the very odd day

This morning as I was getting ready for church I noticed my nose for no particular reason. It seemed bigger, longer than normal. Since it probably didn't grow overnight, I assume it's just an optical illusion, but every time I looked in the mirror it just looked odd. It was as though my nose had been replaced in the night with some foreign nose.

It's rather like when you read or say one word repeatedly and for no apparent reason it starts to seem not quite right. The spelling doesn't look correct, and the sounds feel awkward in your mouth. Everything about the word is strange.

That's how my nose seemed this morning. And like with words that have acquired a certain strangeness, given distance and time, things reverted to normal. When I got home from church, my nose appeared just as it should.

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We've been having scattered thunderstorms for the past several days. So when I looked out my living room window 20 minutes ago, I wasn't surprised to see drops falling from the sky. What was unusual was that all I could see were sunshine and blue skies, so I stepped outside to take a look. I expected to see a cloud hovering above the building, out of sight from my inside vantage point, but no, there were nothing but blue skies overhead and all around excepting one or two very tiny, white clouds a little ways in the distance. And yet, there I stood in the sunshine with raindrops falling all around. There wasn't really any wind either, so I'm positive the drops weren't blowing off of any tree leaves. It was rather like an unusual omen that might happen in a children's fantasy movie before something rather strange and amazing happens.

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There is something wrong with the keyboard on my MacBook. At the strangest times, the cursor just starts jumping around the text box. It will move up into other sentences and highlight random words. It's most annoying and makes it a chore to type anything. This post, for instance, took twice as long as it ought to have because I kept having to correct for the errant cursor. I think it's time to visit a Mac Genius.

hypersonic advertising

I'm all for advances in technology, but I think that ethics and privacy really need to be taken into strong consideration with some new technologies. Take this article for example. Evidently they've developed what they're calling "hypersonic advertising" that can target a sound beam within a limited area. With other types of advertising (radio, print, TV, internet), you have more of a choice to listen to or read the advertisement, but this seems much more invasive.

my pretty

After 2 weeks of torturous waiting time, my new MacBook finally arrived. It is so pretty. It's shiny and white and has a fun built-in webcam and runs so very much faster than my 6-year-old PC that I'd purchased right before I started grad school for the first time in 2002.

Today I spent way too much time playing with it, downloading all sorts of things (Firefox, EndNote, Skype, MS Office, etc.) Oh, if you're on Skype, let me know (or just add me as a contact).

Anyway I love my Mac. Did I mention how pretty it was?

In addition to all that, this makes me an even better white person :) haha

computer woes

I've had my computer ever since I started my first grad degree (read: almost 5 years). I know that's practically a dinosaur for a computer, but I haven't had many problems with it at all.

However, recently it's started doing this thing where when it falls asleep after being left idle, sometimes I can't get it to wake back up. The light on the hard drive stays steady and the fan continues to run, which makes me think that the processor isn't shutting off for sleep mode or something like that. I'm no computer expert, so if that's totally off the wall, someone who's more computer savvy is welcome to correct me on that.

If I turn the computer off and then start it back up, it runs like normal, but I can never be sure if it's going to sleep or go comatose if I leave it sit for too long.

So my question is should I take the computer in (& possibly upgrade the processor, memory, etc.) or should I just replace it? Part of me would love to get a laptop, but another part of me doesn't really want to spend the money on a new computer right now. Help!

woohoo!!!

The amazing thing about this post is that I'm posting from home. That's right... from home. Not from my work computer. Not from a friend's computer. From home!!!

You have no idea how excited I am about this :)

I used my cell phone

I used my cell phone to post this. Neat, huh?

it's finally up

When I was still in library school, I redesigned the website for the Meadows Bible Institute in Reno. Every once in a while, I'll check to see if they've replaced the old website with the redesigned one. Today I randomly checked, and it's finally up. I would have done more with the site if I had more time, but given that I was trying to graduate and find a job at the same time I was redesigning this site, I'm pretty happy with it. So if you're feeling a bit bored, go check out the MBI site: www.mbireno.org.