January 2004

I had to run to FedEx to pick up my replacement video card. Mom was not kidding when she said it was in the middle of a field. Definitely do not want to go there at night. A bit too scary.

I managed to run all my errands tonight except picking up my FedEx package. There was no way that I could be in two separate towns at the same time. I ran into the book store to use a coupon (yeay). I have decided to try and read French books again as a non-technical hobby. Given it took me 45 minutes the other day to figure out a single paragraph, this might be a long venture. Anyway, the guy at the checkout counter must have previously worked in tele-sale or something because he had a complete spiel mapped out that he repeated to each customer. Honestly, it was fairly assuming. I remember working in the library and only using those spiels when I had to leave messages on answering machines. He was probably new and just needs some face-to-face adjustment time. It was still good for a smile at the end of the day.

So I did go to buy the shoes last night. I think I am happy with them. The experience left something to be desired. I still do not quite know what happened but a lady threw a complete tantrum (box-dropping and all) because she felt the sales lady was being rude to her. I opted to mind my own business because the lady had a serious set of nails that I did not want to come face-to-face with. It was an uncalled for event.

Braved yet another storm this morning. I have come to one conclusion. I think I need to start spending more money on shoes (to buy better ones). I am wondering if that is why my knees have been so painful the last few days. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet and buy real shoes instead of $10 specials. It always seemed liked a waste to spend a lot of money on shoes that I only wore a few times a year. I think my knees may get the winning vote on this one.

I was less than amused by tonight's evening commute. This is the second or third time it has happened. A person throws their bag over the seat in front of them, without looking, only to find out my face is in the same place where the bag lands. The good news was that there was no damage. I was so groggy that I just did not want to deal with the situation.

I am not sure how the rest of the week is going to turn out. This morning was not great and supposedly that was the less powerful storm. I really need to find a place closer to the train station. The ride really is not bad on a good day, but on a bad day...

I finished a good amount of my school work today. I still have a bunch to go. I am not sure what is going to happen tomorrow. The forecast is not looking too good. Or at least, the morning may not be too bad but after that... who knows.

I probably did not get as much accomplished today as I would have liked. I did not sleep well last night so my brain just did not wake up today. I will have to try again tomorrow.

It was a pretty quiet day. I was hoping to work on my school assignment over lunch but that did not quite happen. Everyone went out to pickup lunch and then came back so we spent some time chatting. Oh well, I still have the weekend and the due date was extended.

Believe it or not, but I actually take my budget very seriously. I try to leave room for a few extra purchases but I still want to meet my savings goals. I was going to show one of my coworkers "my system" (without the numbers of course) as she prepares her way into the wonderful world of budgeting. After looking at it for a bit, I realized it just was not up to snuff for public view so I spent some time reworking it. Actually, I am much happier with it now than I was before. Now I just have work in the new numbers and give it a try.

Fire drills while working in the city are interesting. The building management people put big signs out early in the morning to let us know that there will be a fire drill at 10:00 AM. Once that alarm actually goes off, we are supposed to walk over to the fire tower and hang out in their until told otherwise. Needless to say, after the first few drills, my cohorts and I head out a few minutes early to the corner coffee house. Personally, I am not a fan of standing around, but will do so when we have the occasional "minor emergency, but no actual danger" incidents.

My hands are a complete mess. I am covered in tiny little cuts, some of which I cannot figure out where them come from. This multi-cut combination is surprisingly painful and extremely annoying. Maybe it is the dry weather or something making me more susceptible to getting paper cut-type cuts. I hope this stops soon.

Oversleeping puts me in a nasty mood. Once my routine gets messed up, I am not quite right for the rest of the day. I would rather avoid another instance of that mess again.

So I gave up (at least for now) on the wireless network. My father needs the connection a lot sooner than I expected and I am just out of patience with trying to get it to work. I really do not have too much extra time to play with it. I am sure it is just a minor detail that I am missing but trying to find that is another story all together. On top of that, the video card in my old desktop PC that I use for file storage is caput. I am hoping to find an very inexpensive replacement.

I did not get done today what I needed to - no surprise. I spend last night and part of today trying to get the wireless network working. Easier said than done, that is for sure. So much to do, so little time. I need to get back to focusing on school work before I fall behind. At least I have my pocket PC to take with me so I can work on the go.

It's Friday! I have to plan how best to use my weekend to complete as much school stuff as possible. I think I need to start doing textbook readings on Sundays (for the next week) so I do not have to carry it around during the week. It is a good book but weighs a ton! During the week I can focus on reading printouts that are lightweight. Hopefully I get this process refined at some point.

Go figure. I live in some sort of bermuda-type triangle. I really do. The weather front just about parked itself over my commuting area and drooped a few more inches of snow than in other areas - like where I work. So of course, there was no need for a delay or closure. I trudged off to work. The roads were not bad but they were not great either. I will probably try to catch an earlier train home because I have ice-fears for the evening.

I will admit that I completely obsess about the weather. I cannot help it. When I have to drive 8+ miles on the highway at strange hours in bad weather, I get a bit nervous about it, especially after seeing a few accidents in the past year. Messy! Hopefully my screen protectors for my PDA will show up tomorrow. I have no idea when my new cable is going to ship. That is just about as important (one less thing to carry around). Oh well, who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Call me surprised but my new PDA showed up last night. That was actually fairly unexpected as I still had not received the tracking information. Do not get me wrong, I am thrilled. It definitely is tiny - good thing. I will need to order an extra cable so I have to tote around as few things as possible. I found a very reasonable one that will fit my needs. I set up the synch capabilities on my home computer and that worked fine. Went to work and set it up there. Almost worked right except I accidentally deleted all my contacts that I loaded last night. Hopefully I can retrieve them when I get home. I know where I went wrong. The other benefit of my new tech is that I can load the files that I need to take home instead of emailing them to myself. Saves bandwidth :)

It was quiet for a Monday. That was probably a good thing since I did not sleep too well last night. I am getting pretty excited for my new PDA to arrive. The case showed up as it was shipped separately. Granted that does not do me much good as I have no electronics to put in it yet. Hopefully within the next few days it will arrive. I have spent some time trying to figure out how to better incorporate a mobile device into my everyday life. I want to get the most value for my money.

I really buckled down today and finished my class assignments for the week. I handled in my written assignment a day early. That has to be a record for me. Since she was expecting them by tomorrow at 5pm, I had to turn it in today. I am working on some personal process reengineering so I can stay on top of things. It looks like it is going to be one of the busier semesters.

I ran off to the stores early this morning. I had a coupon for Best Buy and actually found something I wanted. I bought a card reader that can read the memory cards for both my digital camera and for PDA (still yet to arrive). Not a bad buy for just over $20. I also popped my head into Borders for a few minutes. I was early for the Best Buy opening. Anyway, I found a nifty book called How to do everything with your Dell Axim Handheld. Since it is up-to-date and covers my model, I thought it was a wise buy. I already thumbed through the book and it should be extremely helpful especially since my main goal is to use the device to edit Word documents. There are a few things that I will need to be careful of.

I opted to spend my lunch hour working on class work. So I saved a few dollars (good thing) and finished some reading. Of course I did run after work to the store and bought a few new bottles of nail polish. I am hoping the new base coat I bought will really help my polish last a full week. I have one at home that I can no longer buy so I figured I had better find a replacement now before I get too attached. I am back on my nail kick again. No time like the New Year to start acting girly-girl again.

Now I have gone and done it. I really thought I would not need a PDA, that I could not justify having one. I guess I was wrong because I went out and ordered one from Dell this morning. I figured it would be helpful with class. I was sitting on the train this morning mentally composing an email (which I have not forgotten as I did not want to hand-write it) and realized there had to be a better way. Luckily Dell is running a promotion with a discount. I would rather not think about how much I would have spent if there had not been a sale.

Ever just have "one of those days"? The day had actually moved along pretty well - very productive. I just ended with me running around trying to find information at the last minute. It was not anything massive, but it still turned into enough running around. At least we got everything straightened out and that is the important part.

Yesterday was rainy and today the temperature started to drop. I was hoping to drop by a store at some point today but that did not work out between a few assignments that needed to get done before a few meetings. By the time all that was done, the end of the day was approaching. Tomorrow is the last day to use this coupon that I have been holding on to for a few days. Tomorrow it is also supposed to be much colder. Go figure.

I managed to hide in the office all day. Did not spend any extra money and stayed dry. It is one of those cold and rainy days that proves to be a "stay inside" incentive. I guess weather really does impact the retail market. It has been a quiet day for a Monday (thank goodness). I finished a good amount of work and did some serious desk organizing. Now I can actually find documents - what a concept!

The cleaning frenzy continued as I tried to discard some old paperwork. I found at least a crate worth of stuff that can be recycled. That was a step in the right direction. After all that cleaning the last few weeks, I am tried. I have to admit, there is still a lot to go, but I at least made some progress.

So I came up with a massive to-do list for the weekend. After last night, I am already behind on my list. I did spend the day (took longer than I thought) sorting through old clothing to donate to charity. By the time I was done, I ended up with a 3 foot high pile. I also got the attic a bit more organized (at least for my stuff).

Well that was fun. I went to Walmart on the way home to pick up a prescription. He said I could wait 20 minutes and it would be ready. Unfortunately after 45 minutes it turned out my new prescription plan had not activated yet and I would need to try back in a few days. That was a bit aggravating and not the way I wanted to spent my Friday night. Oh well, what can you do.

I did end up picking up the chair after work yesterday. Boy was that place crazy. I stocked up on extra sleep last night which was great because I slept horribly the night before. It has become my tradition the last few years to use New Year's Eve to catch up on sleep. It is not the most exciting way to celebrate the holiday but it works for me. I had a fun day fixing my network. I somehow lost my printer connection. I guess I never set it up properly from the start so I was working on borrowed time. It took the better part of the day to get the bottom of that mystery. Now if I could just get the wireless working, I would be in better shape.