I Caved .. .. .. ....

Blame it on my parents this time.

Well, I'm trying but it's not working.

My father is the reason I'm a tech whore... lol. He's either almost as bad as me or pretty close. Had he grown up in my generation he'd be much much worse. MUCH MUCH WORSE .. he made a career as a full time computer programmer, while I only do it part time .. lol

He carried a regular phone up until 3 or 4 months ago when he changed jobs. Now he's gone and bought himself one of the Treos and that has now turned into the most recent PDA he obsesses over (there have been about 6 over the past 5 years). I don't even come close to him as far as over-using my cell phone or any PDA for that matter. OMG he has a PDA IV in or something because he can't carry on a conversation without consulting the PDA for something! It's funny ... but like I said, I know exactly where I got it from. When we were kids we were the first people I knew to have a computer.. by the time the other kids saw one, we were on our third Apple.

OK .. I'm denying the obvious ...

I text my Dad last night (yes with the purchase of this Treo my Dad 'discovered' text messaging and is following suite as another text whore in the family .. lol) and tell him to google the Lifebook and check it out (he is so techy that he pays the $40 a month for internet on his phone, while I do not). His reply a bit later was not anything negative ... I got something like that's a great deal. Well damn ... I was looking for someone to bully me out of it and no one did ..

So .. I did what I always do.. put it in the cart and argued with myself for about an hour over buying it or not buying it. Finally I decided that my time is worth more than this and I know me and I WILL end up getting the damn thing anyway because I need it and I have not bought a computer in years now (and I KNOW ME), so instead of wasting even more time (it's already been since November and probably 30 hours of research and obsessing) just buy the damn thing.

So that's what I did.

Tech whore ...

But .. at the same time I found out that he was shopping himself and looking at a Sony UMPC (like daughter like father). Seeing as he was considering the massive price tag for that, I put a little bug in his ear about buying the HTC Shift instead. So while I may not be buying it for myself .. :o( .. maybe I'll be able to touch it and drool over it if it's at his house .. :o)


UPDATE .. storm sucks, almost as bad as my DSL internet connection. I whined for hours waiting on my internet to start working again so I could fix a typo on this page. Clearly I have issues... Ok not just that, but to continue to stalk Best Buy's website for my UMPC .. :o)

Post Holiday Check In

Ok .. sometimes the holidays are never long enough. I wish we were off like a month for the holidays .. then, maybe I'd start enjoying Christmas a bit more .. :)

Oh well .. back to 'normal' life .. .. .. or as close as I'm willing to get I suppose ..

1.) Last Thursday at around 9 or 10 AM the temperature was still below 10 degrees. Today I rolled all the windows down as I was leaving work .. it was in the 70s at least by mid day .. heck I think it just now got into the upper 60s.

Ok .. I'll be right back .. I'm going to email Mother Nature (if you can instant message Santa Claus I'm sure she has email by now .. LMAO) and remind her that it's WINTER here in the states .. and that means jackets and a few flurries in my sad little part of the world ...

2.) As we here in the great (HA) state of Kentucky know, then Louisville Cardinals basketball team .. well they spanked UK pretty nicely this past weekend. Here's the best part, or parts I should say ...

• UK was completely healthy so the poor sport UK fans can't say 'if only [insert name] was healthy we would have beat you all. Nope, they were scratchy throat free but off course left the game with some bird prints on the their backs from being stomped on .. :o)
• We were missing one of our BEST players, Earl Clark, due to a one game suspension (which I've yet to search the net to find out what the reason was). If anything, we were down an incredible player and still put the cat in its cage. ..
• The final score was 89-75 so there's no way the fans can say you got lucky or they were one wrong play away from the game. Nope .. you lost .. that's all there is to it :o)

Ok .. enough gloating, but to be honest it's a toss up for me .. I enjoy the more competitive games and the end of that was just kinda boring for me. But ... I enjoy that we took away every UK excuse. Now ... guess what they'll do .. blame the new coach.

I'm sure the fire Gillispie are already on the internet now. Poor guy ... if in three years their still struggling start yelling, but like Kragthorpe, who tanked the Cardinal football reputation, you have to give him a chance to play his ball with his team. So .. we wait. ..

3.) I am / have been discussing (with my alter ego) the idea of buying an UMPC for some time now. (A) I want to use it in class as, thanks to that stupid wreck, my handwriting is worse than a left handed person's should be and after so long my wrist gets sore and it gets even worse and (B) something like that is the only way I'll ever get organized and I need to get organized. I am fabulous about using my cell phone for organization but anything longer than so many letters and it turns into a pain in the butt. My laptop is perfectly up to speed with technology so I refuse to replace it, but I need something more portable than my laptop but more productive than my cell phone. Hence .. the UMPC.

I know .. tech whore .. yea I hear it all the time. But ..... ... the last computer I bought was 3 years ago and it was my $400 desktop. My laptop is actually and amazingly almost 4 years old but the specs are still comparable to today and I've upgraded what needed to be upgraded. So .. considering that while I've had my 2 computer for 3-4 years now and my father has bought AT LEAST 3 or 4 (between laptops and desktops) I think I can justify the purchase. Ok ... obviously I'm trying to justify it to myself still .. lol.

Anyway .. I'm looking to get the Fujitsu Lifebook U810 because it's (A) small and (B) sports a decent size keyboard which should accommodate my wrists when they hurt. They're coming out with a model in March that adds the cell phone compatibility and while I'm tempted to hold out for that, here's the deal ... while I'm a tech whore I don't pay for internet service on my phone because the internet just doesn't do it for me and I'd rather not spend $40 a month on something I don't really use or need. So .. I don't think I care about the compatibility and if I do down the road I guess I will buy a card or something.

I thought about getting that $400 Asus Eee PC but it's not a tablet pc so that was a buzz kill for me.

I also debated between getting the HTC Shift and the HTC Advantage, which is still very tempting for me. My cell phones have been nothing but HTC's now for 3 + years and I am a loyal loving follower of anything they make. But here's my self - arguing case ... (A) the HTC Advantage operated on Windows Mobile and I want something that I can install a decent number of 'regular' programs on it and not be limited by mobile programs ... I may as well keep using my cell phone if that's the case, (B) the HTC Shift is going to be about $1500 and can I justify paying the extra $500 because I like the name?? (C) the keyboard is similar to my cell phone keyboard and I'm suspected it will be more of a thumb based pecking / typing and I'm hoping the Lifebook is a keyboard you can type more normally on... again if I'm pecking I'll keep my cell phone.

Anyway I have been shopping since November and while I always want to cave, I haven't yet. I'm just having a harder time justifying it to myself when I just pissed away a good chunk of change over the holidays on things that, unlike this, I wanted but really couldn't justify the consistent use of them like I can with this. So .. we'll see...

I know .. blah blah boring .. it's only interesting to me .. I know that and I'm ok with that too ... :o)



Ok .. I'm off to the gym in a bit to work off my 3 holiday pounds that I think I added (although I hope I'm just paranoid). I guess three are coming off whether they were already there or if they paid me a holiday visit.

Photo update ..

So .. lately I've been getting out with my camera. Actually I have been doing it more frequently off and on for the past 2 months but I think lately I've finally made a breakthrough.

To explain ..

When I was going out for fall photos and so on, it was more like pulling photography teeth. I'd go out with a friend and they're snapping away and I'm standing there. .. thinking I see absolutely nothing here. .. then about an hour or so until the deal, if not longer, I finally see one or two things worth catching. But the whole time the world looks no different to me .. not like before.

The other day I went out and I hit that ceiling. Right off the bat something caught my eye. Then, like before, that first shot, which still lives on my hard drive, turned into something else .. and so on. Next thing you know I'm out for hours and still going .. and not wanting to go in because all of a sudden the street I've worked on since April now looks so different to me.

Since then I've been willingly taking my camera more often and sighing on the days that it's stayed at home. And moaning on the night the batteries were dead (hey, i'm out of practice and the last thing I think about are those batteries!). Now, I'm sitting here trying not to go out and almost miserable that I'm still sitting here.

And to top it off ... for a change I'm actually pulling photos off of my camera that I like, and it's not just one or two of them, it's most of them.

Finally .. a breakthrough .. I think.


At the same time I'm half beating myself over it because of all the times it should not be happening now. But that's another blog and probably not one I'm willing to rehash right now .. as it may do exactly what I think it will .. which is demotivate me.

On that note I'm going to stop writing and watch some TV for a while .. :o)

A Welcomed Break

So .. how nice is it that I now have a few weeks between semesters?

You have no idea..

I have made a list of chores that I want to do while I can, which includes upgrading the memory on this laptop. I am also intending on both taking more photos and going through the thousands of photos on my hard drive that are wasting away.

So many things, so little time...

Ok ..well I completely screwed my sleep schedule up starting Thursday and through last night.I'm attempting tonight to bring harmony back into play before the alarm clock goes off in the morning.

My Work on the Internet .. :o)

I used to save links of websites that my work was posted on, but I've stopped doing that. Well, I'm going to start doing that again, because just now I actually needed something that I've worked on and I knew exactly where it was.

I'll update this as I run across them.

Work for MSD's CSO Long Term Control Plan (which is about 40 hours of my work week, if not more):

1. Power Point Presentation from one of the Stakeholder's meetings. Granted it's not as pretty in it's PDFed form, but I primarily worked on most of the graphics for this one. It's a big file though.
2. Here's another Power Point, although they aren't as nice when PDF'ed out.

Finicky Internet and Needing a Sugar Fix

Apparently my nighttime surfing choices are limited, and it's driving me crazy. You know the person who clicks 'refresh' over and over and over again, like someone with some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder? Well I was turning into that person there for a minute. Like watching paint dry, I was waiting for my internet to just start magically working ..

Just my week...

So, I had my last test in my Surface Water Quality Modeling class today. Painful but over with. Now I have a term project remaining, with it's data neatly stored online, as I was assuming that Bellsouth was going to cooperate tonight.

In addition, I have a second term project for my Transportation Modeling class due in 3 days, whose data is also sitting neatly on said internet. Grrrr ... and I am actually trying for once to do the right thing!!


My web surfing choices are apparently the following:

• Flickr - loads amazing fast (is it a Yahoo conspiracy??)
• Blogger - hence why I'm writing
• Geocaching - just a snippet here and snippet there .. not enough to find anything interesting and just enough to tick me off
• Google every once in a while (Google haters ... must be stopped!!!)
  
• .....

... that's it .. grrrrr. If they're going to kill my internet, at least give me something to shop online at or something... I'm on another gadget kick, oh geez, and so I'm currently resisting two things although that does not stop me from window shopping and dreaming.

It's been, oh, two and a half hours now with no feed .. a feed that I need for these stupid classes (ok .. teachers, not that you'll ever read this, but the eclasses aren't stupid at all, they're wonderfully engaging and have great practical applications .. LMAO .. ok over the top but I actually like the classes, minding the extensive virtual sucking up). I actually took a 30 minute eye closing break in hopes that my computer would feel sympathy for me, but apparently not.

It's 9:30 ish and I guess I officially give up.


All the while Starbucks, and something sweet, are calling my name.

• I need to lay off the Starbucks, I'm dreaming of it now, or at least I may as well... I would sleep like a baby, assuming I was only dreaming and not still containing it in my system.
  
• I had ONE, count 'em, ONE mint at work today, and it was the first one in probably a month or two. That ONE little 'harmless' mint was evil, setting off my annoying sweet tooth. OMG .. I'm just dying here. I could slap my father and on up the line for doing this to me.... Besides, don't ask me why Starbucks doesn't qualify as feeding the sweet tooth .. I don't get it myself, but I don't complain when it doesn't set it in motion like it is now ..

So, here I am... I'm sitting here OCD'ing over the internet, thinking of Starbucks, and looking for anything sweet in my house.

Knowing that I inherit a long and deep sweet tooth there is literally nothing sweet in my house besides the necessities. Nothing. It's been like that for about 6 years because I'd just eat it all and make the sweet tooth even worse. So, I'm mentally fighting myself to try and not go to Starbucks and at the same time not go do something just stupid like eat a bowl full of sugar.

Ha ha ha .. that would be pretty pathetic, eh?!

Luckily there is one thing that trumps my sweet tooth ... my laziness. So, no going to Starbucks as it means I'd have to get up, put some pants on, put my few things out of reach from the dogs (give them 2 minutes alone in the house and you can't imagine what they won't chew up on me .. ), walk across to the back of the house, into my car in the dang cold, and down that whole 1/2 mile to the local coffee fix. Then I have to drive all the way back (because it's just so far ..), come back in, let the dogs out (I'm not allowed in if they can't go out), not get comfortable until I let them back in, then go through the whole process of getting back into my jammies and thawing myself back out.

That's just too much work!

Plus, I'm recalling how I actually did that last night, with the intent of pulling a late night study session, .. which turned into me getting a Venti at 8:45PM and being up all dang night long because of it. Just madness.



Well, seeing as I almost caved and went to Starbucks .. I'll just have to continue with the goal of making this my longest blog yet, or something along those lines.

OMG you say? But Christina your blogs are horribly long and painfully rambling .. how can they possibly get any longer?

So the funniest thing is this .. except for me rambling in this blog, I am actually making an attempt to do what I like to call .. shut the F up .. ha ha. Yea, and don't substitute in the bad word because I say it in the 'better rated' version that you are reading here. When I'm talking and writing to people, I'm putting my foot down to myself, and telling myself to not tell everyone and every detail, whether in person or in email. So for the people who think that I don't tell them enough .. well I'm going to start telling you less. I just have a tendency, on occasion, to talk too much, and I consistently talk too darn much in emails and well ... it needs to stop!!



Ok .. now I'm bored... I rarely watch TV now, outside of a few shows, so I guess it's a good excuse to work on homework .. dangit. Either way I'm thinking of just going to bed so I don't have to sit here all miserable.


Oh wait .. one more note. So I was contacted again by Publishers International today. They are using one of my photos in the book seen below (click on the photo to direct you to my flickr page and ultimately the photo in use)...





Now they've sent the paperwork, which I've already returned, asking to use the photo again in another book, something like Amazing Places in North America (probably a similar book, but more adult oriented activities I'm guessing). I'll get paid for the usage again and will also get a copy of the new book as well .. :o)

I think this will be the 4th or 5th book that I'll have photos in, but at least 4 (I have to pull my list to find out .. which also needs a stable internet connection!!). Those books, a handful of websites, a couple of calendars, a future annual report publication, and a few other random details.

Pretty interesting and I honestly love seeing photos that I've taken being put to use other than on my website, but I just wish I had more time to do something more with it. However, I'm hoping to go through the thousands of photos rotting on my hard drive between semesters and also try and do something more than I'm doing now.

Hello ..

I've meant to re-surface sooner, but it's been hectic. So, just to jot some notes down...

(1) They finally found out a major part of what's going on with me, health-wise. It doesn't explain everything, but it's something. It's not something that's going to go away though, so I'm kinda ticked about that.

(2) My foster, Trixie, had surgery 2 weeks ago. She had a mass on her chest and so they removed that and two of her breasts as well. They sent the mass off to test for cancer. I take her in to remove the stitches and drainage tube tomorrow, so I should hopefully find out then.

(3) I FINALLY got my second monitor at work. Unfortunately my computer's card only supported one monitor because if not I would have bought it myself and expensed it out. When it came in, I swear it felt like it was my birthday or something, I was probably entirely too happy to see it.

(4) Over Thanksgiving weekend, Lacy, my former foster, stayed with me. From Wednesday - Sunday I had 5 dogs in here, which could be tolerable except that my Archie and Nina, combined with Lacy meant for a psychotic extravaganza of overly-energetic dogs. Oh well, I still liked having her here, but my current foster, Trixie, hated it!

(5) Friday night my sister had another seizure while we were at my Mom's house. Granted I've experienced canine seizures, but this was such a terrifying experience. The EMS came and we ended up at the hospital until after 11 that night. She goes to the doctor tomorrow and they're going to do an EEG to see if they can find some answers as to what's going on. Until then, and even after that, we're all discussing anything and everything that we can do to both help her and also a plan in case it happens again.

(6) I was very good, or mostly good, over the weekend with all the sales going on. I did buy myself a GPS unit because I've been wanting one. I started out wanting just a basic one, nothing fancy, then I realized for only XX more it could speak street names. Then, a guy at Best Buy sold me on the next model up, as I can actually make and receive calls on the GPS unit (either from a listing in it or from my cell phone's phone book), and it came with the traffic receiver in case I wanted to get that one day. Finally, I found the same model on the internet, except it came with a different traffic service and instead of a 3 month trial, I get one year for it. .. Sucker .. yea I know. But ... I was good, because at that point I was thinking about spending another $150 on a different model that was basically the same thing, but different looking. I resisted, and trust me it was really hard to stand up to myself! Anyway, the unit came in and I've played with it, but I won't be able to do much until the weekend. I did however, give myself a purple car .. :o)

(7) Sometime in the past month or so I managed to find the time to wipe out both of my computers that I actively use and give them a fresh start. Now they run so much better .. it's crazy! At the same time, I FINALLY bought much needed memory for my laptop and am intending on installing that this weekend. I just pulled the directions and I knew that it would require me to take off the keyboard, so needless to say I'm not excited about getting into all of that ...

Ok .. I think my time has expired .. I have homework to get back to and the download just finished.