rant whine 'splain espouse: Back in the US

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Back in the US

We returned from our honeymoon and vacation in Mexico on December 25, and we had a great time. I've only had time to post a few photos from the literally thousands I took on this trip, but trust me, there will be many more to come. You'll be sick of photos of Mexico soon enough.

After we got back, I was looking forward to another week of vacation before having to go back to work after New Year's, but I promptly got a really bad cold on our second day back, and I've been trying to shake it for a week and a half now.

I finally bought my new camera the week before we left on the trip, so I had a lot of fun with the new gear. I was already fairly used to the model I purchased — the Sony Cyber-shot F828 8.0 megapixel — because Ari was kind enough to lend me his for about six or eight weeks last summer. It's a slightly older model now, but it's the last one Sony manufactured with the pivoting lens design that I like so much. I'm very disappointed the newer Sony prosumer cameras omit this important design feature, and no other manufacturer has anything like it.

I bought an 8 GB compact flash memory card and a handful of 1 and 2 GB cards as backups in case I ran out of memory on the trip. I wasn't taking my laptop so I feared not having enough space for all the photos I'd take. It turned out to be fine, though, and I didn't even need the backup cards. I'll probably sell a few of them, so if you need any, let me know and I'll cut you a deal.

The trip was a lot of fun, very interesting from a sociological perspective, and very relaxing. Plus we had lots and lots of honeymoon sex.

Last week I also bought a new Mac Pro. Two 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Xeons. Yup, count 'em: Four Intel processors in my machine. I never thought I'd say that.

A few years ago, when I bought my G4, I told myself I wasn't going to go any longer than two years between upgrades to my home computer. But it's been three and a half since I upgraded, and I'd been looking to do it for a while. Not to mention saving up money to do it. It's not a cheap machine. Luckily, I located a demo model that'd been pulled off the floor at the Stanford store (10% off), and made nice with the store manager and the sales guy, who gave me his last student discount for 2006 that he hadn't used up (more savings).

Oh, and lest I forget to mention yet another new toy I've been enjoying, Velma surprised me with a video iPod as a New Year's gift (we celebrate New Year's, not that other holiday). She gave it to me a little early, so we had it on the Mexico trip, which made plane rides and many a night more fun for me, since I could listen to the Hitchhiker's Guide BBC broadcasts or watch one of the two movies I'd taken along on the iPod.

tags: personal, hitchin', photography, apple, tech