getting an electronic ding letter - they sent me an e-mail and made me open a fucking attachment to be rejected. There's probably a hard copy headed my way to double the pleasure, I'm sure. But immediately after I got the rejection e-mail, I got an e-mail from Boss saying only, "I am sorry about this, but have some good news for you, that may make up for it, a little. I look forward to talking with you tomorrow." So naturally, instead of actually getting any work done for the rest of the day, I was brainstorming and trying to figure out what this news could be. I've come up with the following options:

Option #1: He finally got a grant and will be able to use it to increase my salary. Until my ride home, this was the only kind of "good news" I could think of that he could have for me. The only thing is, I don't think any of the grants he applied for recently were due to be scored around now, with the possible exception of the one I helped him with back in March. I seriously doubt we got that one because a) I helped him write it, b) it was for the NIH and they don't seem to like giving money to foreign institutions, regardless of how much they say otherwise, and c) it was a re-vamped grant that had already been rejected once. Plus, he said "a little." If I were getting a raise, even if it were nowhere near as big as the fellowship would have been, that would make up for the ding letter by more than "a little." Far more likely is...

Option #2: He's going to buy me a new computer. I really kind of need one - Baxter's a good little laptop and a trooper, but he can't really handle some of the software I need to use on a fairly regular basis unless I at least give him some more RAM, and he has a few issues sometimes with his battery - it's nearly worthless in terms of working without an AC adapter, and sometimes it loses contact with the adapter and he needs to be rebooted before he's drawing power again. Nothing I can't deal with, and let's face it, he's an old Compaq - he's done a really good job considering how crappy those can be. But Boss did make a comment last week about "we need to see what we can do about getting you a new computer," and BNL said something another day about how I should ask the boss to buy me one. And frankly, if Boss ever wants to send me to a conference or to give a talk for him, it really doesn't speak highly of him if his postdoc rolls up with her little Pentium III Compaq because she can't afford a better one. So I'm thinking this is likely my good news. It really would be very nice, because while I wouldn't get to keep it once I leave the group, it would literally be a big weight off of my shoulders to not have to haul my computer back and forth to work every single day. And I haven't had a brand-new computer since my second year of college, so it would be a nice change of pace. So yeah, I can get excited about that. But then there's always...

Option #3: Something I haven't thought of yet. At any rate, the last few days have been big ones for bad news, so I'll be happy to hear anything that qualifies as "good" news. I'll let you all know the verdict at the end of the day tomorrow after my weekly meeting with Boss. Until then, feel free to vote in the comments for whichever option you think will ultimately win (write-in votes for #3 are encouraged). You people never comment anymore - I'm starting to worry that nobody reads me at all these days.

UPDATE: Okay, so I now know what the good news is. But I'm not spilling yet because apparently the only person who cares is Mup. This is what happens when my friends get social lives and stuff. (huff)

UPDATE #2: Answer is in the comments.