Oolonging

I'm writing this on a laptop that's more than 5 years old, which in laptop years (which are kind of like dog years, but ratio is even greater)  is positively ancient. And she's showing her age -- freezing, crashing, poking along slowly, and generally freaking me out with her lack of reliability.

I'm traveling so much for work, and working so much at home, that I cannot be without a reliable machine.

So I'm buying a new one this weekend, or at a maximum within the next week.

But despite the fact that I allegedly study stuff like this for a living, I'm more up on my applications than my hardware. And so I have some questions for the more hardwarishly inclined.

1. What's the big deal with the dual core processor? I assume that it improves speed and functionality, but is it worth it?
2. Wireless "N" -- I'm guessing its the latest speed jump in wireless networking, but I'm also guessing that its not that well supported? And that I shouldn't get it with out also having 802.11 b/g capabilities?
3. I'm gathering that with Windows Vista (which if I get a PC it looks that's what I'm getting, whether I like it or not), that it's better to have more RAM? as in 2GB if possible, since isn't Vista a total resource hog?
4. Here's the biggie - I'm more and more tempted by the Apple MacBooks, but I work exclusively in a PC environment at work. Our tech people do not support Apple. If I go with a MacBook, am I stuck with a constant annoyance of having to switch back and forth between versions of various kinds of software? If I bring work home with me and then take it back, are my colleagues not going to be able to edit the document?
5. If I stick with PC, are there any brand issues I should be aware of? I have Dell and like it alot, but they're expensive relative to other brands I've seen out there. But they also seem to a get a relatively larger chunk of the good reviews too.
6. Anyone know anything helpful about the new Dell XPS series? As in, avoid like the plague, or buy buy buy?
7. Anything else you want to share about buying a laptop?

Ok, so I'm not dead. I'm still here. I've just been really really really freakin' busy.

But I'm never one to ignore an internet meme --and I've been tagged by Dave at Extraface to post a list of 8 things you might not know about me.

1. I dislike watching movies when it is light out. After dark, I'm fine, and I'll make exceptions for awful, rainy days, but otherwise, if I could be out in the sunlight or at least near it, I'd rather be.

2. My car has a roof-rack to carry my boat, a single scull named The Chief. The rack has never actually carried my boat and it has been on my car for 4 years. I often get asked "what is that thing on top of your car," I used to tell people that it was a rocket launcher, but now I just say "I'm sorry but Homeland Security has asked me to keep that confidential."

3. One of my cats, Oscar, plays fetch with ponytail holders. Obsessively.

4. In the past 8 years, I have planted zucchini in my garden every year, and have never managed to grow a single zucchini.

5. Many many years ago, I reviewed restaurants for the washingtonpost.com, when they first populated their database with local restaurants.

6. I co-anchored and eventually directed a really awful weekly news show on my college radio station.

7. No one ever calls me Mandy. Ever. Or at least they try, thinking its funny. But then they stop.

8. I am a bottomless pit when it comes to fresh corn. I could eat 6 ears of really good, nice-sized ears of corn in one sitting. And I have. This is why the month of August is redeemed from the vileness of its weather -- it is the month of excellent corn.

When I get a little bit of time, I'm going to incorporate this photo into my header:

Oolong on a Cold Day

What's the next country you want to visit? 
Submitted by Schomer.

Ooooh, good question and a toughie. I may be going to Peru with my sister in April, if we can get our financial and other acts to gether to plan the trip. I may be going to the Lake Louise area in Canada over the summer, and definitely Vancouver (big one on the List) in September for a conference.

Other places I'd like to visit:

New Zealand and Australia -- In particular I'd like to hike in New Zealand and explore its geological wonders.
Thailand & Cambodia
Bhutan
Mongolia
Egypt -- more of a possibility than the above, as a friend may be studying Arabic and doing freelance writing from Cairo for a year in 2008.
and I want to go back to Iceland. And to Turkey.

I've been a bit absent, here and at my other blog.

This is what I was working on. It consumed my energy and attention when ever I wasn't thinking about holiday related travel and gift-giving and Family Time.

I finally released it yesterday after working on it for much of December and the first week of January.  Hopefully, now that the first report is done, we can have a slightly more sane schedule for the release of the remainder of the data from the survey on which this recent report is based.

I am about to embark on my 4th visit to the Verizon store in 3 weeks.

Something is going horribly horribly wrong with my phone, or the charger or their network. In a nutshell, I can barely make a call with the phone and if some one calls me, it instantly starts beeping like its going to shut down and then 9 times out of ten, it does just that. Sometimes I get to talk for 1 minute. Sometimes 5. Once I got to talk to my brother for 25 minutes and the phone wasn't even plugged in! Whoo hoo!

Grrr.

Regardless of how often I charge it, whether I charge turned on or off, whether I charge it for a few hours or overnight, whether I charge everyday or every other day or only when it finally shuts down on its own, it doesn't matter.

The phone has become totally unreliable. I got it in April. Did I mention that the last time I went in to talk to the repair guys they gave me a new (refurbished?) phone, the exact same model as what I had before. And guess what? It's doing the EXACT SAME THING.

I can't stand it. People don't call me any more because they can't actually talk to me on the phone. It only works reliably when plugged in, and guess what? I already have a landline wired phone that works just great and it costs less than half of what I pay for an ostensibly wireless phone on a monthly basis. I do not need another wired phone.

Ordinarily, I do not like to go and get in people's faces about these sorts of things, but really this is just over the top.
The last time it happened when I was talking to my parents, my dad went all lawyer on me, which he doesn't really do any more now that well, he's a man of God. I figure, if the clergy are pissed, its time to get some thing DONE about this phone.

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?
Submitted by sami711.

For many years, my family would always go to the same holiday party on Christmas Eve, neatly sandwiched between the two church services we always attended. It was always a Swedish-themed holiday party complete with lutefisk, sma kottbullar and the youngest daughter pressed into dangerous Santa Lucia service -- which involves wearing (for a very short period of time) lit candles affixed to a special metal headdress. Let me tell you, the wax is a bitch to get out of hair.

Even though the family wasn't outwardly Swedish, the maternal grandparent in the family was born there (or his parents were) and felt it was important to keep family traditions alive.

My parents moved away, and being members of the "God Squad," they both work on Christmas Eve, so if we want to see them on the holidays we have to go to them. And so we do, but we've had to forgo the fun of the Swedish Christmas, and even though we're building our own new traditions, there's a part of me that misses the Swedish Christmas. I miss every year taking a spoonful of the lutefisk (for those who don't know, its a traditional Swedish dish made from dried cod that's been soaked in lye (to soften it) and then triple washed and poached in a white gravy. It's a white gelatinous fish mess, alot like a fish jello and about as tasty), tasting a morsel and then figuring out how to hide it under the peas. I miss watching the Dads drink aquavit, hearing Mr. D tell of the origins of the meal in the exact same way in his speech to the assembled party-goers every year. I miss sitting by the fire with assembled old friends.

What books did you love as a child? 
Submitted by hearts. 

Oh the list is long. I read early and voraciously. I still live near the public library I went to as a child and occasionally I'll go downstairs to the children's floor (a whole FLOOR of children's books!) and take a long look at it sunny, dust-moted, musty loveliness. I thought the librarian of my first elementary school, Mrs. Howellet, was the most beautiful person in the world. Not only did she have glossy dark sausage curls, but she was the keeper of books. She liked me and used to give me the new books to read so I could "tell her what I thought of them." Bliss.

I loved the entire Anne of Green Gables series and anything by L.M. Montgomery. I read most of the Anne McCaffrey "Dragon" books, as well as the entire David Eddings oeuvre. I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories, James Herriot's Yorkshire vet books, Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals and Birds Beasts and Relatives. I'm also still a fan of books I started reading as young teen -- Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness Series. When I was younger, I like Pippi Longstocking, and Horse books -- think Misty of Chincoteague, Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, etc.

I actually worked in the children's department of a major chain bookstore to augment my income for a few years -- I loved the job.* It was the first job I had where people asked my opinion on something and then took my advice. And I got to introduce a new generation of readers to my favorites, from board books on up to Young Adult fiction.

*except when an unsupervised toddler ravaged the section by pulling books off the shelves and ripping the pages. But that didn't happen THAT often.

I find myself newly afflicted with a feeling of craftiness. Its not that I'm feeling clever, its that this year, getting into the Holiday Spirit has manifest itself in a desire to acquire fake birds.

Usually, I'm not one for acquiring any sort of decorative object, because then it must be STORED or otherwise kept at times when it is not displayed, and when you live in a small apartment, that's just a pain in the @$$.

Mostly, if/when I decorate for the holidays, my decorations are of the free and disposable kind -- lovely piney greens acquired for free from the cut pile at a Christmas tree sales lot, draped on bookcases and fashioned into a door swag. Before cats, I used to gather assorted berries and glossy leaves from local woody areas/parks or neighbors, but I no longer want poisonous things hanging in or near my place given my cats penchant for tasting pretty much anything they find. So I have two deep burgandy bows that I keep from year to year as accents to the greens and pinecones that make up the usual holiday decor.

This year, my door swag is just one curved branch from a spruce that someone cut down adjacent to a nearby apartment building. The curve of the branch is perfect, like a crescent moon, and it just cries out for a fake bird to decorate it. [I'd like to note for the record that I never actually believed that I'd ever type or even utter the words "cries out for a fake bird to decorate it" in my entire life. Ever.] Actually it wants two or three fake birds -- two to sit on the curve of the branch and one to perch fetchingly at the top to hide the wire attaching it all to the nail on the door. 

What, exactly, have I become? Some hideous holiday decorating monster that looks like a cross between the Grinch and Martha Stewart? My mother? (who for the record, is an excellent and tasteful holiday decorator and looks like neither the grinch, martha nor any combination thereof).

What song gives you the most holiday cheer?
Submitted by Roxy.

I was thinking about this as I drove home from a visit with friends this morning. Christmas songs are always divided into two types -- the religious and the secular.

Rather amazingly, I'm better acquainted with the religious ones after a misspent youth in various church choirs and because I come from a family that regularly goes to church two and three times on Christmas Eve. Hey, what can I say when it comes to Christmas, we like to get our God on.

Among the religious songs -- I love Lo, How a Rose Er Blooming, Once in Royal Davids City, Silent Night and Angels We Have Heard on High. Also I'm a fan of the rather obscure Bring a Torch Jeanette Isabella and the French carol "Il est neigh le divine enfant".

Among secular songs I love the Holly and the Ivy, White Christmas, and Santa Baby.