I finished a project a week and a half early at work. Woot! I was concerned about not meeting my deadline because the last time I did a similar project, it took me a little less than three weeks. This time I got it done in half the time. There was one day when I buckled down and worked the whole day, skipping lunch, and not even stopping to say hello to anyone. I succeeded in getting a week’s work done in one day. It was awesome. Now I have some time to putter around and do a bit of cartography, experiment with a new method for mapping addresses, and catch up with developments in the Garmin Colorado and Magellan Triton.
I signed into the Groundspeak forums today for the first time in two weeks. All the Colorado topics were bewildering. So much kvetching about certain features. Lots of topics. I was only away for two weeks and it was hard for me to figure out if the unit’s problems were resolved or not. Imagine if a newbie came in. They’d be confused beyond help. The Triton’s latest firmware update gave it a big boost. Correct sorting by distance of geocaches, faster startup, faster/instantaneous changing between pages. The only thing I don’t think it does yet is autorouting. Once Magellan gets that squared away, the Triton should be decent.
I’m getting my taxes finished on Friday. I know how much I owe the feds; I’ll find out how much I owe the state. Definitely no new computer for me. I’ve implemented a plan to start moving some data off my PC onto my portable hard drives. I freed up 1GB but anymore will be tough. I want all my data to live on at least two drives. One drive is 40GB, the other is 80GB, and I think I have about 47GB of data. I need to free up space for more aerial photography. I have on my hard drive about 3GB of a 7GB set of aerial photos that I will need over the course of completing the current phase of my consulting project. I need to think about this backup to see if I can find an efficient and easy way to make sure I have two copies of everything while freeing up space on my PC.
My Logitech laptop mouse should arrive from Wal-Mart within a couple of days. The two Kensingtons from Woot will arrive next week sometime. And an Asus Eee note – I took a couple of photos of my Eee with a 20-inch Acer. Big difference, eh?
I bought a new NiMH battery charger and another set of 2500mAh batteries today. My 2300mAh batteries, which are either 2 or 3 years old, will be recycled. One battery refuses to take a charge now. I want uniform mAh across my batteries, so I’m getting rid of the whole set. The charger is about 6 years old, so I picked up a new charger as well. The new charger takes 8.5hrs to charge the batteries. My old one is one of those 30-minute chargers. Those things are hard on batteries because of the high heat produced during charging. I rarely need batteries so quickly, so I will switch to the slow charger to try and get more durability out of my batteries. This new charger is funny – it comes with 3 faceplates. Since when is a battery charger a fashion accessory?
Time for bed. Sorry to cut this short, as I still have stories to tell. I also apologize for not following AP Stylebook standard with my numbers. You are supposed to spell out numbers zero through nine (or is it one through nine?). Hmm, according to Wikipedia, AP says you are not to supposed to put a comma before the word and at the end of a list. I always put a comma before and. Well, I’m not going to change that. A comma indicates a pause, and if you read a list aloud, you will pause before the and at the end of the list. Planes, trains, and automobiles. Planes, trains and automobiles. OK, if you read the second sentence aloud, it will sound like you are saying trains followed by a singular group of trains and automobiles. In reality, you are speaking of three separate groups of things – planes, trains, and automobiles. That second comma and accompanying pause clues you in to the fact that three separate groups of things are being discussed.
Enough of that. Not like I have a degree in English or Journalism. Just giving my opinion.
