Training

So I’m going to call some colleges today and make a decision by this weekend, on what exactly I’m going to do. I’m leaning towards Baker College’s online Computer Programming associates degree right now. Though, I’m also considering Westwood’s Software Engineering associates, and Oregon State University’s Bachelor of Natural Resources. I’ve pulled out my old copy of The C Programming Language and am working my way through the first chapter right now. Its going pretty good, and I’m enjoying it so far, which is a large part of why I’m leaning towards computer programming. We’ll see though..

Andros is so close to walking, its incredible to see. He’ll pull himself up, turn around, balance, and turn around and grab something as he takes a step. Its absolutely amazing. Any day now he’s going to just stand up and start walking around… I actually dreamed that he did so the other night.

I’ve stated trying to exersize more now too. I rowed for 15 minutes-ish today, did 40 cruches and 10 pushups along with some other random exersizes. Hopefully if I really start exersizing every day, I’ll be able to get into shape and loose the last 15lbs ish of pregnancy weight. That’d be awesome, so, we’ll see if I can really stick to it. Plus, it’d be nice to be in decent shape for my black belt test on the 9th…

Finally!

Well, I really did not expect to spend all day long working on my grandpa’s new iMac… but I did. About half the time was spent on technical support… because it didn’t come with OS X pre-installed, I was trying to upgrade it. And, apparently the CD with Leopard that came with it is faulty. Which, was my guess after 15 minutes. But, of course, it took 2-3 hours on the phone for apple tech support to figure that out!!

But, after that it was (mostly) smooth sailing And, in anycase its up and running nicely now. iChat, Mail, Address Book, Safari – everythings working, with all of grandpa’s stuff. And, I got him OpenOffice for writing his papers and such I chatted with my aunt for a big chunk of the day, while getting everything set up… we even did a three-way chat with her and her daughter, which was pretty cool.

I just really, really wish that I could figure out a way to video chat with everyone else… I still can’t quite believe that there is absolutely no AIM vidoe chat client for linux…

Anyhow… I never really made it shopping while I was up there, so now I’m shopping (as usual) online! Probably cheaper this way, anyhow;)

Computers & Shopping Hurrah!

Ugh. So today we went up to visit my grandparents and get their new iMac set up. It came like a week ago, but between us being sick, them being sick and their trip down to the Biltmore, its just sat in a box since then… In anycase, I figured it’d take me about a half hour to get it all set up and then another half hour or so to show grandpa how to work it. I figured that sounded fairly reasonable. Don’t you?

Well, it wasn’t. For starters, I could not figure out how to install their cable modem (Motorola SB5101) from Time Warner on the Mac. I had the install disc, but it simply did not work. I read the instructions and it just was *not* working. I’m not sure if it was a windows-only disc somehow, or if I’m just totally stupid. Who knows. Of course, Motorola’s site is totally unhelpful. Lots of info on how to install the damn thing for Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista… but not a word on OSX!!

The other big hang up was (is?), that they have been using AOL for the past several years, and there is apparently just no good way to get ones contacts, email and bookmarks off of AOL. I mean, I understand *WHY* AOL makes it soo hard to do so… but that doesn’t mean I have to approve. Ugh. Mind you, its just made me all the more determined to figure it out, one way or another….

And, finally, I could not get it to upgrade to OSX Leopard. Since its so new it came with the install disc (although it wasn’t pre-installed)… but, when I put it in the drive, and it started restarting the computer… it’d just lock up. I didn’t share this with either grandpa or anyone else as I figured it’d just piss them off. I found it both bizzare and obnoxious, but don’t know what I can do, really.

In anycase I’ll probably be driving back up either tommorrow or the next day to finish up, and then go holiday shopping some more. We did manage to find gifts for both my brother and his fiance’ and Kevin’s sister and her family though…. Which basicly leaves just my mom, and his (Kevin’s), mom & stepdad, and his grandparents… Hopefully we can make it over to Lehman’s sometime here soon and figure them out

Ubuntu

Well… I had the bug the other day to play with Linux again – something I haven’t really had the chance to do in going on two years now… So I went ahead and started the 3-day long process (yes, you read that right – 3 DAY process, I’m on dial-up. Still.) of downloading the newest version of Ubuntu (6.10) – After all, 3 days of no phone calls is better than waiting 4-6 weeks, right??

Anyhow. I finally got it downloaded, at which point, it occurred to me that I inexplicably did not have any blank CDs – so I ran to town, and bought 20. Got home, burnt it, got it installed. OK, all good so far…. only I couldn’t figure out how to get wvdial to configure for the life of me, so I figured I’d just reboot to windows… and realized that my boot loader had gotten changed, and I was thus locked out. So I started trying to figure Grub out, gave up after a bit an figured I’d just throw College Linux back on, and all would be good, right? Wrong. Long story short, after (trying to) install various old Linux flavors I realized I’d somehow accidentally formatted my Windows partition… So I re-installed Ubuntu. And after a bit more effort… figured out wvdial. And am currently loving Ubuntu.

Now, when I say that, I really mean it. For the first time, I’ve successfully gotten my modem working, my sound card working… hell, even my iPod’s up and running (I’m listening to it right now!!). In short, I really don’t think I’ll bother to re-install windows… I can’t think what I need it for. Now, its always possible that at some point in the future I’ll want/need it… but, for now, meh.

I think it all boils down to the fact that I’ve been living off of other people’s computers for the past 1+ years. As a result, most everything I actually use on a day-to-day basis is online to one degree or another – pictures (smugmug), email (gmail), documents (google docs), and of course all my mp3’s are on my iPod, so not even they have been lost this time around (and even if they hadn’t been, my wonderful brother burned them all to CD when I formatted THAT in Spain!!)

Anyhow, its just a really strange feeling to be totally free of Windows for the first time, well, ever. And not the least bit worried/unhappy about it. As I think about it… my computer probably needed a good format anyhow – its been a good 4+ years after all.