The fun of random heat waves...
It's been in the 90s since saturday. Though, it seems to be a little cooler or I could be readjusting to being hot constantly. Saturday was brutal though. I wasn't at all ready for it to be very humid and hot all at once - especially as the rest of the week was in the 70s with highs around 80. Currently I keep waking up to temps in the low 70s with temps in the 90s before midday. Ugg...
Past that, things have been rather slow and I like it that way. Today's fun - playing with what I think is a hopeless conductivity meter. At least I'm doubtful it will do anything other than give us jumpy readings. Laura thinks that now that it's been reintroduced to water it might even out. What I see is a meter that didn't pick up anything in a jar of regular water, then was very spiky with the high concentration of water and then was still spikey though a little less so with the lesser but intermediate water. I realize the thing is dependent on temperature. But from 70.1 to 70.4 is not a huge jump. And I don't suspect a jump from 1000 to 700 is warented as a result. Though I could be wrong. I really don't know much about the thing.
I did get to play with Vista today though. Apparently the laptop I keep using does have word and acrobat reader and such its just been installed under vista instead of xp. The comp has both and I just automatically pick xp every time I deal with it 1. to make it easier on me and 2. because I just can't ever fathom using vista.
I did have to use it for this operation though as we needed excel and I learned several things.
1. if you save a file under xp it won't regester as existing under vista. This seems to be true of all such computers with 2 operating systems - at least I vaguely recall this being an issue when it came to the computers at stockton - the files i had saved on the server from the windows computers wouldn't show up on the macs. and it wasn't just the files it was the whole series of folders. I suspected at the time that it was just cause I changed computer types. Now I'm thinking that the systems just have different zones of alotted memory and so load up different areas.
2. Vista makes me angry. And this is not because it's new and I'm not used to it. It's because the set up just seems unnessesarily complicated. Sure in word all the menus aren't hidden any more - the buttons are just rearanged. But they take up space with large icons and in general the option menu I need isn't one of hte most common ones up there. Now I realize you can probubly add the icon to the tool bar but its still anoying. The search was overly complicated and not helpful - we did attempt to find the files.
What I find most intersting though is the way the whole set up is a lot more like macs and a lot less like the other windows systems. but unlike macs vista is still just as complicated as a typical windows. Now I know that I would get used to it if I had to, but I still can't help but thinking that no matter how long I'd use it I still wouldn't be as proficient as I am with the other windows or am getting with macs.
I've had my laptop over a week and though I'm not 100% proficient I feel I know at least the basics if not more so. I can navigate to most of the areas and do many of the things I think of as mildly complicated on my desktop. The learning process hasn't taken as long as I expected. This is in part because I'm more experienced with computers than when I first started with my desktop and so naturally would be more up with finding things but I also am starting to see how macs are less complicated.
So vista as more complicated seeming than xp or 2000 just makes me twitchy. The new and improved version is not supposed to be more obnoxious.
In other news I downloaded the new version of google earth over the weekend. Yay! If you haven't seen it check it out. It now has options for playing with sunlight and looking at the universe.
This of course aided in my weekend being not highly productive in the school work side of things. I did make a map of all the diners and wawas in south jersey though. I suspect road trips with a couple of people will be forthcoming. :D At least its always more fun to randomly drive around when I have a purpose. Though given that gas is now 3.95 at the cheep station I should be working toward driving less.
Well, thats enough ramblings for the moment....
Past that, things have been rather slow and I like it that way. Today's fun - playing with what I think is a hopeless conductivity meter. At least I'm doubtful it will do anything other than give us jumpy readings. Laura thinks that now that it's been reintroduced to water it might even out. What I see is a meter that didn't pick up anything in a jar of regular water, then was very spiky with the high concentration of water and then was still spikey though a little less so with the lesser but intermediate water. I realize the thing is dependent on temperature. But from 70.1 to 70.4 is not a huge jump. And I don't suspect a jump from 1000 to 700 is warented as a result. Though I could be wrong. I really don't know much about the thing.
I did get to play with Vista today though. Apparently the laptop I keep using does have word and acrobat reader and such its just been installed under vista instead of xp. The comp has both and I just automatically pick xp every time I deal with it 1. to make it easier on me and 2. because I just can't ever fathom using vista.
I did have to use it for this operation though as we needed excel and I learned several things.
1. if you save a file under xp it won't regester as existing under vista. This seems to be true of all such computers with 2 operating systems - at least I vaguely recall this being an issue when it came to the computers at stockton - the files i had saved on the server from the windows computers wouldn't show up on the macs. and it wasn't just the files it was the whole series of folders. I suspected at the time that it was just cause I changed computer types. Now I'm thinking that the systems just have different zones of alotted memory and so load up different areas.
2. Vista makes me angry. And this is not because it's new and I'm not used to it. It's because the set up just seems unnessesarily complicated. Sure in word all the menus aren't hidden any more - the buttons are just rearanged. But they take up space with large icons and in general the option menu I need isn't one of hte most common ones up there. Now I realize you can probubly add the icon to the tool bar but its still anoying. The search was overly complicated and not helpful - we did attempt to find the files.
What I find most intersting though is the way the whole set up is a lot more like macs and a lot less like the other windows systems. but unlike macs vista is still just as complicated as a typical windows. Now I know that I would get used to it if I had to, but I still can't help but thinking that no matter how long I'd use it I still wouldn't be as proficient as I am with the other windows or am getting with macs.
I've had my laptop over a week and though I'm not 100% proficient I feel I know at least the basics if not more so. I can navigate to most of the areas and do many of the things I think of as mildly complicated on my desktop. The learning process hasn't taken as long as I expected. This is in part because I'm more experienced with computers than when I first started with my desktop and so naturally would be more up with finding things but I also am starting to see how macs are less complicated.
So vista as more complicated seeming than xp or 2000 just makes me twitchy. The new and improved version is not supposed to be more obnoxious.
In other news I downloaded the new version of google earth over the weekend. Yay! If you haven't seen it check it out. It now has options for playing with sunlight and looking at the universe.
This of course aided in my weekend being not highly productive in the school work side of things. I did make a map of all the diners and wawas in south jersey though. I suspect road trips with a couple of people will be forthcoming. :D At least its always more fun to randomly drive around when I have a purpose. Though given that gas is now 3.95 at the cheep station I should be working toward driving less.
Well, thats enough ramblings for the moment....