My brother got a computer yesterday and we spent yesterday evening setting it up for him.
We have him set up for video editing, so look for some odd videos coming from him.
I learned a bit about how computers are packaged these days. You get a “recovery disk”
which has the OS. Wonder if it reformats the hard drive when you reinstall. You get
a trial version of Office. Microsoft hopes you’ll buy the real thing for hundreds of dollars.
We wiped it all off and put the nice free Open Office on.
They also have Norton anti-virus installed, hoping you’ll start paying for a subscription to virus updates.
We wiped it off and put the free AVG antivirus on.
We had a nice time in Houston with Vanessa’s relatives. Saw the new nephew, grampa,
her brother and sister-in-law,
went down to the coastline, ate macadamia mahi and a lot of other food. The return flight was
packed with parents frantically trying to keep their babies and kids from screaming. One couple
had a portable DVD player. We were feeding Sean like a goldfish. He has fortunately just learned
what “no” and “sshhhhh” mean.
What I said before about not needing another realtime strategy game? Ok, maybe just
one more.
My brother-in-law got it and I was impressed enough to do the same. Just like playing the movies.
(EA has risen to a new level of stinginess, though, by insisting that each player bought their own
copy of the game and has their own serial #…even for a LAN game! Also, no multiplayer pause button that we
could find…a necessity if you have a baby.)
My brother-in-law was testing out a Powerbook for his company. He left it in the room we were staying in
so I got to play around with it. I was a bit frustrated by the things I couldn’t do. Wanted
to watch Winamp TV. Couldn’t do it. All the keyboard shortcuts I knew in Windows were no good…though
that’s more of a matter of learning. We went to the new
Fry’s in Houston (Webster) which has a huge model
of the space station hanging throughout the store.
We also watched the making of Labyrinth on DVD. Apparently, “Doctor” Bevery Crusher was
mainly a choreographer at the time, so she choreographed the movie. She shows up in the making-of
documentary. Her name showed up as Cheryl instead of Gates for some reason.
Part of the script was written by Terry Jones from Monty Python.