Xmas Recap

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Xmas ended up being a load of fun. Wednesday night I went with Jayson & Gretchen to Outback. We didn’t do anything crazy, just dinner and hung out at their place afterward. On Xmas day they had about 15 people over. It was a mix of family and friends. The food was great, well too good since I stuffed my self on appetizers and never did get around to eating the main corse. I have done that before. What can i say, I like appetizers.

I ended up staying over at Jay’s until Friday morning. I took a morning train back to the city. I ended up trying to do some shopping in the afternoon but that was a disaster. I always forget that the day after Xmas is a huge shopping day. I wanted to get some stuff at Macy’s but when I got there it was packed.

Xmas

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It is Xmas eve. Yeah, I am not going to try and spell it the normal way so I am writting it the Futureama way. I am on Metro North on my way to Jayson & Gretchen’s for Xmas. I will probably head home Friday. It will be nice to get out of the city for a few days even though I am going somewhere colder.

I am passing up on my family’s normal friends holiday party on Xmas night. I am disappointed I wont get to see the kids but not disappointed that I won’t see all the other screaming kids that will be there. It isn’t that I don’t like kids, but there are just way too many of them at this party. I am Jewish so it shouldn’t matter that I am not at an Xmas party that most of my family is at, right? I alternate going and having other plans to this party each year.

Its a Netbook

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I tried out an Asus eee 10000H back in August. I wasn’t a huge fan. The keyboard was too small and the battery layout was a bit awkward. Those reasons and the fact that at the time my main use for it was minimal I ended up selling the eee PC to Jayson. He loves it and uses it every day on the train to and from work.

With my new job I have had more of a need to have a really small computer that I can throw in my bag for chat and emails when I am out and about. The Thinkpad T61 from work is great (for a windows machine) but it isn’t so great to carry around unless I am going to and from work. For that reason I went back to looking at Netbooks. I looked at the Dell Mini 12, and the HP Mini 1000. The Dell wasn’t available to ship until January (come on dell) and I wasn’t sure if the 12″ netbook would be too big. That was my dilemma. I want a small machine, thus looking at a netbook in the first place, but I also have bad eyes. I want the biggest screen i can get. I think the Dell 12″ would be borderline too big. The keyboard on the HP Mini 1000 also got fantastic reviews for how good it was. I also looked at the Macbook Air. It was still light even though it was physically bigger than the other netbooks I was looking at. The Air did have a 13″ screen. The final deciding factor not to get the Air was price. It cost more than my regular laptop.

I opted for an HP Mini 1000 with a 60 gig hard drive and bluetooth from Amazon.com. Amazon Prime is great. I ordered the computer on Friday and for $3.99 it was at my house on Monday. Along with the Netbook I also picked up a Verizon Aircard for internet anywhere. I opted for the USB dongle device. I could have gotten a built in card for the mini but I wanted the option of using the device on my Macbook or Thinkpad also. So far the combo has worked out. I took the HP to work yesterday and got great signal on the Verizon Broadband.

I have yet to try out office or any real intense applications on the computer yet. One of the guys on my team did try loading videos from YouTube yesterday and said it worked great.

I am giving the computer a run for its money this week when I take it as my only computer to Jayson & Gretchen’s for a few days.

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iPod Free, Well Sort of

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For years I would travel everywhere with my iPod. Recently I had a 60gb and then a 160gb models. They aren’t the smallest but had enough storage for extra stuff so I had them vs a mini or nano. One of the reasons I bought an iPhone 3G was so I didn’t have to carry my iPod everywhere with me and just use my phone. At first I couldn’t stand that the iPhone couldn’t use the wired remote that I had with my iPhone. Because I liked skipping through songs I still used my iPod for music even though I had the iPhone. Back in October that started to change. The other day was the first time I actually took my iPod out of my bag to save weight. The only reason I use it now is as a hard drive or if my iPhone is running out of battery power.

The iPhone 3G isn’t perfect by any means but it does do allot of things right. Music and Video’s is one of them. I am happy for that. Now all I need is to be able to teather it to my laptop as a modem.

Drinks With Friends

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Tonight I meet up with a bunch of friends at Blaggards to celebrate the holiday. I was able to get out a little early and got there a bit after 5. I was able to see Jose, William, Calvin & Josh. With the exception of Josh I hadn’t seen any of those guys in months. It was good to catch up. I also hung out with Luke, Ben, Herbie, and others. I had a good time. I hadn’t been out with these friends in a while and after being out yesterday reminds me I miss it. After the new year I will endeavour to be out more with them.

Thankfully I wasn’t out too late since I had half a day of work tomorrow. Thankfully I am working remotely tomorrow so I can sleep a little later.

Dinner Monday

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Today was freezing out. I was working from home and all set to stay in and warm. That didn’t end up happening. I meet up with Jayson for lunch near Time Square. I was going to head home to finish the day off but I realized I had dinner plans with people from work and a vendor down by my office. So after lunch I ran down there to finish the rest of the day of work at work. 

Dinner was great. We went to a nice Italian restaurant. I had some Veal. For desert I we all had some Mcallan’s 15. It was good. I have had it before and Mcallan’s is fast becoming one of my favorite Scotches. I am going to look for a bottle for my apartment.

I didn’t get home till after 10, so it was a long day but all in all a good one.