I’ve actually been back since Wednesday the 21st, but with things being so busy I haven’t had a chance to post until now.
Florida was amazing, and in many ways was exactly what I needed in terms of rest and relaxation. I came back to Colorado refreshed and ready for the rest of a busy summer. It’s also nice that this will be my last big trip for a while. After Kansas City, Glenwood Springs and Orlando it’ll be a good month before I’m traveling again, and even that is just a quick 3-day trip. I’m looking forward to being at home and catching up with everything.
Speaking of catching up… that’s going to be the theme for the next few weeks. I pretty far behind in some big projects at work, I have a laundry list of NCSC things I need to do, and my apartment is a disaster.
Some updates on a few things
- I thought it would be a cool idea to try out Windows Vista on my work laptop. I learned pretty quickly how much it can suck to be an "Early Adopter". The installation took forever, and gave no progress indication. After I got everything installed, Vista decided that my laptop didn’t need to access the network. Both my wired and wireless connections were hopeless. I got this stupid "Local Only" status on my network connections. After messing with it for 3 hours, I had no choice but to nuke my laptop and put XP back on. The rest of the day was spent rebuilding the laptop – what a waste of time.
Right now I’m pretty discouraged about Windows Vista. There don’t really seem to be any features in there worth paying the $$ to upgrade. Also I’m pretty concerned about my ability to upgrade. This is the third time I’ve tried to upgrade (using 3 different machines), and while I realize this is a beta I’ve never had such bad luck before. When you’re beta-testing an operating system there a few things you’re willing to live with – but all of the problems have been show-stoppers. I don’t think I’ll be "adopting" Vista for a while.
- This week is Bike to Work Week in Fort Collins, adding with the national Bike to Work day. For me, it’s a 10 mile trip into the office, so these next few days will be spent preparing for Wednesday’s trip. I have my route mapped out, it’s just a matter of covering all of it before I leave. My second biggest issue is what to do with my laptop. I need it for work (as it’s my only computer), but it may be interesting fitting it into my camel-back backpack. I don’t want to drive to work the night before just to bring my laptop – it seems like it’d defeat the purpose of biking to work. I’ll have to play with the backpack and see how things go.
- Lastly, I’m back on the drumming market, looking for a new band. There have been a few opportunities and people indicating interest. It’s be helpful putting up a Craigslist posting as well. In the next few weeks I’ll meet some of these people and jam with them. What’s funny this feels a lot like on-line dating… We’ll see how things go.