My Brain Is in the Computer

I was doing some long-range schedule/vacation planning today, and I suddenly realized that the reason it was so hard I have no holidays on my work calendar for the rest of the year. What gives? Turns out, I needed a service pack update to get the next couple years of holidays in. Hmmmm. Maybe that's why I was having so much trouble remembering which weekend Memorial Day was this year. :o I have started having to write things in my calendar like "Gavin in CA" or "flight bag to work". Otherwise, I find myself getting angry at Gavin for being at work so late when he's on a plane over Arizona or trying to fly the plane in a skirt.

I keep thinking that next month, it will be calmer. I won't have as much to do next month. Every month, though, by the 3rd or 4th my calendar is looking quite full. This mission was supposed to give me lots of time without many interruptions to catch up on some stuff. Today was only the 4th day I have had in my office, though, and a few of those have been short days due to doctor's appointments, outside commitments, or going to do my last pre-check ride lesson.

That's right, I'm GO to schedule my check ride. My instructor said if I fly like I did this morning I should pass no problem. Why am I suddenly nervous? Like I have to take a test or something. :) Anyway, we'll see how fast I can get an examiner scheduled. I'd like not to have to use Alpha Wolf if I don't have to. (Jose, shame on you for not having a post I could link to for that!)

iPhone 2.0 in 60 seconds!

It took Apple 142 minutes to talk about the iPhone 2.0 a few days ago. Someone was nice and condensed it down... it's fun to watch. The price is cheap enough that maybe I'll get one now.

ETA to Positronic Brains?

Decades after we had capacitor, the resistor, and the transistor, the final fundamental electrical circuit has been prototyped.

Enter the memristor, which is a hardware device that shares similar characteristics to the human brain's synapse.

ReelNASA

What do you think of this? Me, I think it's a step in the right direction.

Random Thought of the Day

My MP3 player really likes Jewel today. What's up with that? I have like 6 Jewel songs on this playlist of hundreds, and I've probably heard 4 of them.

What to do in Austin?

Does anyone else think it's strange that your Google account user name is another e-mail address. I mean, it seems like it should be your Google address, if anything.

Life is flying by, as usual. I booked a hotel room in Austin for this weekend. A suite, actually, so that there is a door between us and the Baby Who Makes Noise All Night. I think that's the one thing I learned (again) from our ND trip - it's hard to sleep in the same room as Carina! I knew that from when she was bitty, too.

We are going up for a baby shower, but I didn't want to drive there and back in one day. So, I'm trying to decide if we should try to do anything else while we're there. Maybe a short hike the next day? What's that BBQ place that everyone says is so good?

New Beginnings

I am writing this on my brand new laptop! I got a Dell Inspiron. It's not fancy, but it is new and runs quickly. The only thing that's annoying me is that it came with Windows Vista, which is trying way too hard to help me set up.

Halfway through my first week back at work part-time, I think that things are going well. I'm definately happier getting out every day and contributing to our nation's space program! Even though I miss Carina the whole time I'm at work, that's less emotional stress for me than the cabin fever I had at home.

I'm having some growing pains with the day care. I think Carina isn't getting as much sleep there as she does at home. I think maybe they're getting her up and changing her every time she stirs in her sleep. She's exhausted after being there for 5 hours. Hopefully, I'll be able to get the ladies that work there to go more to the schedule we have her on at home.

I Heart Google

I started this post about 5 days ago. I need my new laptop! (Which, BTW, should be here tomorrow. Yea!)

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Don't you just love Google? I mean, what did people do for fun before you could go google your name to see what comes up? Or alternatively, if you have a 7-week-old and are obsessed, you google her name. What do you find out?

- Fred has a webpage and posted pictures of her.

- Carina's Baby Countdown webpage actually registers on Google.

- There is at least one other Carina in Houston, and she ran the same 5K as Gavin's dad.

Happy Anniversary to Us

Today is our 7th anniversary. I think 7 years is something around the average length of a marriage in the US. We're doing pretty good! :P Things have changed a lot this year, of course. We are no longer DINKs. Crazy.

Did I mention recently that my husband is awesome? He got me a new digital camera for our anniversary. It's good, because my old one was really having issues. If I used the flash, the picture came out really dark. If I didn't, it came out blurry. Plus, this one is really small, and I'll be able to carry it in a pocket. Yea!

Meanwhile, I couldn't find Gavin anything in the 2 hours I was able to spend in the mall this morning. So, I got him a very romantic and expensive dinner at Chili's, with desert at Marble Slab. I think he won the gift war this year. :)

Sunbeams and 300 and my GeForce 7600gs

This morning Jen and I were eating our cereal while watching the Daily Show. It wasn't 9am yet, which is unusual for both of us to be up. The sun was shining in between the blinds and painting the wall next to the fireplace a brilliant cream. Roxy eventually wandered up to the sunbeam on the wall, sniffed at it, looked at the floor, looked back at the wall, and then sat in front of the wall so she would be in the sunbeam. You could tell she was trying to complain to the sunbeam that its supposed to be on the floor! That's what sunbeams do. As the hour passed and the sunbeam slide down to the floor, so did Roxy.

I took a long lunch yesterday to go watch 300 with Troy and Jason. It was a fun movie, I liked several parts of it. Much of it was CG with some actors tossed on top of it, and you could definitely identify some of the comic book influence in some of the scenes. Lots of eye candy, for both the guys and the girls as some of the film reviewers point out. While there was a lot of blood in the fight scenes, it was curiously blurred as it flew through the air in slow motion. Again, like a comic book where a frame is trying to illustrate the motion. It helped to remind the audience that they were watching a comic book movie, not a historical docudrama. Storywise, nothing special. There were some funny scenes. There were also some disturbing scenes, which I also attribute to the comic book influence. I'd probably see it again.

Yesterday after work we drove over to CompUSA to check out the sales. I picked up a new video card to replace my 2-year-old one. It looks pretty nice. I tried boosting up the resolution to 1600x1200 to see what it would do... and my monitor couldn't handle it! Black screen, frequency too high, etc. I suppose I'll need to get a new monitor eventually.

I also picked up Jade Empire, which I was excited about 3 years ago when it came out. I was bummed when I realized it was out for the X-Box, not the PC. I guess a year or so ago they releeased it for the PC, it comes on a DVD. So with much anticipation I put in the DVD to install it... but my DVD player couldn't read it! I remember having a similar problem with the Legos Star Wars game I got a year ago. Looking around on the internet didn't provide any quick easy fixes: everyone said the player wasn't good.

Fifteen minutes ago I returned from Walmart with a new CD/DVD reader and it's now happily installing Jade Empire. And maybe later today I'll install the legos game, and I'll have two to play! In 1280x1024 resolution, with all of the graphic options turned to max!

(Can you tell Jen isn't at home today?)

Bad News, Good News

I had to go in to work this morning for a couple hours to run a telecon, but I came home right after. I don't think Gavin and I have ever been so sick at the same time before. Gavin had to come out and sleep in the living room last night because we were just waking each other up all the time. I hear rumors this is a 3-5 day thing. I hope I'm on the low end of that. I need a better night's sleep tonight.

I found out that I can upgrade my phone now. Thank God. I was not appreciating my old phone with the cheesy ringtines.

I got some very good news from my sister this morning. If all goes well, Baby M should have a cousin just a few months younger than him/her.

Buzz

My computer at work has a fan issue. It is loud. It is annoying. And because it doesn’t affect the actual functioning of the computer, I have no idea when it will get fixed. I just called to check up on the ticket and got “I can’t say when he’ll be able to get there, but I can call and tell him you called to ask.”

It’s not so bad for me - I won’t be in the office much over the next couple days. I feel pretty bad for my office mates, though. I could just turn the machine off, except all my e-mail folders are stored on the hard drive because there isn’t enough room on the network drives for e-mail. So, if I turn my desktop off, I can’t get to my personal folders.

On a related note, I just took our IT training for 2007. One particular section struck me. There’s an entire new section in the training module about backing up your computer, and how you’ll lose everything in your hard drive fails and your computer isn’t backed up. It kind of says “don’t come crying to us.”

I think I should wait another 6 months and then pluck the huge stack of CDs I’ve been using to backup my data down on somebody’s desk in IT. And ask, are you really saving money?

I Did Good

I think Gavin likes his birthday present. :)

I got him a Canon Digital Rebel XT and a lens that cost nearly as much as the camera. He spent last night walking around the house, flipping lights on, and off and taking pictures to test the light levels. He then took pictures of the dogs until they got tired of the flash and walked away. He got up this morning and downloaded all the pictures to his laptop so he could see how he did.

He was very smiley the whole time.