Caught In The Whirlwind
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Toys Galore
Aug 29th 2009
Yesterday was a day where I got many new toys to play with. My copy of the OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade arrived exactly as hoped for and, like I mentioned in my last posting, I swung by the college bookstore to grab myself a copy of Adobe Creative Suite CS4 (Design Premium).
I started doing the upgrade stuff after I got home from work which meant I spent all afternoon installing and then resetting up OS X how I want it. I’m really enjoying Snow Leopard. I’ve only encountered one software incompatibility so far (Curse you logitech!!!) and the rest of my stuff has worked flawlessly. I’m enjoying all the little enhancements over Leopard, like the application specific Expose support if you hold down your mouse on the dock icon. The entire OS is much snappier now and the install, as promised, took up much less room so my hard drive actually has free space now.
CS4 was neat. I’ve never actually owned a copy of Photoshop despite using it for things over the years. I think a lot of folks are in the same boat, honestly… But now it feels weird to have an actual, legit copy of that and all the other adobe apps. I have more design type software than I ever thought I’d have installed on here. I haven’t had a chance to use much of it but I’ve used it enough to know I really like the new interface in CS4. I also like the little photoshop improvements, like if you zoom in far enough it puts up a faint grid of pixels so you know where all the boundaries are. Neat stuff.
The only thing bad about yesterday was I wish I was able to go with my friends to the State Fair 
Week Of Technology Fail
Aug 26th 2009
Well, I’m now detecting a theme for this week…
I went to charge my cell phone last night and I noticed that the screen was all screwed up. I reset it and it went back to a usable state…but now there’s about a quarter inch greyish (some other random colors thrown in) bar of ugly display corruption on the left and bottom sides of the display.
It’s still usable, but it’s annoying. Hopefully it’s something I can deal with via a waranty claim…I might check that possibility out on friday.
I wonder what device is going to crap out next?
I Hate Computers Sometimes
Aug 25th 2009
I’ve been plagued with technical issues today…
Well, it all started last night when I realized that…ok, hang on a sec, I need to explain my computing setup here for this to make sense. My main machine is my MacBook Pro, 3 years old. It’s got a 80GB hard drive in it. My music collection is about 25GB large, and my tv shows and podcasts expand that outward to 60GB. Which leaves no room for…well…anything else. So when I switched to using my MBP as my main machine, I got myself an external drive to house all of my media files and such. It’s worked pretty well, up until last night.
Last night I went to sync my iPod and I noticed that as soon as I plugged the drive into the computer, OS X froze. It seemed to do that whenever I plugged the external drive in. I thought something was screwed up in OS X and I’d have to reinstall (and then re-install again on friday when snow leopard arrived). But as it turns out the filesystem on the drive got corrupted somehow.
I managed to get OS X to mount the drive in read only mode so I could get stuff off of it. Which lead me to another problem…where am I going to put this stuff if it won’t fit on my hard drive? I suddenly remembered I have an 80GB iPod hanging around…and that can be used as an external drive too. So right now I’m copying all my music, video and large downloaded files over to my old iPod. It’s painfully slow, but it’s better than nothing.
Next up I’ll reformat the drive and put everything back. And now I’ll heed the warnings about ejecting a drive before unplugging it…
It’s been a rough day all around really. I realized today that I probably won’t be able to go to the state fair like I wanted to. Stupid broken foot. It’s not healing as fast as I would like and it looks like I’ll have to bow out of the trip and let my friends go on their own. Too much walking and I didn’t want to stress it that much unless things got back to normal. My mom said she’d go with me next week (she enjoys the fair a lot) if my foot allows so hopefully that works out. I really wanted to go this year.
[Plinky] Europe, Here I Come!
Aug 24th 2009
What continent would you most like to visit?
First of all…I’d like to point out that in the list of continents that plinky presented for this question, Europe wasn’t there. Hrm.
Anyway, I’d love to go to europe someday. Make a trip through England, Scotland and Ireland. Specifically those countries since I don’t want there to be too much of a language barrier. I’d love to go and see some actual history. Old castles and cities and churches. That sort of thing. I might pop over to france quickly and grab some of their yummy desert foods…
Here in north america we really don’t have *OLD* stuff. I want to go see where history was made.
Resting
Aug 21st 2009
The last couple days haven’t been terribly eventful. I’ve basically been taking it easy so my foot can work on getting healed up, hopefully in time to do some walking around the state fair on Friday. It’s going to be cutting it close, but…we’ll see. It’s about the same as it has been. Not painful unless I’m walking on it. I’m also able to move my toes much more than when I had initially injured it, so that’s some progress. Not related to the fracture, I would imagine…probably some of the other damage that’s been healing up.
I also have an update on Fish. After I changed his water he seems to be happier. He’s spending more time swimming around and being happy and less sulking at the bottom. I’m trying to keep an eye on him though, just in case he’s really sick.
Lets see here…what else is going on… My roommates bought season 3 of Dexter, the Showtime series about everybody’s favorite serial killer. If you haven’t had a chance to see this show I would highly recommend giving it a try. Seasons 1 and 2 are availible on Netflix Instant Watch if you have that option.
And finally, it’s less than a week until I start school again. It still doesn’t feel like it’s something I’m really going to be doing. It feels like it’s much further away than next week.
[Plinky] Memories And Music
Aug 19th 2009
What three songs remind you of a specific time in your life?
Amazon is being fruity right now, so I’ll put the pictures in later. But here’s the answer
The New Math by OSI
This OSI album will forever remind me of Scuba Diving. That’s a little odd considering the fact that the album doesn’t have the slightest thing to do with scuba diving. But I was taking a scuba course at the local college when it came out and I remember sitting in my car listening to it, waiting for class time.
This song reminds me of a fish purchasing trip with my friend Wassy. I had just gotten Fear of a Blank Planet (the album this song is on) and was playing it in the car while we were driving around. Later she said “That music you were listening to sounded really cool. What was that?”
That sent her on a musical journey into Progressive Rock and Metal and all of my favorite bands, which was cool because finally I had somebody to talk to about this stuff and go to concerts with.
Fatal Tragedy by Dream Theater
Speaking of musical journeys…this song was my introduction to Dream Theater and Progressive Metal. I heard it as a random pick on the old internet radio station Echo. Echo was a station that learned your musical preferences and played songs you might like along those lines…one of the first ones that did that. It also randomly played a song that was outside your likes and dislikes occasionally, to potentially broaden your horizons.
Well, the random pick was Dream Theater and I really enjoyed it a lot. It took a year or two for me to really check it out further. But once I did, I got Scenes From a Memory and I was hooked. My journey into Prog Rock began.
:(
Aug 19th 2009
Monk, the OCD Hamster died last night.
It was a really quick turn around. He was scurrying around his cage demanding tribute and about an hour later he was barely breathing. The theory is that he nibbled a bit of plastic off of his hamster wheel and swallowed it. Not much that could have been done considering how fast he deteriorated.
I’m going to miss his constant demands for tasty treats whenever it was meal time. He had a really short life, but he was the center of a lot of love and attention in the time he had, and that’s what really counts. He had a good little life, as short as it was.
[Plinky] Nicest Place
Aug 18th 2009
What’s the nicest place you’ve stayed?
I’ve stayed at the Courthouse Hilton Garden Inn, Arlington VA two times, on both of my most recent trips to Washington DC. It’s nothing terribly fancy, but it’s very nice. Good rooms, good service, great location. It’s easy to get to, but within easy walking distance of a metro station giving access to pretty much everything worth going to in DC.
Furthermore, as we just discovered on the last trip, if you walk north about 2 blocks you find all sorts of nice stores and restaurants. And if you don’t feel like walking, the hotel’s restaurant offering is pretty darn good too. And very nicely priced.
I’ve pretty much decided that if I’m going to Washington, DC…this is the hotel I’ll be staying at.
Foot Update
Aug 18th 2009
Well, I picked the one day to get injured where my doctors office didn’t have a working x-ray machine, so I had to go over to Urgent Care. After much waiting around it was determined that I might have a small fracture in my foot. The X-Ray wasn’t exactly clear, but there was a little “anomaly” as they called it that could be a fracture, so they’re treating it as such.
I got one of those special shoe type things that limits my foot motion when I walk. I was also outfit with crutches which I’m not sure how much use they’ll get. I’m so totally not coordinated enough to use these things. But I figure I can at least use one of them to help me keep some of my weight off of it when I’m walking.
I had planned on going to the State Fair at the end of next week, but this throws those plans into jeopardy… Hopefully I’ll be feeling better by then but I don’t want to push it.
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