§ New, New and New
It is a weekend of new stuff. New computers, new yard and a new trainer to help us with Bear.
First things first – the wife and I splurged this weekend on new laptops. I’ve been wanting to go mobile for a while and the new 15” G4 PowerBook upgrades were too much to resist. While we were there we caved in and bought a new 12” PowerBook for the wife. To justify this we’re selling the old gear. So if anyone is interested in a 12” iBook G4 with 640mb of Ram or a Dual 1Ghz MDD with 1.75 GB of Ram and 110GB of hard drive space please inquire within.
I have to say this new PowerBook is very cool. The scrolling trackpad is uber-cool as is the backlit keyboard. The backlighting is very well done, it will not only light the keyboard but dim the screen as well. The amount that it dims and glows depends upon the amount of ambient light still available. If the room is pitch black you really don’t need that much help to see the keys so it only lights up a bit, but if there is a reasonable mix of light and dark then it lights up more so you can see for sure.
Andy has an older PowerBook at work and compared to that Apple has made some tremendous improvements on the quality of the powerbooks. The screen is more stiff so you can move it by a corner and not bend it – you can also pick up the computer by a corner and not feel it bend. The new rigidity is very nice.
It is quiet too. I’ve heard complaints about noise and heard Andy’s work machine make a bit of noise when the fan kicks in but with the 15” and 12” PBs on the table the most you can hear is like a constant breath. It is very nice. Heat seems to be less of an issue overall. I was sitting on the couch for a while last night and didn’t get uncomfortable with the heat though it could have been the way I was sitting.
512mb of ram in one stick is a great bonus too. As soon as the tower sells I’ll be dropping in another 512MB of Ram. I’d like to add a gig but ~$280 is too much to spend on that.
I’m very pleased with the purchase of this machine. I can’t wait to get my programs loaded up and start using it for work.
We also got the yard done yesterday. It looks so spiffy nice that when walking up to the house if feels like a new home. The grass is nice to see and the mutts dig it too. Or, more so, they dig in it too. Hasn’t been too bad – they ate up one square but beyond that they’ve been pretty good and we’ve been able to catch them in the act a couple times so hopefully that has sunk in. Probably not. But we’ve got an extra 5 squares to fill in with should they go nuts on the grass.
The bricks and flagstone add so much to the look of the house as well. And the funny thing is the dogs will use the stepping stones in the yard to get to the back. They like to poop in the back of the yard (thankfully) and to get back there they trot along the path until they need to actually come out to poop. Funny to watch.
I just hope we don’t kill it. It has been watered well since it was put in and we shouldn’t have to water it at all today since it is lightly raining outside now and we’re expecting snow. Don’t want it to freeze when wet.
Lastly, but not any less important (and, really, probably the most important) is we started working with a behaviorist for Bear.
She gave us some great things to start working on, mainly some alpha dog positioning (which we’ve tried before and then moved to a more egalitarian approach after we did some other reading). We also transitioned the two to Gentle Leaders. So far the pups are still getting used to them but right away the pulling while on walks has decreased to almost nothing. Quite an improvement and very hard to believe that a harness can make that much difference.
All in all a pretty eventful weekend – and the SuperBowl hasn’t even started. Though in this house the PuppyBowl will get more airtime than the SuperBowl. After all the only reason we used to watch the SuperBowl was for the ads – now even those are dragging and not worth tuning in. Maybe they should show more of Janet Jackson – the I’d tune in for sure.
I’m gonna get hit for that but it is worth it.
Tagged as: computers home-improvements dogs
