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| Friday, November 21, 2008 |
| Rachel's computer |
Rachel got her Christmas present a few days before Thanksgiving. A year ago, she got a Prius and this year I managed to deliver in a similarly spectacular manner (albeit less expensive by two orders of magnitude): a very tiny ASUS eeePC 900HA mini-laptop.
Rachel had inherited my old computer (Baby Beast) when I bought my current, incredible computer (Black Beauty). Unfortunately, it kept losing track of its boot drive, and only occasionally worked. The whole point of her going part time was to get her to focus on researching the notion of building her own business (in crafts or books) and writing her stories. She couldn’t do either without a computer, and I couldn’t just lend her mine since I work on mine.
Well that and I don’t like other people being on my computer. I won’t justify it; it’s neurotic.
I have to admit that I got the idea from PC World. Dad had gotten me a subscription and it had an article on laptops that were larger than the truly tiny palm-tops, but smaller than the briefcase-sized standard laptops. The ones they reviewed were all similarly-specified, but one of them was a mere $350. It also was as powerful as Baby Beast. That pretty much decided it for me.
I had a great deal of fun teasing Rachel that I had bought her a relatively expensive present – and that she would be getting it soon.
The day it was scheduled to arrive (and did), Rachel worked a mid shift at work, and I made sure to tell her it would be delivered in her absence. I’m rather glad this happened, though, because it gave me a bit of time to install all the various bits of software she needed.
This wasn’t quite as straightforward as with other laptops – this one doesn’t have a CD drive. I came up with a good solution fairly quickly, though: I used Nero to create a CD image, copied that onto a thumb drive, and used Daemon Tools to emulate a CD. Done deal.
It’s nice having a very slim (literally and figuratively) computer around. It has MS Word and Outlook, Trillian, Winamp, Firefox, Avast!, DisplayFusion, KeePass, and the printer, Bluetooth, and scanner drivers.
It boots within a few seconds and doesn’t really need resetting.
I even managed to set up my phone as a modem for it, which means it can surf the Internet anywhere I have a data connection for my phone (which is basically anywhere within 10 miles of any metropolitan area).
Glee!Labels: Christmas, computers, madness, money, Rachel |
posted by Steve @ 10:33 PM  |
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| Monday, October 22, 2007 |
| Methods for Madness #1 |
Last night, I blogged about how I couldn't sleep. Instead, I worked from about 10pm to about 4am on graphic design. I got a lot done, actually, and I have no regrets.
But at around 4am, I decided I was tired enough to go to sleep. I had also noticed that there was a precipitation-free hurricane going over Tucson. Wind speeds of around 45-50 miles per hour (!) have been sweeping the city since around midnight last night.
That's fine. I like the smell of fall wind. And the weather's been nice and cool. I dig.
That's before I tried to sleep. Normally, I don't mind a little wind, but my patio has a tin roof. That tin roof has a palo verde tree next to it, and I'm the only one who's trimmed the thing in years and years. There are a lot of branches that sit on top of the patio roof. Normally, this isn't a problem. But when there's 40 MPH winds, the tree drags itself up and down the tin roof.
It sounds exactly like running fingernails down a chalkboard, and it has been going on for 13 hours straight as of 1pm this afternoon.
I can't hear it from the other end of the house, and I eventually realized this at around 8am to catch a few hours of sleep before work.
Think about it for a second, though - I listened to and attempted to sleep to the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard for six hours. Between that and the sleep madness, it's amazing I'm coherent enough to type.Labels: madness, sleep |
| posted by Steve @ 12:43 PM |
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| About Me |
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Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think.
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