I have returned

Due to paychecks and bills lining up just right I was left with a little extra money this month, which I spent on a new netbook. That's right I have rejoined the internet world so expect longer and more frequent posting. But not right away. Right now I'm working on installing all the programs I use to use on a daily basis. Things like a feed reader and openoffice and Miro and tweetdeck and stuff I can't remember right now. Also I need to rebuild my bookmarks from scratch. Plus I'm going to be looking into finding some free animation programs for a project I'm working on with a coworker.

So I'm back but not really until later in the week. See you all then.

Gilly

Since I haven't done so in a while, I'm posting a pic of myself. Please excuse the wet hair I'm typing this up between showering and going to work.

Posting from wii

So its been awhile since I posted. I had one week of just being too tired to post. One week and a half of being depressed and not feeling like posting. And then my netbook stopped working. I took it back to Best Buy to have it fixed. After three weeks they called me to pick it up. When I got there I was first told that they couldn't fix it but after reading the papers that came back with it and asking a few questions I determined that there was a problem with their parts ordering/repair tracking system. I got a full refund for the netbook and the service plan I had bought for it.

There wasn`t another netbook there that Iliked so I held onto the money over the weekend before deciding to buy a wii.

Quite a bit has happened in the last few weeks but it is really slow typing this one letter at a time. Expect a longer post when I get a usb keyboard in the next few days.

Health insurance/depression update

Ok I've had one of those weird brain spasms where that thing that made no sense, now makes sense. So I've decide to get the insurance through my work. I'm going to be getting the plan that costs less per month but has the higher deductible.

I have been wondering how I will deal with going to the doctor for my current health problems. Specifically am I going to tell him I'm transgender and selfmedicating? Of course I absolutely should tell him but I don't know if I will be able to. I mean I don't know if I will be able to work up the courage to tell a complete stranger things that I have largely kept hidden. A thought just popped into my head that I could write a short letter and hand it to him. While still scary it would be less difficult for me to hand over a piece of paper than to say it out loud.

In other news I am feeling shitty. I have this ever persent feeling that things are going horrible wrong in my life. When I stop and take stock I find nothing to worry about, this does not rid me of the feeling. I'm forcing myself to keep moving forward.

Closing this off here. I need to get up early tomorrow so I can take my netbook back to where I bought it and see if they can do anything about the fact my speakers have stopped working.

Some thoughts on my new netbook(Aues Eee PC 1000HE)

Earlier I preformed an impromptu battery life test. I started at 8:30pm with a fully charged six cell battery. At 1:27am my netbook went into standby mode with 5% battery charge or 17 minutes left. So about 5 hours. Now this was with wifi turned on and Utorrent running, so I could probably get the seven hours the sticker on the netbook promised.

The keyboard is comfortable to use. The only real complaints I have with it are the small right shift key and small arrow keys jammed into the corner. I find myself hitting the enter key instead of the shift key because of it's size. Yes the left shift key is closer to normal size and I know you're supposed to use the shift key opppsite the letter you want to capatalize but I only use the right shift key. This is just a weird typing quirk I picked up years ago.

Before I started using laptops on a regular basis I didn't like touch pads. I have learnt to use them. Having said that I like the touch pad on this netbook. Besides tracking finger movements very well it has some interesting multi touch features. Two fingers moved up or down will scroll the current page. There is also a zoom feature that allows zooming by dragging two fingers apart. I've had less than stellar results from trying to zoom but the scroll feature works wonderfully.

I've had a bit of trouble with sound. Some apps were hard to hear while others seemed fine. I managed a fix by raising all the sliders in the Realtek equalizer. It's not an elegant solution but it works.

This week has just not been a good blogging or writing week. I thought I'd whip up a quick post.

First good news. I am typing this on my new Eee Aeus. So far I'm loving it. It is totally walk around the house portable. Small and light enough to easily carry one handed. My last laptop was a monster with a 17 inch screen. It was nice to look at and use but not easy to move around unless holding it with both hands and braced against some other body part. The ten inch screen on this gem is smaller than I'm used to but not to small to be annoying. It cost me $349 plus tax.

Second more good news. My store is part of a group of stores which was in competition with other groups of stores during the first quarter of this year and our group of stores won. And as part of the management team I got a larger bonus which just about covered the cost of my netbook.

Third good and bad news. I'm going to be getting health insurance through my store which they don't offer to regular employees just management, which I am in the eyes of my manager but not yet in the eyes of the company. The regional manager is going to push it through to get me health insurance. Now on to why I need heath insurance. Basically I be or may be becoming diabetic. It runs in my family and I really don't eat right or exercise enough so if I am it's my own fault. But my symptoms(dizziness, lightheadedness, difficulty remembering words, fatigue and tiredness not linked to lack of sleep) might be something else so I'll glad that I'm going to be able to get medical care.

Fourth good news. Our cat Tinkerbell started giving birth while I was writing this. So far two have come out but we think there will be more.

Thats all for now.