I nearly got squished by the bus door today. I was last to step out of the back door (being polite as I am) and the driver closed the door right in front of my nose. I climbed back up the stairs, raised my voice to have the door opened (hm, that usually does it) — nothing. People helped me by pressing the stop button and shouting to the driver who finally let me out.
I shouted (laughingly) that I must be so small he can’t see me.
Yeah, right. Short maybe. Small not.
The furniture delivery was scheduled to arrive today. I got a call yesterday that they would be bringing it sometime between 5 and 9 pm.
I’m taking the next two days off (summer holidays in the middle of winter) so I was working my head off to try and get my tasks at some sensible stage. I was supposed to leave at 4 — didn’t quite manage it. It got 4:30 and I thought I had to leave no matter what. So I did.
Then I got stuck in traffic. I was sitting nervously in the bus, thinking it would be just my luck if they were early. I was thinking like that because then it would be just my luck that they in fact arrived five to 9 pm… which would’ve been better.
Well, at 5 pm sharp I get a call from the post office. I’m still sitting in the bus at this point. They were parked in front of my house. I said I’m there in about 15 minutes and they were nice enough to make another delivery first since it was close by.
I jumped out of the bus, ran to the train, stood nervously in the train, ran to the next bus, sat nervously in the bus, and ran home in the nice and slippery snow mush.
Just in time. I managed to move some stuff away from the foyer to make room for the packages, take a breath, and then I got the 2nd call.
The packages are here but I’ll probably leave the assembly to Friday. I know I’m nuts but I’m leaving to my grandparents early tomorrow, and in any case I have to think how to arrange the furniture in my bedroom.
And now as I’m browsing my bank site I notice they charged it off my bank account instead of my credit card. Good thing I had balance! (And good thing the pay day’s soon, I’m not touching my savings account.)
Today I set to assembling the desk I got on Wednesday. The manual had an image on the cover saying I needed two men, a hammer, and a screwdriver. I thought screw it, I’m going to do it all by myself. And you know what, I did.
All I needed was one girl, a hammer, a screwdriver, and a little resourcefulness, so I just had to make a small correction to the instructions:
Next task: the bookcase. I may need to swallow my pride and ask someone to help me with that one because it’s quite heavy.
To be continued… (i.e.: can’t write right now, I gotta play with this new toy)
I’m sitting here at my dinner table, waiting for potato wedges (mixed with onion wedges, sweet chili sauce and a little oil) to bake for half an hour. You guessed it, on my brand new Acer Aspire One.
I haven’t got my cookblog here and I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to have a local copy of it here or whether I’ll try and access the blog on my PC (which I may not be savvy enough to accomplish). So, to get things started I set up the mail program to access the same Gmail I’m using on my phone to view recipes. Boy, was that a breeze! I just entered the email address and password (which I luckily remembered by heart) and the application set up everything else. There are some “pre-installed” mail addresses you can set up as easily as that. If the application doesn’t recognise the mail you can enter the information manually.
So, what do I think about this little thing. (I haven’t named it yet.) The keyboard feels nice. The del, home and end keys are a little difficult to access: ins and del are in the farthest top right corner, and home and end keys need to be accessed using the Fn key. There is a Home button where the Windows key usually is and it minimises all windows which is really handy.
The touchpad is a little tricky. Sometimes I’m good at using it and sometimes the pointer is all over the place. Maybe it depends on the dryness of my fingertip. 
Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it glides. But I’m getting the hang of it. I’ve enabled tapping (I should say I haven’t disabled it — it was on by default) because the mouse buttons are on the sides of the touchpad instead of above or below it (which is the layout I prefer) which results in some accidental clickings. Especially because the applications open with single-click not double. Don’t know if there is a way to change that setting.
The out-of-the box theme looks like Windows XP so I couldn’t be faster in changing it. First I needed to access the advanced settings which aren’t accessible by default. To do this, I browsed to the 10 tips I found earlier. I’ll also try and figure out if it is possible to use the other user interface style of Linpus: not this ultra simplified 4 categories, 3 icons layout but a normal desktop with a menu in the left hand corner and several icons on the desktop.
(Excuse me for a second. I’ll need to toss the potatoes around a bit.)
Hm, what else. Oh yeah, obviously I got the WLAN going. It was nice and easy because I just followed the instructions without doing anything special. I did enable all kinds of security settings I could find and restricted the use to this laptop and the PC (because the WLAN box works as a router for the computer). I was proud to name it something “clever” instead of the default (brand of the router). I’m imagining the faces of the people who find it in their access point list. I’m seeing two other networks and one of them is unprotected! (Or at least it doesn’t have a lock symbol.) Tsk tsk.
Anyway, time to resume cooking.
Wow, it smells so amazing in here. I just took a plateful of Christmas muffins out of the oven. They’re spiced with dark syrup (delicious, I had to lick the spoon), cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and raisins. Now I’m patiently baking a sweet potato casserole — for one and a half hours. I still have all my presents to wrap but I’ve got all night.
In the morning Dad is going to pick me up (he was hoping I’d come today for sauna, but that didn’t suit my plans…) and I’m going to have rice porridge ready for him. I even bought a bag of mixed nuts so I can have an almond in the porridge (I don’t need whole almonds so I got the nut mix) Rice porridge is a Christmas tradition but I don’t think anyone else in my family likes it. However, when I told I was making the porridge myself this time so that Mum didn’t have to bother with it, Dad complained how he wouldn’t get his porridge then. I said I’d make it.
I wish you a happy Christmas time!
Someone in this building seems to have gotten their very own WLAN and maybe a netbook for Christmas. A brand new network has appeared in the selection (called “own wlan” — clever). This one is locked — kudos to them.
Myself, I’m typing away on a fancy new keyboard: a Razer Lycosa. The blue backlighting of the keys nicely match the blue lights on my computer. I don’t like blue but this blue I can like. I haven’t yet tested this in action — I just installed it and haven’t yet restarted the system. I got this from Dad. I got tired of my basic keyboard once the browser button suddenly stopped working and I couldn’t figure out how to re-program it to start up Firefox. The basic keyboard has no special settings anywhere. Then I started looking for keyboards and I shouldn’t have googled “keyboard”… I stumbled across a site reviewing Razer keyboards and that was it; I couldn’t settle for a dull Microsoft board anymore. I mentioned the brand to Dad and said I couldn’t even think of asking for it for Christmas because they are more expensive than the basic keyboards. But he insisted.
Well, this keyboard doesn’t have a browser button, but it has customisable macro buttons so I’m hoping I can get an easy access to the programs I need. This does have media buttons which are also important to me. Now I need to learn the new layout: the media buttons are in the top right corner now, not in the center anymore.
I spent the Christmas eve and most of Christmas day at my parents. The muffins were a hit but the sweet potato casserole wasn’t. Apparently it wasn’t a taste they are used to. Well, of course it isn’t because Mum never uses sweet potato. They like the same ol’ same ol’ every day. I’m more into trying new stuff. And my sister didn’t try it at all because it’s a casserole… Oh well, more for me. It’s not tastier than the sweet potato casserole I usually make so I’ll keep making it until I find a better recipe.
My Christmas Star was offended when I chose not to celebrate Christmas with it. I had watered it on the morning of 24th, and when I got home in the evening of 25th it looked like this:
Come on! You can’t expect me to sit home alone talking to a plant on Christmas! 
[Edit] Yeah, I programmed Scroll Lock and Pause/Break to work as my browser and email shortcut keys. I never use those anyway and they’re in the same area where those special keys used to be on my old keyboard so I instinctively try to push a button there. [/Edit]
[Edit2] When I told the boys at work that I got a Razer keyboard for Christmas one of them commented “I heard they’re not that good.” Er, what’s the point in telling me that? To make me feel bad about my present? [/Edit2]