Travel And Leg Updates

So I'm headed off to San Francisco this evening for a week to take care of the stuff I have to do regarding my dad's estate. I did buy a new laptop but I'm not sure I'll have time to actually write any blog posts, so this may be the last one until I return.

As for my leg, I have an appointment to see a surgeon on October 11th. As I mentioned in my last post, I was concerned that my leg might get worse during my trip without any further antibiotics. My doctor said I should be fine as long as I don't develop a fever. I have an old digital thermometer, but it's very old and I wasn't sure how reliable it is so I bought a new one. I'm going to carefully monitor my temperature to make sure it's okay. Here's a question, though: the last three days I've taken a reading with both thermometers. The old one has registered a temperature that's 0.4 or 0.5 degrees higher than the new one. Is it safe to assume the new one is the more accurate one? That's the one I'm taking with me.

I went for the ultrasound and x-ray. They asked me if I wanted to have a report sent to the doctor, or if I wanted them to give me films or a CD of my x-rays. How the hell am I supposed to know??????? I finally decided to take the CD because it would be easier to carry. So they burned my x-rays onto a disc. If I get around to it I may post it.

Too Long For Twitter: Netbook Part Deux

I'm so confused and frustrated. Help! I previously wrote about how I want to buy a netbook or laptop before my trip to California (which is next week already). In checking various websites (and going into a couple of stores) I'm just not completely satisfied with any of them. Either they're too expensive or they have issues:

• Too large to easily carry on the plane (or anywhere else) with my backpack
• Only 1 GB of memory (I've seen a lot of comments on different pages saying that 2 GB or more is better)
• Includes Windows 7 Starter instead of Windows 7 Home Premium (almost all comments say the Starter edition is really bad)
• Out of stock
• Not sold in the store and it can't be shipped in time for my trip unless I pay a high price
• And probably one or two other things I'm forgetting at the moment

The cheapest I've seen is a Gateway netbook sold at Best Buy for $199.99, and on its site it has surprisingly decent reviews from customers. I'm thinking I should either settle for it (even though it's one of those with the 1 GB memory and Windows 7 Starter) or get nothing at all. But it's gonna be a serious pain in the ass to carry the old laptop with me.

Too Long For Twitter: Netbook Edition

There's a part of me that, despite my current financial status, really wants to buy a new netbook or laptop before my trip next month. The laptop I have is NINE YEARS OLD. I bought it before I went to Baltimore on a temporary work assignment (I ended up staying down there for nine months). It's on its second hard drive, which I somehow managed to install by myself. The disc drive doesn't work any more. The battery life is pretty poor. And it's not very light. I have to take it on the plane in my carry-on bag because, as old as it is, it still would probably disappear from my checked bag.

A new laptop (or netbook) would be a lot easier to carry. But, just like my old TV that still refuses to die so I would be forced to buy a new HDTV, I'm not sure I should buy one if the old one still functions (at least well enough).

If you want to talk me into (or out of) buying it, feel free to comment.

And don't forget to vote for me for the CBSPhilly.com Most Valuable Blogger awards. Click on the image at right. Thank you!

It's Really Hard...

I know what you thought when you saw the title of this post. You perverts. Get that thought out of your head. I'm referring to my new external hard drive. I am finally backing up my files. Hopefully.

Through a link posted on SlickDeals.net I found a nice deal on a Western Digital My Passport Elite 500 GB portable external hard drive. It arrived today. I plugged it into the USB port. Eventually I figured out I'd have to install software. There were 4 categories of things to install, one of them didn't install for some reason. The instructions that came with it are non-existent, and the online help at their website is about as useless. I couldn't figure out how to start a backup or anything.

Finally, I decided to just back up my files using my Norton Security Suite -- the one that just replaced McAfee as the security package Comcast provides free to its Internet customers. It seems to be working as I write this. If it doesn't then I hope someone reading this is a computer genius and can help me.

This is a big deal because I'll have backups of my photos and some documents, and especially my mp3 files.  I wouldn't want to have to copy those from my CD again, and I have plenty of downloads that have never been backed up or burned to CDs. Losing a lot of them would be a disaster.