I’m Scurrying Like A Confused Squirrel

How do we do it? My time is being tugged in at least three different directions and my life is devoid of a significant other! How do we survive? There are simply not enough hours in my waking day to accomplish what I need to accomplish.

You’d think that all of this activity would include great news about house repairs, fantastic progress with my yard work, or some fun. Sadly, no.

After Much Difficulty, I Am Mac OS X 10.5.7 Compliant
Yesterday was not a good day. I love my Macs; I really, really love them. However, just like any relationship in which I have been, love has it’s rough spots. Yesterday was a rough spot.

Twice yesterday afternoon my MacBook stopped functioning properly. I’d get up and walk away for a little while and when I returned the screen was dimmed as if it were going into power save (which is not an unusual behavior) but all trackpad and keyboard input was ignored. To make matters even more strange, the computer hadn’t completely crashed because the audio for whatever I was playing was still coming out of the speakers and when the iTunes window was visible I could also watch the time change as the track played. Not good.

At the end of the afternoon I read that Apple had release a new operating system update, Mac OS X 10.5.7, so I gleefully kicked off a Software Update in hopes that whatever was contained within would fixed what ailed me. On two occasions my download failed part-way through the 286MB download, so I switched to a direct download from Apple which increased my download to over 450MB. Sadly, the internet at the office is not the swiftest so my download took well over an hour and my plan to leave .

Well, at least I was able to catch up on a few back episodes of The Office.

ITP Flickr Pic
Hey! Look! It’s a photo not taken with an iPhone.

This is the big blue bear which peeks into the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver. I tried for three days to get a shot of this when some light was actually hitting it. Like most downtown areas Denver has a number of tall buildings which block the light for most of the day.

I’m Remembering Why I Broke Up With Microsoft
After my spat with Apple I thought that I might want to flirt with Microsoft’s Windows 7 Release Candidate. My interest in operating system whoring was twofold. First, since I’ve been unsuccessful in getting my legal copy of WindowsXP to install as a virtual machine on my Mac under VMWare I figured that this could be a legal way to have access to a Windows operating system. Second, this access would allow me to update the Black Sheep stats (which are currently clumsily compiled in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet) until I finally finish writing my Black Sheep Stats application.

All I’d have to do is kick off a overnight download of the 2.6GB file. Simple, right? Nope.

First I had to reset the password of my Windows Live (MSN / Hotmail) account since I couldn’t remember the password. Actually, I didn’t remember having a Windows Live account.

Then I had to jump through some hoops to get to the download page.

Then, because this is Microsoft, the download was not done in a standard way — so I had to disable my popup blocker.

But of course this didn’t work smoothly on my first attempt, so I deleted the partially-downloaded file and kicked off another download. But that didn’t work properly, so I tried again.

And I tried again.

And I tried again.

And I remembered why I broke up with Microsoft, quit trying to download Windows 7 RC, and went to bed.

Kicking My Photography Up A Notch
I’m tired of being a half-assed photographer and am vowing to improve my skills and marketing by year’s end. Beginning this weekend I am (finally!) going to work on my SmugMug account.

I’ve also enrolled in a two-day (June 6-7) workshop being put on locally by Digital Days Photography. Yeah, I know that June 7th is a Black Sheep Sunday; I guess I’ll have to miss yet another hash.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – scattered
Current Music – listening to the “MacCast” podcast.
Website Of The Day – The web is such a wonderful place! Where else could you find a compilation of Awkward Family Photos?
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing

Monthly
Foot Mileage – 0 miles, Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 3 (3)
Vegetarian Days – 1, Carnivorous Days – 11
Marta Rides – 0

May Goals
It’s mid-May. I’m not going to make any goals.

2009 Goals
– Reduce my weight to 190 pounds (today’s weight was 199.5 pounds)
– Completely read the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
РEarn at least $150 through photography sales in order to cover the cost for the renewal of the Jalape̱o Beach SmugMug account I opened the other day.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop

The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in Objective-C (iPhone development) and Ruby on Rails (Black Sheep web page concept)
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]