Still in Indiana, Merry Christmas!
Or rather, Boxing day! The morning of the boxing day finds us still in Indiana, after a very successful Christmas bash at Jen’s. Ate till I could eat no more, and then stuffed myself some more. Quite remarkable the propensity of a person to stuff oneself disregarding conventional wisdom. No wonder then I am turning into an elephant.
The festivities over, I am quite excited at the prospect of returning back home and to work, to take up the usual routine, which stressful though it might be at times, is home. I am quite excited as well, to get back home and assemble my new rig. Yes I bought components for a new computer which I will make exclusively a Windows Vista Ultimate machine. The specs are nowhere near ultimate, but it should do the jobs I throw at it, with consummate ease. The specs I chose for this machine were designed with an eye on keeping the price low.
AMD Athlon X2 5000+ (2.6GHz)
ECS G8200A (v.1) with HDMI output motherboard
OCZ 2x1GB PC6400
Samsung 500 GB HDD (7200RPM, 32MB Cache)
ASUS 19″ Widescreen TFT
Raidmax Case + 530W Antec PSU
All from Newegg for a princely sum of 299, after rebate! That is including the TFT screen. Make me a better system for that price, I challenge y’all. What can I say – just at the right place at the right time.
Back to Christmas – I got a chockfull of Chocolates from one and all, Pound cake from Rissa, and hold your breath - Pete Sampras’ Autobiography – A Champion’s Mind. I literally squealed with delight at the sight! That along with the Black and Decker corded power drill and accessory bits made this Christmas complete. Thank you my beloved!
Apologies for the discombobulated entry, Sam has the Wii on, and the TV to a volume the neighbors can relate to. Ah temporary respite – switched on my iPod.
Temperature dips!
We are in Indiana for the holidays, and having a great time with Jen, Sam and the kids. The kids keep getting bigger each time we see them! Of course they are really curious about my beautiful MacBook Pro and are ever too eager to claw at it. Who can blame them, it Is a majestic machine worthy of the most exalted claws, but being the proud owner of an MBP, I am ever so panicky when Ella or Logan look at the machine with that cute, mischevious grin. So I blog, though from my iPhone.
But to the topic at hand… The temperature! It has really dipped in the last 24 hours around here, and as it stands now the temperature is around -14 and that is in Fahrenheit! -25 in C for those using the sensible metric system. The horrid part? It is so nice and sunny outside. Almost like teasing. Officially, this is the coldest I’ve ever been in. A frigid and frosty Indian please.
Updates to the site…
I undertook a poignant journey down the road this evening, updating my current blog with posts from my iWeb blog from back in the day (not so far away). Reading of my excesses at the Winter School in Innsbruck last year, brought a smile to my visage. Snow angels, a multitude of brews and a whole lot of fun, I sure did party then. Add to that, my very first MBP (that went back the very next day). It has nearly been two years since I started blogging, time that has just flown by. I grow nostalgic now… good times.
Theater and a concert
I have been meaning to blog of late, but due to the pressing demands of work and the relaxation that follows at home, I have been unable to garner enough time and enthusiasm to blog one out. What follows is an apology post – of sorts.
On the sixth of this month, Rissa and I attended a performance of the Trans-Siberian orchestra at the local arena. I was quite unprepared for their brand of music, as I had heard of the band only in passing, and that too in relation to their take on Christmas carols. I went prepared for a lot of holiday cheer and merriment. Found instead, a former heavy metal band from the 80s, unable to shake their roots in terms of sound, and pyrotechnics inculcated in the show. It was a feast for the senses as the sold out HSBC arena (some 14,000 people) rocked to their take on "Joy to the World", "Christmas Canon", "Noel" and the like. I must admit, once I overcame my initial shock, the show was thoroughly enjoyable. As soon as I get my hands on Rissa’s phone I will upload a couple of crude videos of their performance that night. The songs still ring in my head, and I am unable to listen to any Christmas carol since then, without overlaying their rendition on the same.
On the thirteenth, mom invited me along with her friend and the friend’s family for the Broadway hit, Mamma Mia in ROC. Featuring hit songs from ABBA interwoven around a storyline featuring a girl’s quest to find her father at the eve of her wedding, the play, sometimes enjoyable and sometimes just cheesy, featured some sub-par acting, but some truly inspired singing. I don’t know what might be considered worse: that I went to the ABBA musical, or that I knew each and every song by heart. I shall keep quiet on that one. But a couple of performances stood out this day, especially that of Kittra Wynn Coomer who played the part of Rosie. She simply stole the show from under every other performers’ feet. There were a number of production glitches, which no doubt dampened the effect of the song underlying the skit, but over all, one walked away, quite entertained.
And now it is back to chopping wood and grunting for me.
XSlimmer – trim the fat
I recently decided to give those "How-to-make-my-mac-go-faster" self help articles a shot. I usually steer clear of these articles/videos, for most of them assume a pedantic tone in peddling their hardly sage advice, and rather turn me off. But the other day I had the good fortune of reading one such article, which was devoid all aforementioned drivel and did in fact give some practical tips on how to speed up my Macs. One recommendation was to trim the fat off the existing Apps by removing support for extra languages and reducing the number of libraries included, to make it platform specific (Intel vs. PowerPC). The article recommended XSlimmer as an option. I downloaded the app, albeit skeptically, and voila, easy to use, and quite intuitive in its use, it removed the extra languages and libraries in a jiff. I was left with nearly 3 GB of freed disk space and my apps feel much snappier in comparison. Do give it a whirl, it is well worth the effort.
