Entries from June 2008 ↓

Ok, as I posted yesterday, I bought a new laptop. An Acer Extensa 4420. The biggest problem with it, it runs Vista.

I’ll deal for now, but there are a number of things that have to be done to make this thing “ready to fly”. First thing I did was download Firefox. I haven’t done a lot with add-ons with FF3 yet, but I’ll have to look in the best way to sync my bookmarks tween work, home and laptop now. Second thing I did was burn the restore DVDs, so if I need to, I can go back to factory fresh. I am debating on taking this thing down the Linux road… we’ll see. I have some programs I need Windows to run, so until I can test them on the desktop with Wine, I won’t be going that route.

Next thing was ditch MacAffe for AVG. Just a no-brainer there. I had to bite my tongue in Best Buy - While waiting for someone to help me, I observed another sales guy talk to a customer about antivirus and spyware, giving him two packages. “They both have anti-virus and spyware, but the spy-ware on this one sucks, and the virus protection this one sucks, so between these two you’ll be covered.”

Next was Open Office. There’s a 60-day trial of Office on here… need to figure out how to get rid of it without messing anything up. I wish I could get Evolution for Vista… I’m using it on my desktop and rather like it, so will probably stick with Thunderbird for now.

I have AutoCad, a mapping program, and some construction related stuff for work I need to get on here, but beyond that I’m not sure that I’ll be putting that much more. I have portable versions of a few things like GIMP, Pidgin and a couple others on my thumb drive that I may use here and there. The whole idea is for me to keep this thing light-weight. The majority of the stuff being done on it will be web based or basic spreadsheet and document writing.

Oh yea, when I unpacked the thing, the battery said 75%, and about 1.5 hours remaining. So I figured.. hey.. 2 hour battery. Not bad. Not great. But now that i’s fully charged, it’s telling me there is just over 3 hours remaining… so that’s better. I may look into a second, or a larger battery… but will wait and see how much I need to work just off battery for a bit first.

I bought a new laptop last night, and yes, I am blaming my sister.

Ok, need to back up. Seven Eight years ago next month, my niece and nephew were born. Waaaaay too early. They were born at like 24 or 27 weeks. Cole weighed a whopping 1lb, 11oz when he was born. His sister came in at 1lb 1oz. Unfortunately, they’ve been dealing with issues every since.

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Sunday Evening: So, I got the standing desk up, and spent a few hours working today. It is a good thing I went and got the stool, I would not have been able to stand the entire time without my back giving me issues.

I was moving around quite a bit, I think part of the problem is going to be the existing “low” desk. I need a high table surface. I had some writing to do and did some of it crouched at the desk, and some with the papers in my lap while on the stool. Hmm… maybe tomorrow I’ll measure the top. I have some plywood here, I could maybe rig something up to go on top of the existing desk for now to see how I like the height.

I probably spent about 50-60% of the time standing. My goal for now is to get that in the 80-90% range.

I may need a small box or something to rest a foot on while standing. I kept wanting to take a posture like if I had one foot up on a step or something. And I’m wondering if I shouldn’t get a pad similar to what cashiers at the store stand on as well.

Monday: Monday went ok… did a mix of standing/leaning/sitting. The desk is a bit short for me though, so I have the keyboard up on a 3″ binder. Gives it a nice slant too though. So may have to rig something more permenant up. My legs/knees were very sore that night though. Need one of those mats like they have at the grocery store registers.

I wasn’t in the office at all Tuesday, visting a job site in WI. (5 hours of driving for a 30 minute meeting… whee!). Wednesday I was only here for a couple hours. The major hurdle is not having a stand-up height writing surface. I had a bunch of writing to do and ended up pulling a chair up to the other side of the bigger desk for awhile.

Shoes. Another key deal here. Stopped and got a new pair last night, Nike. My other ones were Rebok, good, but just worn out. I’m in and out a lot today, so we’ll see how the rest of the day goes…

Even though I work in construction, I’m one of the guys that has a ‘desk job’. As a project manager, I’m on the phone more and more, sending stuff by email, etc. And while I spend most of the day at my desk, I do a lot of getting up to grab files, look at plans, file submittals, and so I am getting up and sitting back down quite a bit. So the concept of a ’stand-up desk’ has intrigued me for quite awhile.

Last place I worked we had a bar-height table for reviewing plans, with a nice high stool on rollers. I would use that a fair amount when reviewing plans and what not. Just as often standing as I flip through pages as using the stool. At my new place, it seems I am up and down from my chair more than ever, so thoughts of a stand up desk have been creeping back to the fore-front of my mind.

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Ok, dual-purpose posting here.

First, go see Get Smart. I like Steve Carell (I’m glad he got this over Jim Carey). I haven’t gotten in to The Office, but seen some of his stuff from there, seen Little Miss Sunshine, 40 Year Old Virgin, and Dan in Real Life, and soon as I heard he had this role, I knew he would do it justice. And he did. It is seriously too bad Don Adams didn’t live long enough to do a cameo.

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ok, just a quick posting about a site I wandered across recently.

Imagine a site dedicated to optical illusions of various types and .. well.. someone did, and put together the Visual Funhouse site.

Submitted by readers and grouped into nice categories, this would be a good site to blow an hour or three on just clicking the Random Optical Illusion link.

Here’s a couple examples, but you really should check out the site…

[Visual Funhouse]