Blizzard

So this is what it looked like after the snow had (mostly) stopped:



and:



This is what it looks like after you shovel for half an hour just to make a small path to your garage because your plow guy has to rent front end loaders to dig people out and each driveway is taking 4 times as long:

Olympics on NBC = FAIL

Olumpics so far...

30% Opening Ceremony

40% Commercials

25% Human interest stories

5% Sports

Seriously NBC, you suck.

Why do I bother?

I just took a look at my blog for the first time in about 8 months. I'm blogging again...for one post at least.

Two weeks of Mac

So far all is well. The OS X learning curve has been pretty shallow. I just installed Windows 7 on it as well with Bootcamp (thanks to Lifehacker and Simplehelp.net). The install went very smoothly. I only used Windows 7 for a short amount of time and all the functionality seemed to be there. I'll report more as I find it.

I have to give props to Apple for iPhoto. Not a ton of features, but I'm finding that I don't need all the features the other photo software packages come with. I'm especially enjoying the face recognition piece. Extremely easy to use and has a pretty good success rate in guessing faces.

Upgrading the Macbook Pro 13 Inch

I refused to pay the exorbitant prices that Apple wanted for upgrades. So I purchased 4 GB of ram and a 320 GB hard drive from Newegg. Including shipping the total order was about $120 to my door. Much less than apple wanted and it was sitting on my porch the next day. Nice Job.

Unfortunately they upgrade itself was not quite as smooth. Apple, in their infinite wisdom (or more likely to prevent users upgrading their own hardware) decided to secure the bottom panel with ten precision screws. They also decided to put lock-tite on all of these screws. Hopefully you can envision how annoying it was to remove all these screws. Note to apple: please stop being control freaks and make it, if not easy, at least less annoying to upgrade hardware. Sorry, but the PC makers have you beat on this.

Once the cover was off, the upgrade was straightforward. It wouldn't be hard to figure out, but kudos go the the guys at iFixit for their guides. It's nice to have backup if you need it.

Ok, everything back together, time to boot back up. Insert the install CD and we're ready to go....until it asks where to install the OS to. No disk shows up. Get annoyed for a few seconds thinking I have a bad drive. Then search the menus at the top of the window, found the disk utilities. Format the volume and I'm on my way. Once again, it's just a little thing but Microsoft has this right. OS X should detect the drive(s) and ask which one you would like to use, then offer up the disk utilities if it's not there. I can't think of a reason not to offer this choice. The rest of the install was extremely easy and took about a half-hour to finish.

Going to the Dark Side - The MacBook Pro

So my reliable Dell PC was finally on it's way out. Not too bad considering it provided 5+ years of reliable service. So it was time to upgrade. I've always been intrigued by the Mac. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal to switch over since my laptop is primarily for web surfing, movie watching and other light duty work. I have a quad-core desktop in my office that I use for heavy lifting.

So a few observations:

Other than the crowds of a Friday night at a busy mall in my area, the Apple Store was a breeze. There were plenty of staff inquiring if I needed help while I browsed.

I used a student ID to purchase it. $100 off the purchase price, and a $229 rebate towards an iPod. Win-win!

Apple does the best packaging hands down. No styrofoam. No annoying, tight, cardboard boxes that you have to shimmy it out of. Other PC makers take note. They make the package part of the experience. It works.

I'm going to separate some of my other observations into other posts...more to come.

Chinese Beer

We visited the China Pavilion in Epcot's World showcase and had some Chinese beer. It was quite tasty.

Christmas Crafts

I love crafts

Christmas Cooking

Flambe tequila shrimp salad...yumm!

Blue Martini

Bought at Ohana in the Polynesian Resort, DisneyWorld. I thought it was kinda gimmicky when I saw it on the menu...but seeing it in person I have to admit it was kinda cool.

Track Day

Picture from a track day - Watkins Glen, New York...cold and a bit rainy for parts of the day...but fun none the less. If you're interested in trying this out yourself I highly recommend it. Here's the track day org I belong to...PDA Driving School

Test Fit

So here are the lights test fit for now. We have people coming over for the Superbowl so I won't have time to sand, spackle, and clean before hand.

Home Improvement Begins

So the home improvement is about to begin. This is what we are starting with:










These recessed lights do not give out enough light over the kitchen work area so we are going to replace them. Yes, those walls are purple! This is another reason to replace the lights, so I can prime the ceiling (which is yellow) and the walls at the same time.

It's always interesting to see how close you came to having your house burnt down...



It's not showing up in the picture too well, but the insulation around the recessed cans (the ones with a warning label telling you not to place insulation within three inches of them) was burnt. There was also burnt insulation stuck to the cans when I took them out. Luckily we have had cfl's in the sockets since we moved in so there wasn't much danger.

This picture shows how yellow the ceilings were:



I have to give our previous owner credit for the colors, they definitely were bold!

You may be able to tell from the pictures that I am a horrible spackler (sp?). So there will be a lot of sanding in my future.

Here's a picture of the pendant lights we are putting up:



More to come after I get more work done.