Don't Do It!

Normally I get the flu vaccine as flu season rolls 'round, this year I am not being vaccinated and am encouraging friends and family to do the same. This song while entertaining is also educational, please give it a view.

Brave New World

I spent part of the morning helping my co-worker navigate her new cell phone the Motorola Rival, she hadn't upgraded since 2000 and the gals at the office teased her constantly about having a monochrome brick.

It takes her a long time to reach a decision about most things and she had threatened to upgrade her cell one year previous when Sprint phoned to say her phone would cease working once they completed their network upgrade to digital. Clearly she was not discouraged from continuing to use her brick and she didn't rush out to upgrade, which we all find amazingly comical!

She was very disappointed with Sprint's plan offers and came away feeling that she needed to be a corporate subscriber to receive good customer service and a competitive plan. It was all good, however, because she's now a Verizon customer and we can utilize the cell to cell option which is unlimited texting / photos / calls - how can anyone beat that?

After an hour she learned to receive and open text and photo messages, as well as send them. She also knows how to populate her contact list with new people as the gals from the office send her stuff. I truly think this will enhance her relationship with them and it's definitely a brave new world for her!

If I sound excited it's because I am. I wholly embrace technology and this particular gal's an introvert with many health challenges. I think a camphone will herald a new and exciting way for her to interact with her peers, family and co-workers. At least I'm hoping so.

Anything I can do to help her use technology to express herself and communicate I will do. So I foresee calls for tech support in my future, which I hope I'll know the answers to.

Music makes the world go 'round

Sometimes I feel like my mind's an encyclopedia of music from the 50s, 60s, 70s and on. My mom loves music and always had it playing while relaxing or house cleaning. My sisters were Motown girls, Beatle crazies and Soul lovers. Every memory I have is recalled to a soundtrack - every memory - happy or sad, good or bad it has its own soundtrack.

So while at work my co-worker (who recently lost her mother) and I were alone and I decided to play music. Naturally she's quiet and contemplative and sometimes the silence is a bit much. After all, I can only initiate conversation and talk so much. We come from similar generations with similar taste in music.

What I observed in her after ten minutes or so of listening was an uplifted spirit and a lilt in her demeanor. She seemed more engaged in her surroundings and participated in conversation even initiating topics. It was good to see her spirit uplifted and catch a glimpse of her smile. I guess what people say is true: Music makes the world go round.

Seems things are breaking...

...nothing major though, they're things that can hopefully be repaired or definitely replaced in time.

So the fabled meeting went on without a hitch except that a whole lot of nothing was said instead of something. It's as if our Big Cheese was admonished not to drop the bomb just yet but had to save face by chairing the meeting anyway.

We left feeling very much deceived and wondering when the Big Cheese would be given the green light to speak his piece and tell us the real deal. Remember when grown ups would speak within range in hushed tones so the children couldn't hear? You knew something was up and felt scared. Worried.

Meantime my DVRs dying and I have recorded programs on it. Grrr! LOL I need to have marathon viewing sessions so I can change out the broken one for one that actually records scheduled programs.

And the TV that the dying DVR is connected to is also on the fritz. The screen is fuzzy and lettering stretched as if italicized. Sometimes the screen straightens in five minutes, others in two hours, lately not at all. Bummer!

So the TV's shorting out and I need to see if there's actually a TV repair guy who can fix it, the last thing I need to do right now is incur an expense for a new TV.

Ah yes, Boo's been notified on the down low, of course, that massive layoffs are approaching.

How's your week going?

Oh woe is me...

I awoke this morning with The Boss's song Cover Me playing in my head perhaps, it's because my cat was dive bombing the bed in search of her toy. As I lay awake I began thinking about yesterday's late afternoon surprise:

My cost center which includes all departments is having an all hands on meeting next Wednesday, a first ever event and this coupled with the earlier announcement of merging with another department is not looking promising.

I wish I could say that I am not concerned but I would be a liar. I do feel that management could have waited to announce the upcoming meeting until Monday of next week - why wouldn't two days notice be sufficient? At least we could have a great weekend devoid of worry, as I'm sure this will occur soon enough.

How I love my Netbook!

Most important and what makes it so darned convenient is its weight, size and portability. It's so light and convenient that I literally take it with me everywhere. I've owned notebooks for several years but their weight is too much for me to lug them around.

The HP mini has a 10.1 inch screen which is more than adequate for me to compose blog posts, edit photos, surf the web, work on a spreadsheet or document and read news articles. If the screen was a mere 7" then I'd be in trouble because that is too small withvery limited real estate.

The built-in wifi means I don't have to carry a wireless card / dongle and I effortlessly connect to open wifi networks. The netbook immediately identifies existing networks and presents a list of available ones and whether or not they're open or secured.

The HP 1033 mini's battery life is great at 5 hours on a six cell Lithium Ion battery. The battery indicator in the task bar makes it easy for me to monitor the battery's status. I can have a morning session, shut down, follow up with an afternoon session and still have enough juice left to compute in the evening.

The minimum cell pack I'd recommend is six, I tried a three cell Acer Aspire One unit and the battery quickly degraded to a mere 2-1/4 hours of battery life which is insufficient.

Most netbooks have three USB ports which is more than enough since they also have built-in media card readers. My only complaint is that the card reader does not read Compact Flash media, which I use in a MicroTrack 24 /96 recorder and digital camera.

The HP mini has a 160 gig drive as did the Acer Aspire One and I strongly recommend this size as being the smallest size I'd consider. You can find netbooks with drives in 60, 80 or 100 gig sizes but 160 is the magic size for me.

Netbooks do not have internal optical drives but the thee USB ports certainly provide for added expandability at my leisure. I normally travel with two 8 gig USB flash drives though I rarely use one, except for game play.

I've installed games on an 8 gig SanDisk drive that acts like a hard drive eliminating the need for me to use a game's compact disc during game play while preserving space on the internal 160 gig drive.

So if I sound jazzed about the netbook it's because I am! I rarely use other computers in the house preferring to surf from the light weight netbook and any room in the house. The netbook's so light and doesn't generate a lot of heat like a standard notebook that I can comfortably surf for hours.