The Ski Trip - and Monday

Now I can finally write about the ski trip to Canada. It was amazing, and one of the best weekend I've ever had. It was so much fun to rent a huge house for the weekend with 15 of your co-workers and have a good time.

We left work Friday around 3:00 and got to Collingwood, Ontario around 9:00. There was so much snow in Canada it was crazy. There was about 3 feet of snow on the ground at the house we stayed at and the snow banks from plowing the roads were huge. Friday night we had a really interesting party that lasted pretty much all night. I didn't go to sleep Friday night/Saturday morning until 5:30 AM which I never do.

Skiing Saturday was hard because I was exhausted from the night before. My ski pass was good until 10:00 PM but a few of us ended up leaving around 4:30 PM to go back to the house and shower and relax. Saturday night was much more low-key.

We decided to leave Sunday pretty early, around 9:00 AM to get back earlier and because we didn't know what the roads were going to be like. Sunday was literally blizzard conditions. Driving was really hard and there were points where we just had to stop in the middle of the road because we couldn't see the hood of the van we were in. The snow was blowing like crazy and you couldn't see the road or anything. We drove south to Toronto and got on the 401 back to Windsor. The 401 was actually closed in one area because ofa weather so we had to take an emergency detour route around the closed area. All said and done, it took us almost 8 hours to get back because of the weather. We got lucky though, 2 other cars of people we were with actually had to stay in Canada because they closed all the roads they were travelling on and forced them to stay overnight because conditions were so bad. So I am glad we made it back last night.

I'll have to post some of the pictures I took from the weekend, but I'm going to get ready for bed now.

PS...I love my new computer! It's my first blog entry with it and I really love the way the keypad feels. Vista is nice too so far, I like the user interface. So far so good. Did you know today's high was 11 degrees!

I Have The Weekend Off

There will be no posting this weekend, because I will be in Ontario, Canada skiing at Blue Mountain (www.bluemountain.ca). There's 17 of us total going from work. I'm excited because I got to practice my skiing last weekend so I'm ready to go. Supposedly last night it snowed 20 inches there so that should be exciting as well.

What else...oh I bought a new computer. I completely was not planning on doing this for another few months, because the laptops I liked were over $1000. Tonight though I went to Circuit City to check some out in person I had been looking at online and found what I think is a really good deal (Jay thought so too). I ended up getting an HP with a 15.4" screen, 2 GB RAM, and a 160 GB hard drive. Those are the same specs I wanted in the Dell but it was $1080. I ended up getting this HP for $620 after rebates which I think is a good deal. It's better than the $1080 and I like this computer. It's about the same size (l, w, h) as my old Thinkpad and weighs a little less. I'm happy with it. I bought it sort of on the spot, because the rebate ended Saturday. So I made the decision fast.

I'm going to wait until I get back from Canada to even boot it up. Actually I'm going to ask a guy that is in IT at work to just wipe it clean and start fresh with XP. I guess I would like to try Vista, but I want to get all that garbage off the computer that the manufacturer puts on. Hopefully he can get XP for me.

Katey will be watching little Walter and my apartment for me this weekend. She said she's going to take him to the dog park Saturday and I left her some money to spoil him with. I know he'll be just fine.

So...everyone have a nice weekend, I'll be in the great white north.

The One Good Thing About My Dead Laptop...

is that I am now 100% positive I will never own an Apple computer as my primary computer. Their "cuteness" can't cover up the fact that trying to do practical, everyday things like make spreadsheets is horrible with their application. Oh, but wait, you say you can run MS Office on a Mac? You're right...but doesn't that negate the whole point of even owning an Apple product...because you want to be innovative and new and different?

Can you tell I'm sour? I'm trying to make a spreadsheet to compare laptops I like and it's taking 10x as long as it should because I can't stand Apple's spreadsheet formatting. I guess if you like playing with widgets an Apple is good.

Anyway, I had Best Buy check my hard drive and they were able to power it up, but couldn't get anything off of it. I think I'm going to just forget about trying to do any data recovery since most places will charge around $200, and the data I lost is not worth $200 to me. Two of the laptops I really like are the IBM Thinkpad X61 and the Dell XPS M1330. Both have 2 GB RAM, 120 GB Harddrive, and smaller screens (12" and 13" respectively). The only bad thing is they are both around $1100. The Dell does come with a 3 year warranty and the IBM only comes with a 1 year warranty. I like the idea of the 3 year warranty. They are both considered "ultra thin" laptops which I really want in a laptop, but the packaging scares me since everything is so close together.

I like being that boring guy in the Apple commericals... I can get my work done faster.

A Part of Me is Gone

After 6 years, 2 deaths, and 2 re-incarnations my IBM Thinkpad laptop is dead. For the past few months I have had to slam my fist above where the hard drive is located to get it to start working again after pausing like some person who just woke up from a seizure. Tonight my method of slamming my fist on the computer didn't work, so I just applied a constant downward pressure with my fist until felt a vibration followed by what sounded like a card on bicycle spokes, then silence followed by heat on my fist. I'm assuming something got rubbed together and fried. It felt good. The only thing I will miss is my pictures. I need to find out if there is a way for them to be recovered. If not, all my pictures (about 3 years worth) are gone. I don't care about the music or the documents...but I want the pictures. Jay thinks they are gone forever. If I try to turn the laptop on I get a screen that says "0200: Disk System Failure". I'm assuming that's like the oil warning light in your car - you're screwed.

You're probably thinking "What were you doing David, when you're computer died?". Well, I was about 45 minutes into preparing my tax return on Turbo Tax. That's a good time for a computer to lock up and be killed, isn't it? You might also ask "If your computer is dead, how are you writing this?". I have an iMac G3 I bought for $60 that works, so I can have internet access. It sat in my closet and I brought it back out just now so I can use a computer.

Well, my Civic fund is going to be short about $1000 now for a new laptop. Laptop is dead, now the Saturn needs to go (not die, just go away) so I can get rid of the two things that pester and mock me.

I remember an episoe of Sex and The City when Carrie's laptop just died, and she lost all her columns, about 4 years worth. That's what it feels like. I had about 6 years worth of things on my laptop and I'm assuming they're gone forever. All my baby pictures of Walter, all my vacation pictures, and all my pictures from Clemson will be missed.