Two Cents and a Thousand Words

It seems like every summer I have to have at least one project.

Last summer, I organized my closet. Yup, completely. That’s a big project, trust me. Before that, I cleaned up downstairs. You get the idea.

My first big project this summer was ripping all my CDs into MP3s on my iMac. Well, 6.2 gigs and 1700+ songs later, that project’s finished. I love iTunes: I can sort by genre or artist or album and just play whatever I want easily. My next project is converting my film prints to digital photos on iPhoto: yeah, there are a lot of ‘em, but it’s pretty easy to just put them under my digital camera and make it act like a scanner. It comes out pretty well, too. Then of course there’s my continuous project of going around the state; after I get my car fixed Friday, I think I might be doing western Maine this weekend.

I went to Boothbay Harbor a little while ago, and some of the best shots were of the harbor itself. Thanks to Adobe Photoshop Elements, I created a panorama. Click the picture below for a bigger version.

More shots coming soon.

Got this e-mail from Dell after asking about my keyboard:

Dear Justin,

Thank you for contacting dell e support and services.

please do give the details so that I will be able to do the needful.

Gotta love weekend tech support. Anyway…

Details of the Out of Warranty details are as follows (approx).

1) $269 flat rate Out of Warranty

2) $129 Parts only

3) Additional $699 for Motherboard–if it has to be replaced

OR:

You could purchase the keyboard (part#:02RNH) from Dell Spares and get it fitted at a local service center.

This comes down to the fact that I’ll pay $400 to send this thing into Dell (disregarding the mobo if needed). My other choice? Buy a refurbished keyboard from them for $35 and take it to a ‘local service center’.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, reboot for a minute. I’ve been there, done that. I think that’s how this all started and my fan still doesn’t work.

I think this means I’ll finally be tearing open my laptop. I bet I could fix it myself, and if it doesn’t work I could always send it into Dell. It’s a flat fee, so… I dunno.

If I were to get a new laptop, it’d be around $1800. That includes a three-year warranty.

I’ve been able to stay pretty close to the 50 hours of dial-up per month allowed free by UMaine, though I do use the computers a lot at the library. I’ve been able to keep up with everything I do on the Internet.

Almost everything, that is. I’ve kind of slacked off with the e-mail thing.

I’m not really sure why; my best guess is that I have to either use a separate e-mail program (having to be online while I read them) or the slow Web interface. I get through a lot when I’m at UMaine, but other than that, nope. I’ve spent the last couple hours going through and sorting e-mails to make them easier to go through later. I think I have over 400 I’ve just kept in my box since May, including payment receipts, bills, and special offers.

If you send me some mail and I haven’t responded, I’m sorry. Hopefully after today I’ll be caught up. You may now resume your e-mailing.

So, yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this thing. I’ve been working at the library, going around the state, that kind of thing. I’ll have new pictures up soon.

My laptop continues to die a slow, miserable death. It really shouldn’t – it’s only 2 years old. I’ll be sending it into Dell to get the fan fixed (again – they didn’t fix it the first time and now it doesn’t seem to work at all – thumbs down to Computer Renaissance) and the keyboard, too, since some of the keys don’t work. I’ll probably be without it for a month, so that’ll probably force me into learning more about my iMac. That’s a good thing. I’ll be reformatting both of my computers before I go back to school to start clean, so that’s a project in itself with backups and synchronizing and stuff.

On another note, being at the library really makes me want to start reading again. I haven’t read a book for pleasure for years, and I’d love to get back into it. I’d also love to read some works about technology and not about technology alike – anything to get me off of the computer. When I’m bored, I go on the computer. Maybe if I could read instead when I was bored I wouldn’t be on the computer so much. Who knows. Worth a try.

Our kitchen is complete, finally. It looks great. I’ll put some pics up of that, too, soon. It looks a lot bigger now and the only things left are painting, wallpapering, and getting a new window for over the sink. Overall, I really like it. Mom went through everything and we have a lot of space in the cupboards now, too. Not to mention there’s lots of stuff for our yard sale next month.

Hopefully I’ll be writing more entries soon. We’ll see.

We had one of the worst thunderstorms I’ve ever seen last night. We had lightning almost constantly, and we had thunder and heavy rain, too. We even had a tornado warning here, and they think a tornado may have touched down near Lincoln.

All I know is that it made me miss a chat with my Leoville folks. Sorry about that; if we didn’t have electricity striking all around and we had electricity in the appliances in the house, I would’ve been there.

I was able to shoot some video of the lightning; keep in mind that I didn’t edit this at all. It was pretty much like this for at least a half an hour. Click on it for a 1.5 MB MPG.

It’s Maine, dammit. It’s never supposed to be above 80. 97 is just too damn hot.

In other news, we’re having our kitchen redone. We’re getting new cabinets and getting the floor replaced (there was some pretty bad water damage in a corner; we could see downstairs once they pulled the rotted wood out, and we could look down and see our washer). Click to make ‘em bigger.

I love Photoshop Elements. More specifically, I like the Photomerge feature. It helps you create panoramas of pictures you’ve taken. Take a look at a picture from Weston during my Aroostook trip (click it for a 320Kb version):

All this from a program I got free with my digital camera. On top of that, I’m finally learning how to use some of the more advanced features of the C-700.

More Aroostook pictures here.

First the fan, now the keyboard.

The b, n, space, right alt, right control, left arrow, right arrow, and down arrow keys don’t work on my keyboard. Sometimes they do, most times they don’t. I’m typing on an external keyboard now. I’ll probably have to send the thing into Dell; I’m NOT going to have it done locally again.

This is me grumbling.

I think a lot about what I’ll do when I grow up. It usually comes down to something having to do with web design, a little psych, a little photography, and maybe some journalism. Hell, I’ve learned a lot about TV just by watching TSS.

I’ve started to think I might have a new title, though: Internet Theorist (or something). I have a file on my laptop with about twenty ideas for sites. Each one of them could make me a million bucks. Of course, I’d have to spend my life on one of them to make a million bucks on it, but you get the idea. I’m thinking I might like the whole business path where I own a web business devoted to making services and a network of other sites. I think I could really get stuff done like that. And I already have a lot of ideas.