robglazebrook.com

Life’s keeping me busy. And, whenever I have time to be productive, I find something else to distract myself with.

My Giant Package (aka, Poppa’s Got a Brand New Bag)
To complement my little package from Dell on Tuesday, I got a giant package from Amazon Wednesday. The box was huge, but weighed about three pounds (most of which would have been cardboard weight, I think). I have no idea what the packagers at Amazon were thinking… at least 75% of the box was wasted space. Anyway. Inside was my new backpack with a built-in sleeve for my laptop. The bag seems solidly constructed, but it has this weird little strap that seemingly allows me to strap the backpack, not only to my shoulders, but to my midsection. I tried it out, and discovered:

• It seems to reduce the weight my lower back carries
• I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it (see image)

I’m told this strap is useful for when carrying heavy loads while hiking. My question is this: who in the hell goes hiking with their laptop? I’m seriously considering cutting the strap off, except that’d probably violate the lifetime warranty.

Of course, looking at the warranty card, it looks like I can return it iff (if and only if) I find a body part sewn into the material or find a large quantity of cocaine inside. Neither was the case, so I suppose I can modify at will.

Well Hung (aka, Illuminating Manuscripts)
I had roughly 100 pages to read last night between my two classes. I knew, from the beginning, that this would take more hours than I had in the night, meaning I had to spend the entire evening (and subsequent morning) reading. So what do I do? The obvious thing: engineering. Well, reverse engineering. Which sounds an awful lot like demolition to me, but we’ll discuss that later. What I did is, I took two crappy lamps (one a silver desk lamp with a telescopic arm, the other a bare-bulb system mounted above my desk), took them both completely apart, and turned them into one crappy lamp. Previously, my desk (you’ve seen the picture) was illuminated by a bare bulb mounted behind a 2×4 holding up a storage area above my desk. This was great for illuminating the stuff on the ~back~ end of my desk, but tended to cast shadows on what I was reading (because the bulb was on the wrong side of the board). So I took some of the mounting stuff from the other bulb, obliterated my desk lamp, and now I have a telescopic arm mounted to the other side of the 2×4, giving me light on the side of the desk I need it, and adjustable light at that. It looks like crap and is probably a pretty big fire hazard (I had to take apart the switch, cut the wires, and re-splice them with scotch tape), but now I have light shinning ~on~ my pages, as opposed to casting shadows.

I got roughly 40 pages of my reading done.

Going Down (aka, Gimme a Break)
It sounds like, one way or the other, I’ll be going down to Texas over spring break. The only question is, who am I going with? I have two options: either I can go down to Corpus Christi with my grandparents and stay with my uncle (slow paced and cheap route), or I can go down to San Antonio with a few friends and stay with one of their families (faster paced but slightly more expensive). I’m still waiting to hear from my grandparents as to whether or not they’re still going to Texas, but they just moved, and I realized I have no way to get ahold of them. Will someone with their home phone number ~PLEASE~ email it to me? I need to get my spring break plans figured out. I have eight days until break, which gives me roughly -2 days to decide.

Time to finish reading my email and head to Dublin Bay. G’day!

It’s not the size of the ship so much as the motion of the ocean. Or so they say. Regardless, this line of thinking has nothing to do with what my real reasons for updating. My laptop arrived today. :)

I’m already becoming a pretty big fan of this diminutive thing. The screen is fantastic, the processor responsive, the noun adjective, and so forth. I’m even a fan of one of the laptop’s so-called shortcomings: its keyboard. Apparently, Dell shipped the 700m with a keyboard 92% of full size, which is difficult for a lot of people to adjust to. Luckily, however, my hands are about 92% full size, so I don’t seem to be having any problems whatsoever. Well, I miss a key or two on the right-hand side near the enter key, but that has nothing to do with the size of the keys and a lot to do with the fact that laptop keyboard manufacturers love rearranging keys. Otherwise, it’d just be too damn easy to adjust, now, wouldn’t it?

I’m not a fan of the battery life, however. I drained the laptop from 100% to 10% in just over two hours (while working in Word with wifi on and Trillian running in the background). Looks like I’m going to have to pony up the cash for one of the extended batteries. Most review places online mention you can get the battery for $130. Dell’s charging $190, though, which suggests that a ~lot~ of people buy the battery and Dell’s savvy (read: cruel) enough to make a profit on one of their laptop’s few shortcomings. Luckily, the battery can be had on EBay for around $100 after shipping.

My laptop will be going with me to campus tomorrow, even though my new laptop backpack hasn’t arrived yet. It should be able to survive in my backpack at least one day, I would think.

Summary (for those who can’t be bothered to read what’s above) :

• The Dell Inspiron 700m rocks, assuming you’ve not giant hands and remember to get the big battery.
• Buy Dell refurbished. You’ll save moola out the wazoo, and you won’t be able to tell the difference (save a slightly fuller wazoo).
• This update in no way suggests I have a small package other than the aforementioned laptop.