Month: January 2008

My new Mac Pro finally arrived today, probably the sunniest day of the year so far. I went to my 6:30 Tai Chi class but skipped the Pilates class because I was afraid that I would miss the Fed Ex early delivery if I didn’t.

I needn’t have worried, it came in the second delivery of the day, about 2:30. By then Skye was hyped up, barking at every dog or person that went by the house. I probably should have taken him for a walk as soon as the delivery was made, but that would have taken a better man than I am.

No, I had to unpack my new computer, install the second hard drive from my old G-5 and transfer my old data over to the new computer. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to install the hard drive. The whole process must have taken less than ten minutes.

Unfortunately, transferring all the data from the old computer to the new one took much longer, much longer. Even though I didn’t need to transfer any of my many photos or my movies, it took over two and a half hours to transfer all the files, no matter how often I woke the monitor up to see if they had finally been copied.

I haven’t had a lot of time to use the new system yet, but Aperture and Photoshop, the two programs I use the most, were considerably faster, even with only 2GB of memory. I wonder what effect additional memory would have. I guess I’ll have to wait awhile to find out, since this machine pretty much tapped out my computer budget.

I was watching the news from Vancouver, B.C, while eating lunch a few minutes ago and almost spewed soup out my nose when the weather girl offered the 5-day forecast: Gloomy and Wet.

She’s right, that’s exactly the kind of winter we’re having here in the PNW, at least on the west side of the Cascades, as they’re having record snowfall in the mountains. It was so dark and stormy when I woke up at 5:30 this morning that I nearly went back to bed rather than brave the dash from the house to the car and from the parking lot to the gym. But I didn’t. I knew that if I missed another day I might just curl up in a small ball and hibernate ’til Spring, when I’d probably be too stiff to get up at all.

I’m still plugging away at mastering Dreamweaver, but as you can tell from the site, I haven’t mastered it well enough to make any major changes here yet. The biggest news in my life is that I finally ran out of excuses not to upgrade to a new Mac Pro. I still haven’t made the Apple Intel jump yet, but with cameras producing larger and larger photos, I was beginning to notice that my G-5 was spending more and more time making photographic changes. It’s definitely more money than I wanted to spend, or should spend, but computers and cameras have proven to be my number one expense in the last ten years, exceeding even the amount spent on cars. Anyway, I’m now anxiously awaiting the email announcing that they’ve sent my computer.

I’ve also been reading the Jesus Sutras for a while and have found them quite fascinating, though I haven’t quite figured what, if anything, I want to say about them here. The early chapters remind me a lot of Pagel’s Beyond Belief, revealing more about early Christianity than about the Christian Church in early China. I’ve always been more comfortable talking about philosophy than religion, but perhaps that’s changing since I started blogging my every thought.

Speaking of religion, I thank God for Will Hume’s of One Thing I Know willingness to engage in an ongoing game of Scrabulous on Facebook, since it’s been one of the few things that’s helped me to maintain my sanity while confined to the indoors. One cannot live by reading alone. I imagined when I joined Facebook that I would be inundated by offers to play since most of my readers seem to be word-oriented, but unfortunately I’ve since found out otherwise.

I know it’s probably sheer coincidence, but I almost feel like the birds are calling for me, wanting to know why I’ve abandoned birding. Until recently I’ve never seen a Great Blue Heron around my house, but twice in the last two weeks one has flown by my den window or right over my head as I was going into the house.

The first time it seemed to be merely flying over this ridge to reach a different beach area, but when I didn’t take that hint it became more insistent today. Standing on the roof of the house across the street until I finally went out an hour later and took a picture of it:

Of course, it probably just stopped there because it was gathering warmth from the home, but since I haven’t been out for birding since I don’t know when I felt like it was calling me.

Of course, it would help if we could get a little sunshine around here, and, depending on the weather forecast you look at, there’s not supposed to be any sun until next Monday, though one suggests it will be cloudy rather than rainy tomorrow. If it looks like there is an extended break, I will try to get to Nisqually tomorrow, though I’m not counting on it.

I’m afraid if I don’t get out pretty soon, the local Bald Eagles will swoop down and lift me to the nearest viewpoint.