This is an archive and may contain old or out-of-date content. Check the date; things may have changed since the time of the original posting. Conversation is allowed on older posts, but be aware that they will not come to my attention as easily.
A quick converstation this morning between me and a guy I work with. Note: I was supposed to be in at six and I did indeed make it there at six.
Guy: This day is just dragging on. Probably ’cause I’ve been here since four.
Me: Four?? What were you doing here an hour early?
Guy: I forgot about the time change. I thought it was tonight.
Me: TIME CHANGE?! *frantically looking for a clock* Wait, what time is it really?!
Apparently, technology is awesome, and my phone automatically adjusted itself at two a.m. like it’s supposed to. My alarm went off at the new time, I had had an extra hour of sleep without knowing it, and when I glanced at my wall clock while getting dressed… I guess I only glanced at the minute hand!
This is all probably a good thing because I always stress about time change. Wait, that was today, right? Did I look at the clock I actually changed? CRAP, what if I’m the only idiot in the world who changed their clock and it’s really NEXT WEEK??
Yesterday I gained a new member of the family. Yes, a dear member of the family will be passing on, and I now have his shiny new replacement. In non-geek speak… I got a new computer.
In all fairness, the old laptop is now going to Tegan (my younger sister). and it was a loyal help for the past… oh at least five years. But the hard drive was small by modern standards, the display was painfully cramped when trying to do anything useful (Photoshop, anyone?), the CD drive was about shot… and the dumb thing would overheat unless I had it on a desk, propped up, with a fan blowing directly underneath. No wireless, nothing.
So now I have this shiny new laptop. Three times as much memory, twice as much screenular real estate, huge hard drive, and I’m over the moon. There’s only one setback… Windows Vista.
I’m a complete Mac fangirl and an XP loyalist, so I was expecting to loathe Vista right from the get-go. But you know what? It’s not so bad.
I mean, the “are you SURE you want to run this program??” gets kinda old fast. The sidebar is annoying and the folder structure takes some getting used to. I only opened IE7 long enough to get Firefox fast, but the five minutes I spent in there weren’t as bad as I thought it should have been. Things install quickly. Drivers are found automatically. You can change the background color in Solitaire. Everything is bright, friendly, and looks very polished and well-designed.
So yes, you heard it here, from a girl who swore she’d never switch from XP unless it was straight to OSX… Vista is not as bad as they say.
This year for Father’s day, we got my dad an iPod shuffle… you know, just one of those little, fifty dollar, 1 Gig clip-on things. And of course, it being my dad, we also provided him with lights and tools and other “daddy” toys. Usually, he’s excited by the tools and the gadgets. This year he was only momentarily distracted (“oh! laser!”) and put almost all of his focus on his brand new iPod.
We haven’t been able to pull it away from him yet.
He’s not overly tech-savvy, but you had better believe that within five minutes he had iTunes loaded on to his computer, busy importing all of his music files, with the first twenty or so already loaded onto his iPod.
Today he came home and hopped straight onto his computer. “Mel! Come here!”
I went in to his room to see him triumphantly holding up a green card. “What is it?” I asked.
“25 iTunes dollars,” he replied. “Some guy gave it to me when he saw I had an iPod. What can I buy with it?”
“Music,” I responded. “99 cents a song.”
I have never seen my dad so happy. Who says iPods are just for young people and Apple geeks?
I’m not a big gamer. I don’t play World of Warcraft or Halo. I don’t have a Wii or an Xbox. I don’t speak 1337 and I don’t usually “pwn” people (much…). I’m actually much more easily satisfied. I get games for my iPod and entertain myself for hours.
I just got this game that came out, Phase, and I’m in love with it. Seriously, I downloaded it last night and I’ve probably played about four hours worth of this silly game. It’s like DDR or Guitar Hero (both of which I’ve never played, mind you) in that it takes your music and turns it into a game. You basically have to keep on beat and “catch” the notes by hitting one of three buttons. Simple… yet really, really addictive. Just wanted to throw that out there for anybody else with a video-capable iPod. You must get this game!
My other newest love (okay, besides Robin Hood, but I won’t drool all over you guys today), is this site called Symbaloo. It’s kind of like Google’s personalized home page, but definitely more graphical. You kind of have to see it to understand it. It’s like playing with blocks, seriously… and it’s just replaced Bloglines.com as my new home page. You should go check it out.
Okay, that’s my shameless advertising for today!
So yesterday, I was so proud of myself for clearing up half of my hard drive, right? Huh. Not anymore. Well, kind of.
One of the problems I found was my iTunes music. When I had transferred all of my music to my external drive, I didn’t delete my old music files from my first drive just yet. You know, just in case; I had bought some stuff from the iTunes store and I didn’t want anything to… not work. Except I never went back and deleted my old files.
iTunes stores its library information in a little file in your music folder… and apparently, my iTunes was still writing to the old library file.
Which, yesterday, I deleted. Imagine my surprise when I went to put two new songs onto my iPod and my iTunes was COMPLETELY EMPTY. Oh no!
I guess it’s okay. Then I can get my library organized anyway. Right? Ugh!