Sunday, January 11, 2009

Sunday Morning Bike Ride, more Scattered Thoughts

It drizzled all night, but is now clearing up. The sky is still cloudy and light gray, breezy and around 58 F outside. Temps are supposed to drop throughout the day. I got up late, which for me now is 7:00 am, stretched, and went on a quick (15 minute) 3 mile bike ride to stretch out a bit. It was like riding through a dream. iPod blasting Paramore. It felt good. I miss working from home. I used to do this every day, either biking or walking/jogging. Summer of 2006 I was averaging two rides per week at 22 miles each trek. I used to ride my bike to work back then also. Last Summer I barely got out. Oh well, it was nice to get out again, even for such a brief moment.

I saw Marley & Me again last night. Great movie, but sad ending. Sorry for the spoiler. I got home and had to bond with my baby dog "Lucky" for a few hours. I think the movie was produced by a secret group of dogs.

Twitter

Twitter has become a minor obsession for me. I'm finding that short quips are ideal for Twitter rather than blogging. I'm probably going to be using Twitter much more than Blogger from now on. I'll use the blog for times when I have something elaborate or significant to say. Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/skatterbrainz if you care.

I will be posting more stupid scripting stuff here over the next week or two. So, if that's your cup of tea, hopefully it's something you find helpful. Let me know if there's something you'd like to see? You can also check out Don Hite's scripting blog. He has tons of goodies of all sorts.

Windows 7

Windows 7 is pretty nice. Not as drastic of a change as going from Win2k to XP or NT4 to WS03, but it's a very noticable improvement over Vista. It's always easier to point at things we don't like than what we do like, it seems. I don't like the Win7 task bar, but only because of the way it combines quick-launch shortcuts with running (minimized) shortcuts. You can't tell which are actually running without moving the cursor over them to see if they produce a preview popup. Very confusing. I also don't care for the odd mix of icon motifs. Some are 3D-ish, while others are 2D and boxy, like the new Explorer icon. The WMP shortcut is flat-out ugly. I'm really surprised Microsoft couldn't concoct some prettier icons.

On the plus side, there are many. Faster performance for installation, configuration, and startup/shutdown operations. Some UI changes are nice, like the new desktop properties popup, control panel and network and sharing center. The new Action Center is a nice touch as well. The new tree-panel behavior for folder selection is better but it takes a little getting used to. It no longer automatically expands folder trees when you select a folder (you have to explicitly click on the "[+]" icon). There's a lot more, but I'll leave that to others who get paid to review things.

Blogs of Note

I have amassed a crapload (that's a technical term) of blog feed links over the past two years. I follow most of them very closely. I really don't know why. I suppose it gives me something to do that distracts me from the drudgery life can deliver. Adam Schefter's NFL.com blog is really good and he posts like a madman. Matt Raible has a great slice-of-life blog. John C. Dvorak has a fun blog. Some others I follow: Rod Trent, Mini-Microsoft, The GPO Guy, Andy Wibbels, and about four dozen more.

Anyhow, it's Winter now, which in southeastern Virginia means cold, clouds, and rain. We're not allowed to have snow unless we've been bad, which is rare. And nobody here can drive in snow. Even flurries send drivers here immediately into the nearest guardrail or utility pole. I can't understand it. I'm hunkering down for Spring, which can't get here soon enough. I like warm weather. If it's going to get cold, it should snow. Nothing in between. Virginia is in between. Maybe when the housing market turns around I will think about moving somewhere else. This got me thinking about what I would do if I won a HUGE lottery payout. I'd probably build a house in each place I'd like to spend time. That would probably be somewhere in Colorado (where my parents were from), somewhere in southwest Michigan (where my wife's family is), somewhere near a beach (Florida or California), and maybe a private jet to get around. That would be cool.

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