Those around me know that my car has been slowing breaking, bit by bit over the last year+.  It seemed that around the time for every oil change, something else would break on the car and end up costing 200-400 bucks.  The Check Engine light came on again a few weeks ago and during that repair it was discovered that a few more (rather expensive) repairs would be in line for the near future.

Given that we didn’t want to keep throwing more money at a car that was falling apart, and that we don’t have a vehicle we’d trust for long trips (Ana’s has been more reliable but had some transmission issues last year), we decided it was time to ditch the Intrigue.

We now have a silver 2006 Impala LTZ with 12,000 miles.  It’s in the same class (in my opinion) as the intrigue: handling, size, comfort; but has a few very nice additions that have spoiled me already.  Things like remote start, heated seats, 6-disc in-dash cd changer that plays mp3 cds, etc.  The heated seats are amazing, I swear they heat up in under a minute.  That combined with the remote start has kept us from sitting in a cold car, a welcome change 🙂

As reported by a fellow Central Illinoisan, it’s snowing like crazy today. Ana and I both decided to go to work this morning, even though there was a blizzard warning in effect. We decided to just come home around noon though, as reports kept coming in on how bad the roads were continuing to get.

On the way home, the roads were crappy as expected and we got stuck pulling into our driveway which had accumulated quite a load of snow in the few hours we were at work. After a little pushing and shoveling the car was back in the garage safe and sound. In the mean time, a neighbor couldn’t get into his driveway with his cargo van, so I donned my warm, carhart astronomy gear and helped push his van too. Before it was all said and done I helped another neighbor with their Trailblazer, a 4×4 nonetheless.

So I’ve been inside all afternoon playing around on the computer and watching the wind whip around the snow the keeps falling. I think the weathermen were finally correct with their predictions of snow until midnight. They’re saying we may end up with 10-15 inches by the time its all done. That should make for another fun morning.

It has been a long long time since it has snowed like this, but it has also been a long time since we’ve had a real winter here in Springfield so I guess it’s well overdue.

This is my first post under Vista!

I  obtained a couple free copies by watching some online training videos, and they arrived last week in the mail. I was going to wait until HP was set to release drivers (so they said anyway) for my laptop on Wednesday but decided to give it a shot without them.

The entire installation process for a clean install (wiped partition) took at most 45 minutes, and I have to say that was the smoothest Windows install I’ve ever done.  Everything has just worked, from the wireless network to the video.  In fact, it downloaded and installed the new nvidia driver without me telling it to on the first boot.

I’m running Aero, and it seems pretty darn slick.  Way to go Microsoft, and thanks for my free copy.

Tomorrow I head back to work after the nice little Holiday break.  On short notice I decided to take today off and play with my new toys rather than try to concentrate at work.  For the remainder of the week I’m planning on leaving work an hour or two early each day instead of just taking the entire day off.  Ana, on the other hand, has to burn some vacation time so she’s home all week.

I received some great gifts this year.  Among them are: a dvd burner; a gamepad for my pc; a couple of software-related books; and a pair of Garrison Keillor CD Sets.  I hope everyone we gave gifts to enjoy theirs as much as we’ve enjoyed ours!

I just kicked off the installer and was notified that the process could take several minutes to several hours!   Greeaaat, nothing like having a potentially unusable machine for a couple of hours.

Over Thanksgiving weekend we rearranged things at home a little bit.  We have a formal dining room that has been sitting without furniture since we moved in, with no plans of filling it any time soon.  So we decided to start getting use out of the area for something other than junk.

We moved Ana’s Piano from the living room (the front living area in the house) into the dining room and then moved the office from upstairs down to the living room. I always disliked having to go all the way upstairs to sit at my desktop and work – it just felt so isolated.

So now I am sitting in our front room while Ana is in the family room watching tv, and I can watch it too.  And we can still hold a conversation, unlike when I was secluded upstairs.  All-in-all I really like it, I’ve gotten lots more done since I’ve been down here.  The only downside so far is that I’m sitting right next to a window, one that’s a little chilly when it’s less than 10 degrees outside 🙂

I love office supplies.  There, I said it out in the open.  I don’t know what it is about them, but I could spend hours (and have come close before) in office supply stores.  There’s something good about knowing that I’ll have paper, pens, binders, notebooks, etc. on hand at home whenever the need arises – which is just never anywhere near enough to use the surplus I have amassed.  It’s hard to walk around stores and not spend a disproportionate amount of time in the office isles.  I just plain enjoy it. Is that weird?

I don’t think so.  I have noticed over the past several years that there’s a very close relationship between one’s geek self and the love of office supplies.  I can’t think of any of my friends who don’t have this affinity.  Maybe it’s just coincidence; maybe it’s some other personality trait linked with office supplies. I’m pretty sure it’s geekiness.

I’ll ponder that as I continue to print and hole-punch and bind my way to organization…