It’s the start of a new quarter, actually the end of the first week of the new quarter, for me and I thought I’d save some money by not buying the books but just getting them from the library.  Smart move.  Except one of the books from the library was the third edition and the required one was the eighth.  Turns out there’s a fair amount wrong.

So I look on half.com and see the book is really spending, but I can buy the e-book version from the campus book store for cheaper than half.com.  A pretty good deal right?  Almost.

Turns out when I paid $110 for the e-book I didn’t actually buy the book.  I buy the rights to read it for 180 days.  That’s right, after that I have the book no more.  That really sucks.  It’s a fair amount of money for not owning something.

Besides the crazy price and not owning it, I think it’s a great feature.  I can read the book from any computer, highlight text, search terms, and make notes.  It’s very useful and it’ll be a lot easier to go back and find my notes and do the necessary work from the readings.

Granted, not all ebooks are merely “rentals” but the way this one is set up it is merely renting.  I guess this book is a wash.  Hopefully the benefits continue to outweigh the negatives.

The new Google Phone is coming out in a few days.  I’ve read a few reviews of it.  I think it looks interesting.  Because it’s Google it has all of the Googly goodness.  Contact Sync, Calendar Sycn, etc.  Push email and everything else.  It looks like a good phone.

The one problem with it, to me, is that it’s on T-Mobile.  My house is in a dead spot almost for them.  I kind of want the iPhone because it’s an Apple product.  The ATT service is great at home, and works in the LP.

So to my friends who currently have T-Mobile go out and get the G1!  And tell me how you like it!

I finally get the last piece of the floor in!  That’s exciting.  Now I just get to fix the holes. (In case you’re wondering how I did that, I had to use a crow bar to get the last pieces of the floor along the wall into place.)  And tomorrow night we’re going to pick out floorboards so I can put those on Friday.  I’ll have a number of projects to do tomorrow and Friday as I have both days off.  It’ll be nice though.  We’ll get things into place, and have this place just that much closer to being done.

I finally got my airport working properly!  Well, I did this last night.  But it’s still blogable.  There must be some interference on the same spectrum, because I would loose signal, but the airport would still be on.  But messing with some settings made it all work nicely.  That’s good news.

Anyway, hope everyone enjoys the last of their week.  I for one shall enjoy my 4 day weekend!

For those of you who maybe traveling this coming holiday season, don’t forget to pack all the cords to plug in your essentials, such as your iPod.  However, if you do forget your plug in adapter for your iPod just go to the grocery store, buy an onion and some Powerade and you can charge your iPod.  Don’t believe me?  Check it out for your self.  Hilarious, but cool.

As for house stuff.  Well I don’t really want to get into that right now.  If all goes as planned, we close tomorrow at 2pm.  Check back after that for more info.

I’m making the most of my day off, and I’m watching The Price Is Right while I’m waiting for my laundry.  It’s the first time that I’ve seen it with Drew Carey.  I’m not impressed.  Drew is not nearly as animated as Bob was.  And I think he just hit on a lady in contestant row.  Granted it is one of the first episodes he’s done.  Maybe he’ll get better.  We’ll see.

There’s been a lot of hype around the new Mac OS coming out, Leopard.   There are a lot of new features in the new os, over 300 is what I read.  Many of them seem really sweet.  I think Time Machine would be vary nice.  Finally a back up system built in.  Of course that would require a much larger external harddrive for me, which I want to get anyway.

The only down side is that the computer requirements are G4 with 867 mhz or faster.  Mine is a G4 with 1.33 Ghz.  So I technically fit, but I’m wondering if it would lag pretty bad.  It also requires 512 mb ram, which I have 768 mb so I’m good there, but the more the better.  So I’m not sure how worth the upgrade it would be.  My battery is also dying, so I’ve thought a little bit about a new computer, but that’s even more expensive.  What do you think?  Should I upgrade to the new OS or just wait a year and get a new compy and everything?

As for the house search: no news yet.  We’ve got an offer in on one.  Not sure what will happen.  We’ll keep looking on Monday I think, just so we don’t loose more time.  Perhaps next time I’ll have a better update on that.

That’s right, the weather outside is great. Some might say a little warm.  But it’s great.  I think I should go to the driving range later today to enjoy it more.

This weekend has been low key.  Just hanging out.  Surfing the web looking at houses.  Dreaming about the right one.  Now if that dream would just come true.  Although, I am liking a few that we’ve found.  If only it were in a different town. Oh well, we’ll have a few things to consider.  Or if we had some more money we could be Mooney’s neighbor!

I read an interesting article a few days ago that has mellowed my iPhone desires a tad.   I think it will mean good things for future versions of the iPhone.

Has anyone every watched the TV show My Boys on TBS? They have a marathon on of it today.  I’ve watched a few episodes now and I am starting to like it.  I’ve seen lots of commercials for it, and thought it would be pretty funny.  I would say that it is.  So if you need a summer show to watch I’d suggest checking it out.  I believe the new season starts tomorrow night at 9.

I must also state that I enjoy watching sports, especially the Twins in HD.  I really like our new tv!

No, I don’t have one.  I went to the Apple Store today and played with one though.  I must say I was impressed.  The typing thing would take a little bit to get used to I think.  I just navigated to a few websites, and that was a little difficult.  But I think if you use it more it’d be great.   The YouTube feature was kind of cool.  I don’t watch much on YouTube though.

I also played around with the Apple TV for a bit.  That was fun as well.  I think it’d be fun.  But it’s not in the cards.  Maybe if I get a few more giftcards to apple, or save up some more.

While I was there I inquired about a job as well.  I applied a few weeks back and hadn’t heard.  So I talked with the hiring manager, and things might move forward with that.  We’ll see.

That’s my fun story of the day.

Last night Beth and I, along with some people from work, went down to Canterbury Park to enjoy some horse racing.  It was Dollar Night which made it even better!  $1 admission, $1 nachos, hot dogs, and soda’s.  It was a pretty good time.  The horse races were fun to watch, even if they were short.  Everyone would be cheering on their horses.  In the spirit of it all we did place a few bets.  Overall we lost just under $6, so not to bad.  We did win one race, which was fun!  Some of the people with us were up $30 or so.  I guess we’re not that lucky.

I’m looking forward to the weekend!  Tonight we’re heading up to Twin Lakes Campground near Drummond, WI.  It should be a good time.  We were hoping to go to the North Shore, but it was all booked.  That’s what happens when you plan late.  We’re going up with Pat and Tina, so that’ll make it fun.  We’ll try to take lots of pictures and post them upon our return.

Being out in the wilderness means I’ll miss the release of the iPhone.  That’s okay.  I’m interested to know how people like them.  So if you get one write a review on it so I know what you think.  I’d like to know how fast the internet is using EDGE.  That’s the one thing that scares me a little bit about it.  I hear that can be pretty slow.  But I’ve heard unconfirmed rumor (maybe more like wild speculation on the internet) that the iPhone has the technology for the 3G networks (like Verizon uses) and just requires a software update to the phone.  But I would think that AT&T would need to switch their networks over first.  Either way I’m looking forward to owning an iPhone someday.

Have a beautiful weekend everyone!

I just watched this guided tour video of the iPhone, and it looks sweet!  It makes me want an iPhone even more.  But that will not happen anytime soon.  By the time I get one, there will be 2nd Gen ones I’m sure.

The week has been good.  Fairly busy.  Yesterday I gave blood!  I saved a life.  It wasn’t bad, except the nurse didn’t do a great job putting the needle in.  I think she missed the vein at first, or something, because it hurt a little bit more than it should have and she had to re-adjust the needle.  But one that was fixed it went fine, and fairly quick.

This weekend is Back to the 50’s.  I think I’ll probably go tomorrow with my brother and dad for a while.  It’s kind of fun to see all of the old cars there.  But tomorrow is supposed to be really warm, so that could decrease the fun factor a little bit.

In other big news I fixed my car this past weekend.  I took it to the shop and they did some stuff, and then they told me the spark plug wires were the problem.  Turns out one of them had broken, so I just bought replacements and did that myself.  It was pretty easy, and a lot cheaper than having them do it.  So now my car is running better than it has in months!  Yea for that!

For the Techies out there: WWDC.  Now, if you would have asked me about that 4 years ago I would say “Huh?  What’s that?”  Now I find myself checking my Google Reader looking for the latest news about it, or browsing Mac Rumors which has live updates.  And some of the stuff seems sweet!

First: the iPhone.  I want one.  I think it looks sweet, and it would be a nice tool as well as a toy.  What’s not to love about that?  (Well besides the price tag).  And if you’re wondering I will not be buying one anytime soon, as the cell phone contracts are a hindrance.  Unless they have some super sweet deal and buy out contracts.  Anything is possible.  We’ll see.

Second: Safari on a PC? I’m not sure about that.  I can understand (with some help) why they would want to do that.  But I don’t imagine they would get a huge following.  I think people would use FireFox before Safari, but I could be wrong.  In fact a lot of Mac users I know use FireFox on their Mac, instead of safari.

Third: OS X Leopard.   That looks like it has some nice bells and whistles.  I probably will not upgrade right away.  I think I will likely wait until I get a new Mac which will be quite sometime off.  I will definitely love playing around on Leopard when I visit the Apple Store after it comes out.

Also the Apple website has a new design to it, which is kind of pretty.

Also of note: I applied to be a Mac Specialist today.  We’ll see if they give me a call back.  Here’s hoping as I think it would be a fun place to work, and it would be nice to pick up some extra hours to save up for a House!

So I saw this yesterday, and I’m wondering how safe it can be.

By default, Google Browser Sync continuously synchronizes your bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, tabs, windows, and saved passwords across computers.

It does put a safe guard in there, but I’m wondering how safe it can be.

The PIN you create during setup is used to encrypt information that’s synced between your computers, which may include sensitive information such as your passwords for websites. We use your PIN to unlock that information. Without your PIN, no one will be able to read the information that’s being transmitted between your computers via Google Browser Sync.

Like everything else it’ll be as safe as your password. Google has a good reputation on security, from what I’ve seen and experienced. Does anyone have any thoughts on the safety of this?

I posted some new pictures.  Feel free to check them out.

I’m using iPhoto to export these ones, so it’s not as uniform as using Dreamweaver.  Does anyone else use iPhoto to do this?  I’m trying to figure out how to get it to name the main page index.html instead of the album name (ie. winter-carnival.html).  Any tips?

So reading some of my friends (likely a few of the ones who read my blog) I realize I post much more often then they do… what does this mean….  anyway

Work is fun.  I finally got set up with my email address here.  So now I have an official work email. I’ve been doing some real work, and it’s going well.  I’m really liking this job so far. It’s a lot of fun, and I get to do a lot with some fun technology.

Today I was in a Windows Vista meeting. We got some info on some of the features, how to use them, etc. Some of it was interesting, and gave me a few good tips.  The rest just pointed out to me how much Vista is like OS X.  But that’s alright.  Seeing how I can’t use a Mac here, I might as well use Vista and get to know it.  It’s always good to know the latest stuff (and what doesn’t work on it).  Office 2007 is interesting.  I kind of like it, but it has a few things that will take me a bit to get used to.

Novell is a little hard to get used to.  I’ve not used it much before here, and it doesn’t seem like it’s the best way to go.  Or maybe it’s just not set up the right way here (that’s what a few people think).  I’m looking forward to diving into that more and being able to learn more about it.  Of course their switching over to AD shortly, so my time with Novell could be limited.

I’ve recently started watching Season 3 of 24, and I must say I like it.  IT’s good with the suspense, and the plot is very intricate.  It almost seems a little bit better than the current season of 24.  And I must say that David Palmer was a much better President than his brother is. 

That’s my exciting life.  Hope everyone is staying warm out there.  Drink plenty of hot cocoa and make sure the heat doesn’t go out!

Well so far so good for the job.  I haven’t done much today, except for reimage a few machines which I get to use and arrange some stuff in my office.  That’s right, I have an office!  It’s got a window and I can see the outside world!  I’m on the 4th floor (the highest in this building), so I can see a good variety of things around me.  One strange thing I saw today was a kid sitting against a building (outside mind you) eating his lunch.

I get to play with Vista.  That’s what I’m using right now.  First impression is alright.  They got ride of the hour glass, but it has some spinning circle thing now. 

One bummer is that it says “X wants to run.  If you didn’t start this program, please click cancel.”  I can see why that’s a good thing for some users (maybe most), but for me it’s a little bit annoying. 

The account manager thing is interesting.  You can’t have the username Administrator. 

The graphics are alright, granted I don’t think this thing has the card (and I know the monitor isn’t the greatest) to be seeing the graphics. 

They have a thing to switch between windows.  It’s the same thing that you get when you alt+tab, but you can click on the window you want to view, and you activate it in Quick Links area. 

I’m excited I’ll get to play around with Office 2007 later today, or tomorrow.  Sweet action.