It's been far too long since I'e posted up here. There have been many reasons, of course.

So, what have I done since I posted last and why haven't I posted at all for months? It's been well over three months now.

Well, not long after my last post we took a trip to Hawaii. It was my first time there and it was rather pleasant. It was actually colder than I expected. Not that it was cold, but it was scorching sunny -- it was often overcast or just comfortable. The water was a bit cooler than I had hoped for -- I still got cold in many areas.

After that, work got very busy for me. However, wedding prep and other things kept me away from blogging even when I wasn't at work.

We had decided to replace our carpet floors with hardwood before the wedding. One problem led to another and it's still not done, but we're doing all of the work rather than paying others to do it. This came about because of some problems with others, too. The reason we haven't finished it isn't because we can't go faster. It's mostly because we've been waiting on various things to happen. The latest is that we have to get our concrete floor levelled and we haven't been called back by people to get quotes on it. Two large cracks have createed a floor with 3 different planes to be levelled.

Now we're keeping busy doing house work (the goal is to make progress every day), planning for our honeymoon, and doing regular work.

On the gadget front, many things have taken place.

We returned the Averatec because they wouldn't help us get Windows back on it and the Linux driver support was pretty poor.

I finally got a replacement for the Jeep stereo (VRCD-300USB) from MegaSound -- the MegaSound VRCD-400USB (It's nicer looking, but so far isn't working much better -- but I haven't had time to really try to get it working).

We got an XBox 360. It's really quite great. ;)

We got a DS Lite and a DS. Compared to the PSP, the features aren't as good but the battery life and ease of picking them up and putting them down to play quickly is much better, IMO. I still like the PSP and still need to download the LocoRoco demo.

We got a Dell XPS M1210 for our upcoming trip. This is my favorite laptop, to date. It's small, but not too small. It's light (ok, it could be lighter -- but it is under 5 pounds). It's not so small it's skimping anything -- it has a dual core processor, can take up to 4GB of RAM, has a DVD burner, and has a real video card (64MB fixed and 192MB shared). It's the battery life that has me sold, though. In my typical use for it, I'm getting well over 5 hours and usually 6-7 hours of usage out of it. (My typical use? Browsing, email, Google Earth, and other non-development and non-gaming tasks with WiFi turned on. It is the T2300E, with a 5400rpm hard disk, too.) Basically, with the exeption of the screen resolution, it can be a full development machine if it wants to be. It won't be the best gaming machine, but it won't be bad either. The screen can be seen in full sunlight, too, which is very useful.

I'm sure there are plenty of other things I'm missing (that's why you're supposed to blog frequently and as things happen, right?) Some things I'll need to elaborate on, when I get the time.

Speaking of that, when will I blog next? I actually don't know -- all of the things keeping my away from the blog are still present -- and then we'll be on our honeymoon.

So, until next time -- whenever that is -- enjoy!

Posted by Shane on August 6, 2006 9:48 AM | Permalink