Busy Weekend – Coolness To Come
Of course, that could describe almost any week or weekend for me.
So, Saturday, I got up early to run out and get a few parts to upgrade my laptop, braving the near cataclysmic, torrential downpour. Naturally, I was far from the only geek hard core enough to weather the storm to spend some quality time at MicroCenter. Though I have to admit, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I thought it would be, even with the flooding. I know that Fry’s Home Electronics is more popular with some geeks, but I think MicroCenter’s prices are competitive and I think I get better, less aggressive, more knowledgeable, service there. Though, in this case, I knew just what I wanted. My main purpose was to get a bigger internal drive for my laptop, because all the pictures that I take suck up drive space like a drunk soaking up free booze and I was starting to feel the pinch. But, I also wanted to get a wireless, “laptop” mouse that I can throw in my bag when I hit the road, since my laptop is quickly becoming my creative workstation. I also grabbed a bunch of magazines that I usually don’t find in my usual haunts. Mainly Photoshop stuff, but some others that I wouldn’t normally get like Practical Web Design and Giant Robot. The particular issue of Practical Web Design has an article about time-sensitive, dynamic stylesheets that seemed pretty cool.
In any case, after that, I ran home to start cloning my laptop drive… In fact, I’ll have a better, detailed post on that later this week. Once I got the cloning process started, I ran over to some friends’ house with the intention of all of us going to the Friends of the Houston Library book sale. However, after having my car almost get caught in water far deeper than it seemed, which was made worse by a jackass in a pickup cutting me off and throwing up a wave of water almost over the hood of my car, we thought better of making the attempt. So, instead, I did a little work on her laptop, getting it on their wireless network and running some antispyware on it. (Though, it sounds like it already could use another cleaning, so I’ll probably be back.)
After that it was church and dinner.
Sunday, I got up early to get in a good workout. I’ve been getting into a bad pattern of exercising late, staying up late and dragging all day long without enough sleep. After watching another friend at dinner who’s burning her candle at both ends, I made up my mind to not let that happen this week. So, I got my lazy bones out of bed and got breakfast and coffee and got my behind in gear for a good, longer, workout before 10:00AM.
After that I was editing some photos for a project a friend of mine in New York is putting together. Naturally, I hooked up my new wireless mouse to get better control of my editing tools. I got a Logitech “laptop” mouse and it works great. It’s a little smaller than a regular mouse, but not uncomfortably so. What’s cool about it, though, is that it has a little USB dongle that links the mouse to the computer. When it’s not in use, it fits on the bottom of the mouse and, when you slide it on and off, it automatically turns the mouse on and off to save battery life. That may seem like a little detail, but it’s a great feature that helps not waste batteries when you’re on the road. That can be a big deal sometimes. In any case, that probably took longer than it should but my graphic editing skills are weak, weak, weak. So, the practice no doubt did me good. Also, it was flattering to have her invite me to submit some of my photos for her project.
I also managed to get in a little reading and some photography, too. Not much, but, still, every bit counts! Obviously, when I get through with the book I’m reading, I’ll review it. And, sadly, I still didn’t get any work done on the WordPress themes I want to build or the creative website either. As busy as I get, I’m not sure how I’ll manage time to work on that as regularly as I’d like. I am trying to leverage Google Alerts to get some of that work done, but, there’s still a component of it that requires quite a bit of work from me, so… Well, I’ll get there somehow. (And, yes, I count the new site as part of the “coolness to come”, along with the step-by-step post on upgrading a laptop hard drive.)
