Packing

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I am on my way home to pack for a trip to Kingston. Dan and I are going for a minimum of one night. I may end up there a second night. I don’t want to be there for 2 days so I will do everything in my power to leave Wednesday night with Dan. We leave tomorrow afternoon right after work.

We are shuttling up some computer equipment also, so we will need time to fill up the van with stuff.

I need to make sure I have clothes and my laptop charger and misc stuff packed tonight. I originally wanted to go see the new Harry Potter movie with Jayson and Gretchen, but I can’t stay in the city for the movie and be able to pack tonight.

For that reason I and many others, I cannot wait till I can move into the city.

Still Building My Laptop

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Sunday I got the OS back on my Thinkpad. Today was spent getting all the other applications on it. Throughout the day I had people come and ask for stuff. I would say, dam I need to install that. I would spend the next 20 minutes doing an install to get 5 seconds of information for someone. Hopefully this will be done soon so I can resume my normal work schedule routine.

Most importantly I still need to put on the VPN and Wireless software on the laptop, so I can be remote when I am in Kingston tomorrow. That is on my agenda for first thing Tuesday.

Still Apartment Hunting

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I saw 3 more apartments today. I liked 2 of them. The only problem is they were both on the high side. Not too high, but if you inch higher in what you are going to pay, the next thing you know you are paying way more than you originally planned on.

Both apartments were nice. One was a big bigger than the other. But the smaller place was in a much better location. I think I am going to put in an application for the smaller place. I liked the location, and the building was nice.

The third place I went, was none of the above. it was not in a nice area, it was not a great building, and it didn’t have a 24 hour doorman like I requested.

The original buildings I wanted to see today had no openings. They filled up between the time I asked to see them, and the time we were going to go to see them. Oh well.

I am going to think over my choices tonight and call the real estate broker tomorrow. Hopefully the place I finally choose is not yet taken. That seems like it may happen. Stuff moves fast in manhattan in the summer.

Resume Normal Activity

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Today I pretty much returned to normal activities. I still am a bit stuffed up and coughing, but I went to the pool, and hung out with Jay most of the day. I was feeling well enough to goto outback. I also wasn’t afraid to get close to Morgan. Normally I am petrified to go near her when I am not feeling well, so I must be better.

Product Recovery

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I finally gave into the desire. I just got finished backing up all (i hope) of my data on my IBM Thinkpad T-40. As I write this I am running the IBM rapid restore function. Basically a hidden partition on the hard drive has all the settings and software that the machine had when it was bought. I am just returning it to the factory fresh setup.

I do this every once and a while. I may have done it once or twice before on this particular machine and I have only had it for 11 months. When I had more free time I would do this almost every 2-3 months. Now I don’t have the time, so it is a big pain in the ass to do, but it does wonders for the performance of the box.

I was having issues with the machine freezing up and then begin to work again after 30 seconds or so. I also realized how much crap I had accumulated on the machine. Now I am going to put Windows XP (pro), all the security patches and a few other pieces of software. Everything else I need I will put in a VMWare Virtual Machine. I will put VMWare workstation 4.5 on my machine. I just downloaded the free upgrade from 4.0. I want to keep this laptop as clean as possible. I know deep down that it will never happen in reality, but at least I will try.

I will spend the next week installing the main pieces of software I will need. I will spend the next month after that installing other miscellaneous pieces of software until I am finally happy with the setup.

Whenever I do this I always hope I remembered to back everything up. I almost always forget something. Sometimes important stuff, but usually something stupid, that will just take me time to get again, or I say goodbye forever to it.

Saturday Night Halo

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I went for a hair cut Saturday. I got up early since I couldn’t sleep, and went out. I ended up doing some errands, like the bank and a card for my dad’s birthday also while I was out. I then spend the rest of the day in bed trying to rest up for my dad’s birthday dinner.

By like 5PM my mom called to tell me that the dinner has been canceled. I was recovering from a cold. My mom was sick, and then it was discovered that my brother in law mike was also sick. We postponed it till next week. I was going to stay in bed for the night, then I ended up calling jayson and he came over. We went to dinner and then went over to John’s to play Halo for a while. Jay ended up going back to my place to sleep and we are planning on hitting the pool sunday. I also want to see Shrek 2. Not sure what is on the agenda.

This blog entry was written while listening to Out Of Love from the album “America Town” by Five for Fighting

Friday Still Sick

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Friday night I stayed in. I was still feeling sick. I took some more Tylenol PM and tried to goto bed early. Work was a normal kind of busy. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

I am scheduled to visit some apartments Monday afternoon. I hope that I find something. Miguel’s sister is a real estate broker also and I will be calling her if I cannot find something by early next week. I am still optimistic.

This blog entry was written while listening to I Alone from the album “Throwing Copper” by Live

CallShield Saga Is Over

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I finally got the Pro version of CallShield working on my Treo 600. Mantragroup makes this cool software call CallShield. I have mentioned it before. I can have distinctive rings on my Treo based off of groups in my address book. I can filter by number, area code, etc. I can also tell the software to go right to voice mail or hang up on someone based off of criteria like #, group, area code, etc. it is really cool.

My problem was that the lite version had a bug that would prevent me from using the distinctive ringer on my Treo 600. It kept rebooting when the ringer would go off. I went through 2 trials of their pro version of the software that worked before I was stuck. The support group was cool. they sent me a key to use the software for an extra week. Then a week goes by and the fix wasn’t in for the lite version. So I email them. Several days go by and they say, hey you have been cool send us your information and proof of purchase and we will upgrade you. I figure great, that was nice of them. I send them the information they require and another week goes by before I hear back from them. In total I bought the product on April 30, and I am finally getting it working without any demo’s today June 2. Not so good.

I do give them high marks for the software being really good. Also they didn’t give me a hard time about the upgrade. it just took a while to get responses back from them.

My bad experiences asside, Call Shield is my new killer app for the Treo 600 along side my Snappermail, & Verichat. This is why I have a smart phone.

Office 2004 For The Mac

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So my initial review of Office 2004 for the Mac is this. It is great. it is just as great as the previous version Office v.x for the Mac. That is the problem. I went out and bought this thing (and I am not regretting upgrading) and it doesn’t have that much new stuff. It is not a quantum leap of enhancements in any way. It is what everyone has been saying about Microsoft office upgrades. It is minor changes, that if you have 2 or 3 versions older product you will appreciate the upgrade. But if you are going from one realize behind to the new release you wont find much difference. That was my problem.

Entourage is nicer than it was in the previous version. Other than that, I don’t see much difference. I still like the product, but for what I do it is very similar to the older version. I will see after a few months if I change my opinion.

Friend Of A Friend

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Everyone has them. You have a friend and that friend introduces you to his or her friends. You either get along or you don’t. If you do and you hang out thats great, or not. That is how you meet people. Friends of friends are common. Some of my current friends I have were introduced to me by friends I don’t even see anymore. That is just the way it is. Other people you meet that are “friend of a friend” you only see or talk to when the initial friend is around.

That being said, a friend of a friend of mine called me last night. He never calls me. he is in the later group of only seeing him when I am with the mutual friend. I answer the phone and ask whats up. I get along with this guy so I am nice. He is looking for our mutual friend. I immediately am now pissed. You call me looking for someone else because they aren’t calling you back. How rude is that. Of course he does not even see what he did wrong, so I don’t mention it. I just file it away for future reference.

Am I wrong to think that was rude? I don’t speak to this guy very often and then he calls looking for someone else because he cannot get that person on the phone? And he wanted to talk to my other friend about some stupid thing. it wasn’t even an emergency. of course this guy thought it was an emergency, but what I am I to do? I may be over reacting. I am on cold meds this week. That may be it, yeah…