Screw You, Universe

Universe:  So Jon, I see that you already got your VA tax refund.
Me:  Yeah, that was surprisingly fast.  I mean, I just got the notice that my form had been accepted on Tuesday.
Universe:  Sweet!  So...what are you going to buy?
Me:  Nothing yet.  I mean, I might take a day off from work next week and make a Costco run to stock up on stuff, but nothing too major.
Universe:  What about that Samsung Slate you've been wanting?
Me:  I can hold off on that for a while.  I want to wait until March, when I've gotten my Federal refund and my bonus, and I know how much of a raise I'm getting.
Universe:  Seems sensible.
Me:  Yeah.  I really want to put as much money away as I can - after paying off a few small debts - and use it to get some work done on my house and yard this summer.
Universe:  Good plan.
Me:  Thanks.
Universe:  You know you're not going to do that, though, right?  You can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to me.
Me:  Screw you.
Universe:  Hey now, I'm just being truthful.  It's not my fault that the truth hurts.
Me:  No, that's just a happy coincidence for you.
Universe:  Well, it couldn't hurt to just browse over to the Microsoft Store site and see if they have any kind of deal on it.  That has been the place with the best price for it, after all.
Me:  No, I don't want to go there.
Universe:  Come on...
Me:  No.
Universe:  You can do it.  What's the harm?  Start typing...
Me:  No.  Dammit, fingers!  Stop typing!
Universe:  ...dot com.  There you go.  Now, hover over Computers, and then on the Slates flyout...
Me:  WHAT THE FUCK?  $300 off with the 128 GB SSD and docking station????
Universe:  Yeah, that's a hell of a deal.
Me:  DAMMIT!
Universe:  Oh, hey, look!  You also get a $200 Microsoft Store credit for future purchases!
Me:  SON OF A BITCH.
Universe: 

Problem?

It's Not A Half Day Or Anything Like That...Oh, Wait, It Is.

So yesterday I officially made the transition from one boss to the other.
While getting lunch at the café in the building next door, I encountered my new boss who asked, “Have they sent out any kind of notice about tomorrow being a half day?”I confessed that I had seen no such notice, to which she said, “Well, just plan for tomorrow to be a half day.”
She got no argument from me, and shortly after noon today I was on the road and headed home, though I did make a brief stop at Best Buy.
Why? Well, the last time I’d gone to Dell to check on the status of my order, it said that it was “In Production” and the estimated shipping date was 3/25.
However, when I got to work yesterday and checked my mail there was a message saying that my computer had shipped on Wednesday. I thought, “Oh, well it’s two day shipping, so it should be here on Friday. I’ll have to see if I can arrange for Kathleen to be at the house.”
Then I clicked on the tracking number and discovered that it was already in VA and on its way to my house.
Unable to get a hold of Kathleen, I was annoyed when I checked the status during lunch and saw “Delivery Exception – Customer not at home or business closed.”
*Sigh*
By that time I knew that it was possible that I would be home in time on Friday, given the half day thing, but I couldn’t be certain, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to sign the signature sticker that I found waiting on my door when I got home, which would have authorized them to simply leave the package outside my door on the next delivery attempt. Even in the nicest neighborhood you don’t want a big box that says “Dell” on it sitting unattended outside your door.
So I called FedEx to ask if it would be possible for me to go somewhere to pick it up, as the most likely alternative was waiting for the third delivery attempt on Saturday. Sure, that would have meant getting the computer sooner than originally anticipated, but now that I knew that it was so close, how was I supposed to wait?
The lady on the phone told me that I could pick it up – from Winchester, which is a pretty good distance from Leesburg – particularly given that travel is measured not in distance but in time in these parts – which was a pain, but which still beat the alternative.
Looking online, I saw that they had more than one facility in Winchester, so I called back to make sure which one it was.
This time I was told that I couldn’t pick it up. Picking up a package from a service center is only an option after the third and final attempt at delivery has been made.
So I was annoyed.
However, sometime later I was upstairs in the office and heard a noise outside. I looked out the window and saw a FedEx truck parked next to my car and the driver heading for my door.
The driver – who is now in the running for “Jon’s Favorite Person” – decided that he should swing by again to see if I was home this time.
(While I was signing for it, he was peering over my shoulder at my TV and raving about how wonderful it is.)
So, long story long, I have my new computer!
I don’t, however, have my Digital TV Tuner, as that will be shipping separately. It’s not a big deal, as I need to schedule an appointment with Verizon to have a tech sent out with a CableCARD anyway, and will need to be home for that. I’m hoping the Tuner comes soon, though, so that I can try to schedule the appointment for the 9th, as I have that day off. I’d requested it off – along with several other days – because that’s when my mom’s flight will be arriving, and we’d originally anticipated her arriving earlier in the day. Turns out she won’t get here until around 10 PM, but hey, a day off is a day off.
In any case, most of my time has been spent transferring files and settings (made, appropriately enough, easy through the use of Vista’s “Easy Transfer” application), and installing essential applications.
I had hoped that the new Hugin would come with Vista Service Pack 1 already installed, as MS did the RTM (Release To Manufacturing) of SP 1 back in February, but alas, such was not the case.
In fact, since turning the new Hugin on and hooking it up to the network I’ve downloaded hundreds of megabytes worth of updates and patches.
I’m holding off on SP 1, though.
I actually installed it on the old Hugin the other day without incident, but the old Hugin has an ATI graphics card, whereas the new Hugin has an nVidia card, and so far most of the SP 1 horror stories I’ve seen have involved issues with nVidia drivers.
So I think I’ll just wait until it gets served to me via auto-updates in the hopes that MS will have the kinks worked out by then.
Anyway, the reason I stopped at Best Buy on my early trip home today was that while the new Hugin came equipped with a respectable number of USB ports, “respectable” isn’t a high enough number for me, what with external drives and the graphics tablet and whatnot.
(There are some extra ports in the front, but I don’t like to use those for permanently-connected devices.)
I was going to transfer the USB card from the old Hugin to the new Hugin last night, but then said, “Meh, I’ll just buy another one.”
So I did.
While I was there I considered picking up a Blu-Ray DVD or two to test out the new Hugin’s drive, but couldn’t really find anything that I was terribly interested in owning.
At least, I couldn’t find anything that I didn’t already own in standard DVD form, and I’m not going to start replacing my regular DVD collection until after I have a Blu-Ray device permanently hooked up to my TV.
While I was looking at the Blu-Ray titles I noted that the HD DVD add-on drive for the Xbox 360 is selling for the fire sale price of $49.99, which, given the death of the format, is hardly that surprising. I don’t own an Xbox, but I did note that it connects via USB, and wondered if it would be possible to hook it up to a PC. It turns out that it’s more or less possible, with some caveats, so I may see about doing that so that at some point when I make the switch to Blu-Ray I can convert my existing HD DVDs over.
In any case, once I got home I put in the USB card, hooked up everything else that needed to be hooked up, and am now going to get back to the task of installing applications.
I’ll likely be back later, possibly with pictures of the new rig.

(Don't) Trust Your Intuition

As mentioned yesterday, I decided that I simply had to spend some amount of money.
Buying the Touch didn’t really cut into my bonus, as it was essentially purchased with the disposable income left over from my regular paycheck after paying bills.
So far I like it – I went with the 16 GB, which means that I can fit a lot more music on it than I could on my 2 GB Nano, obviously.
The interface is decent, and the underlying OS is pretty responsive. The multi-touch screen does actually make for some intuitive interaction, which is always touted as one of the strengths of Apple products.
That being said, John C. Dvorak recently wrote an article about how there really is no such thing as “intuitive” technology, and I tend to think that he has a point.
In particular, you run into the question of “Intuitive to whom?”
As a veteran PC user, there are certain approaches to interacting with anything computer-related that strike me as intuitive, though to a Mac user, or a complete newbie, they might very well seem counter-intuitive. Of course, I’m also a veteran Mac user, so making the shift isn’t really that difficult.
However, where the intuitive – to pretty much everyone who isn’t a Luddite or from a pre-industrial society – aspects of using the Touch end is when you run into the brick wall that is iTunes.
All of the non-Apple mp3 players I’ve had in the past generally worked like this: you plug it into the computer, the computer recognizes it as a storage device, and you drag and drop content directly onto it.
From pretty much any standpoint – Mac user, PC user, Linux user, etc. – that is extremely intuitive.
Much more so than having to launch a specific application (after you download and install it, along with another application that you may or may not want, but have no option not to download and install), telling it where to look for the files you want to put on the device, then going through a rather lengthy “synching” process.
Again, that leads to the question of “Intuitive to whom?” In the case of iTunes, I would say that the answer to that question is “Certainly not the end-user.”
Granted, this isn’t a particularly arduous process, but it certainly lacks the elegance of simply grabbing what you want and dragging it over over to where you want it.
Really, where intuitiveness comes into play with the iTunes model is from the perspective of a product/service provider. Tying your end-users to a particular, proprietary application, which you can then use as a means of delivering additional for-pay services to them, is incredibly “intuitive.”
Still, those quibbles – and some irritation over the way it organizes, or more to the point, doesn’t organize photos, which I won’t get into – aside, the Touch is a decent product.
Given that, minus the actual phone and the camera, the Touch is essentially an iPhone, I did consider actually taking that additional step and going all out and buying an iPhone.
The main reason I didn’t, though, is that it wasn’t all that long ago that I dropped a considerable chunk of change on my current phone. Given that there’s nothing wrong with my phone, I see no need to replace it.
(Technically, there wasn’t anything “wrong” with my Nano, either, but I did want something with a higher storage capacity.)
Beyond that, while I have come around to liking the whole smart phone concept, I don’t really see the need to combine my cell phone with my mp3 player, and I believe that there’s something to be said for having distinct devices that perform specific functions, even if there is some overlap.
(And of course, there are my objections about the inherent pretentiousness of iPhone ownership, and my desire to avoid diving any deeper into Apple fanboyishness, but those are just knee-jerk reactions and not actually major considerations, or really in any way serious, for that matter.)
In any case, so far it seems like a worthwhile gadget to have dropped some money on.
Speaking of which, after discussing it with Scott – who concluded that I would “use the hell out of it” – and watching some YouTube videos of it in action yesterday, I’ve decided that once I get my refund, I’m going to drop a huge chunk of change on a Wacom Cintiq.
I was initially thinking about going with the more affordable 12” model, but eventually said, “Screw it,” and decided to go all – or at least mostly – out and get the 20.1” version, which I think has the advantage over the 21” model in that it’s widescreen. Not to mention the fact that it’s $500 cheaper.
Kathleen made a suggestion, which I’m seriously considering: register Heroic Portraits as an LLC, which would allow me to claim the cost of buying the Cintiq as a business expense.
It’s a good idea, and one definitely worth pursuing. The only problem is that it leads to the inevitable conflict between practicality and impatience.
To wit: I want the Cintiq now!
(Well, not right this second, but as soon as I have the refund money. Okay, I do want it right this second, but I’m able to wait until I get the refund, but waiting beyond that? I’m not so sure.)