Had to take some things home today so I wouldn't be the 'cat lady' there

I had these stuffed cat pillows on either side of my monitor that look very realistic, the type that's a printed image front and back that is then sewn together and stuffed with polyfill. I think they creeped the IT guy who was upgrading my computer today, because they stare straight ahead, which was a little unnerving at first, but I've long since gotten used to them.

I told myself awhile back that if I got Windows 7 at work and could use the same cat theme as I do at home, I'd go ahead and take the stuffed cats home. Well, I got that today. There are just a few glitches with the upgrade they're working on (mainly that I need to change my browser settings for DOCLINE and PubMed to work correctly, but those settings are not accessible), but otherwise it went swimmingly. And I was able to get the cat slideshow on my desktop. So, the pillows came home. My desk looks a bit bare without them, but you can only have so many cat images in one place before they start wondering about you. Especially if you don't actually have cats at home.

I saw a comic today that reminded me of my best friend. It's the comic Non Sequitur. Check out the link; Danae, the young girl, stalls for time in a very eloquent manner. :)

I'll write later. Have a good night.

I have been a little too tired to blog lately, sorry

Last night a friend cooked dinner for his husband and myself, which was really nice (I cooked for him on Chanukah, he cooked for me on the solstice, my holiday, so that worked out rather well). He is a wonderful cook. We visited for quite some time and I helped him with a few things, and I didn't get home until somewhere around 1 am.

Sunday I had only had about three hours of sleep because I'd been keyed up by upgrading to Windows 7 (my computer has half the memory needed for optimal performance and a graphics card that doesn't actually translate the Aero translucent windows effects, plus since I was going from XP straight to 7 I had to do a clean install, transferring my files and settings to an external hard drive and then letting it erase all the information on the internal one. So you can see I was a little concerned. But it all worked out, and things are going pretty well. I would like to upgrade my memory to 1 GB (I'm at 512 MB now) and upgrade my graphics card, too, but that is for another day. Actually, my stepfather might have some lying around; he builds computers for people, and usually has the latest thing in his own, so he's got a room full of parts. :) Anyway, I played the game, I had fun, but we played till almost 10:30 pm and I was wiped out afterwards.

So far it's been a pretty good week, though. I'm taking Thursday, Christmas Eve, off from the hospital so I can go visit my family (it was either that or New Year's Eve, and Christmas Eve there's a lot less traffic). I'm working 9 am to 4 pm on Christmas itself at the store, which is fine. It'll probably be really slow except for people looking for batteries. :) It usually is, anyway. Then I'm working Saturday night because the truck is delayed until then due to the holiday.

It looks like my mom's present might make it before Christmas after all. I've been tracking it and it's travelled from New York to Lexington, so it just needs to make the trip 45 minutes away to Stanford. Yay.

I paid bills tonight--cable, cell phone, and electric. Two of them were double bills, and I'll pay the rest tomorrow after I get paid. I got my pay statement today from the store (and other people got cheques, but they are dated for tomorrow, so theoretically they can't cash them until then). My direct deposit should go in tonight sometime, and I already know what it will be, so that's nice. That'll leave me about $100 to get through till New Year's, when I get paid at both places and pay my rent. It's nice to not be down to the wire, though. Granted, I need to be saving and paying down debt, but I really wanted to do a little more during the holidays than in past years because I'm in a better position to do so. I'll work on the other starting in January.

I've looked for work pants online and at several stores without success (who knew it would be this hard?) but Brenda, who's a seamstress/costumer, suggested that I look for the pants in the men's section, since I'm pretty much up and down in terms of my waist and hips. She said to try the bigger sizes in a relaxed fit. Those sorts of pants are common for men and cheaper, too. That's the plan, although I'm not sure when I'll have the opportunity to go looking next. Maybe Saturday morning or Monday afternoon? The buses don't run on Friday at all, and nothing's open but places like us and Walgreens. :)

We ordered Chinese tonight at work and I got Bean Curd (Tofu) Szechuan style and a couple of veggie egg rolls. Here is my fortune: 'Pick a path with heart.' The learn Chinese thing on the back is for potato, which is apparently 'ma ling shu'.

I've been putting a few things back on the computer such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash Player, and some of my Real Arcade games. Two of my favourites have been retired, so there's no re-downloading for Real Arcade's new system--Get Medieval and Moon Tycoon. The ones I transferred won't open on their own, so I have apparently lost them, which is unfortunate. The others translated over, though. I might be able to find the retired ones online as stand-alone games somewhere, I don't know.

Okay, I've been starring news items to share, but I'll leave that for later. They found the Auschwitz sign, for example, cut into three pieces. It just made me cringe, but at least they recovered it.

I'll try to write more tomorrow and certainly Thursday night, when I'm off. Thanks for reading.

Success!

We are now Windows 7 Ultimate +. Now--the question is, can I get my data back off my external drive to access my documents and settings?

Remember the 'touch' techonology from Microsoft I blogged about some time ago?

It's making its way to personal computers with Windows 7, scheduled for release in 2010:

Microsoft demos 'touch Windows'

Scheduled for release in 2010, the new fingertip interface lets users enlarge and shrink photos, trace routes on maps, paint pictures or play the piano. 'The way you interact with the system will change dramatically,' said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

Thanks to John Jaeger for this information.