The Jeff R Project

No, I’m not lost, I’m a fan of ‘Lost’ – you know, the hit ABC primetime drama named ‘Lost’.

It’s all Chris’s fault. He got me hooked at the beginning of season 2 and now it’s one of few TV shows I have to watch each week. If you haven’t checked it out yet you totally should! Rent Season 1.

I haven’t seen Season 1 yet.

Tonight on Lost they killed of not 1, but 2 characters! And it was evil and creepy how they did it. A little “Twilight Zone” meets “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” meets Edgar Allan Poe. But they did it. Chris mentioned that he read critics were worried it would be a ‘placeholder’ episode and it kinda was. They didn’t advance what is generally considered to be the “main storyline” (Jack, Kate, Sawyer, ‘The Others’, The Dharma Project etc) but there were some hints at it in flashbacks.

The flashbacks were done in a “catch up” fashion. The first flashback was to before the crash, then the crash and then a series of of them leading up to the start of the show. Which revealed some of the creepiness. Yuck.

Anyway, not having been a rabid fan from day one, the flashbacks reveal stuff to me. There’s a scene of a conversation between Juliet and Ben talking about getting Jack to do the surgery on Ben. I can’t recall when it happened (comment if you know) but it was, I believe, prior to Ben getting caught by Jack and the crew and held in the hatch. It’s creepy to see Ben being that manipulative and cunning. I guess I’m more a happy friendly guy who doesn’t want to think about who’s planning what and spending a month manipulating me to get it.

So we hired a new employee at work. His name is Gavin and he seems really great. But on day one, you hope he wouldn’t be an idiot. He seems like a good kid and he’s very energetic and gung-ho.

Today was Monday so it’s a new work-week. How did it start? Not too bad. I can’t remember who knows about this blog so I’ll be very reserved. Let’s just say “I wish I could fire some people” and leave it at that.

How’s that for bi-polar. “I like Gavin” then right into “I wanna fire other people”…

I’m addicted. Whether it’s good or bad is a matter of opinion. I’m addicted to HGTV and all the “Flip That House” type shows on TV. I swear I could sit at home and do nothing but watch home renovation shows (and our Real Estate channel) and be quite happy. Chris calls it “house porn” and teases me about watching “porn” all the time.

On the plus side it means that when the time comes to buy something, and renovate it, I’ll be totally ready. Buying a house/condo/townhouse is probably the next big major thing Chris & I want to do. We’re both dying to have something we own and are building equity in. Vancouver is a pretty tough market to buy in. It’s so expensive here with next to nothing available in our price range. And we’re not doing much to save money for our down payment.

Today I’ve been cleaning up my little office and getting ready to sell a few pieces of furniture. A few shelves from Ikea etc which serves 2 purposes. First, it’ll clear up the office and second I’ll have a bit of money to put towards the computer purchase, and maybe buy a new desk for here.

Rumble didn’t like me cleaning at all. It was a little noisy and disruptive and I kept finding him as far away as possible in case he got caught up in anything. LOL. Poor pup.

So last time I blogged, I mentioned I’d bought a new HP 1730N computer. Sweet ride. It’s taken some time to get things set up the way I want. I learned a few things, bought a few new things to go with etc.

- I upgraded my internet. I went to Telus High Speed Enhanced which doubles my download speed. $10 a month extra. Why? Because I got a $150 router (2Wire) with it so I can have my home network. Plus it’s faster. Faster is good. Speed rules!

- I’ve ordered KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse switch) so I can use 1 keyboard, monitor and mouse with 2 systems. Why? Because I can return the monitor I bought now that I have my data transferred and save $200!

- Wide screen monitors are tricky. I was actually just reading a post this morning that reminds me that widescreen monitors tend to be at least 6% SMALLER than their regular counterparts. So if you’re buying one, go 1″ bigger than you think you want. I’m not that pleased with the widescreen HP monitor. Not only is it smaller, but its position isn’t flexible. It has a slight tilt back at the top that’s driving me crazy and can’t be changed without shimming it somehow. Why?

- Transferring files with a 2GB USB key sucks. See the point about the router above.

- Failing hard drives suck. There are certain files I can’t retrieve from the old machine. There’s some serious corruption on the C: drive blocking me from retrieving my Firefox bookmarks.

- Quicktime won’t work on Vista. At least on my machine. Which totally sucks.

- New technology won’t make your work better. I find myself still following all the same bad work-at-home habits I had before. Ignoring emails, not filing, bad organizing, procrastinating instead of working (ie: surfing the net not working) – except that now I can do it faster!

Regardless, the new computer was a good decision. Now, after a week of working out the kinks, I’ve got it settled. I can get back to working. Chris likes it too. It’s a lot faster, we can have separate logins again without major conflicts or problems, and there’s enough memory that it doesn’t slow down.

Sweet deal over all.

The end of an era arrived this week. I don’t remember exactly what happened, so I won’t be able to mark the occassion appropriately in the future. Basically my 5 year old computer started to fail. The hard drive is going. Many, many errors, programs lost, partitions vanishing, then reappearing. Yep, I saw the herald and the death knell has sounded.

But what to do? Do I buy a new hard drive and simply replace the fearless old one(s)? Or do I pony up and buy myself a sweet new ride? I hemmed and hawwed. Chris and I debated the price and if we could afford to do it. In the end, we’re both geeks, both guys and both like new toys so I bought a new computer.

An HP 1730N system. By the numbers: An AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ at 2.6Ghz with 2GB of ram and 320GB hard drive. I get sweaty just typing it all out.

Now I’m faced with the monumental task of moving all of the data from my old Windows XP based system on to the swanky new Vista Home Premium edition. Not only that, but finding the installers for all the applications, downloading the cool tools I use and setting everything up.

And I’ve got work to do! Rather than piddling around with all this swapping back and forth (Right now I’m using a 2 gig USB drive to transfer the data) I should be doing some coding for a couple of sites, and I have another client about to send me a draft proposal I have to consider. The easier solution to the data transfer is to create a network with the 2 machines, but I don’t have the hardware (router, cables) for it yet.

How do you move 1000s of emails from Thunderbird over to Windows Mail? Or should I just get Thunderbird again? There’s gotta be a better way…..