It's been a strange day. I decided to drive up to Raleigh to the Apple Store and purchase the newest Mac OS called Leopard. I wouldn't have done it except I wanna get me a SSD to get around this HD bottleneck, and it's the fastest, simplest way to get it done on my Mac Mini. I'm trying to give myself a little boost to help me stay patient while I wait for Snow Leopard to come out. I'll have to buy a new computer when it does. The longer I put buying into it off, the more I'll know if I wanna do it.
To put an SSD in the Mini I'll have to crack the shell. If I'm gonna crack the shell, then I might as well max out the DRAM memory at 2 Gigs. Presently I only have 512 megs. Between installing the SSD that's faster than any rotating hard drive available, and quadrupling the RAM memory my little Mini should seem like a new computer to me.
I'm fairly happy with the way things are. The Mac Mini is actually all the computer I need for what I do with a computer. The motherboard video is notoriously slow. Apple changed to Nvidia for the video system in it's newer computers. But, the biggest holdup on this computer is the lack of memory and the slow response of the hard drive. The hard drive in the Mini is the same as comes in the laptops. Only 5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm on a regular desktop. I'm pretty sure the speed of the SSD and the additional RAM will more than hold me over until Snow Leopard comes on the market, and the first few patches to do things right.
I bought another keyboard. Apple came out with the same size keyboard as the bluetooth keyboard I use, but it's tethered with USB instead. I like wired peripherals. I've grown less and less impressed by wifi. It has the same problems the new over-the-air digital TV does in bad weather. It breaks up and the reception is lousy.
When I got to the Apple Store I changed my mind about getting the small USB keyboard. There are features on the full-sized keyboard I don't wanna do without. I'm keeping the bluetooth keyboard, It works with any device that has bluetooth installed. Even the iPhone I reckon.
One of the things I didn't like about the regular keyboard is that the number key pad is on the right side of the keyboard, and it makes me have to extend my hand out to operate the mouse. I've had to switch the mouse to my left hand, because the index finger has just died. Between overdoing it clicking the mouse and the rheumatoid arthritis I can't bend it to click the mouse any more, and doing is very painful.
So, I started using the mouse with my left hand, and that puts the mouse on the left side of the keyboard where the numbers key pad doesn't interfere. I especially like that the full-sized USB keyboard has two delete buttons that delete both ways. That's damned convenient as clumsily as I type.
Part of the reason I went north to the capital to day was just to get outta town. I need new sensory stimulus or I begin to get drifty. One of the old habits I have that I'm convinced helps me from getting drifty is working crossword puzzles. I go to Barnes and Nobles and buy books of them at a time.
The major newspapers all have puzzle editors who create books of expert level Sunday sized puzzles. I'm picky about puzzle editors. One book of 50 of them cost $10-12. I did the NYT puzzle books for a long time, but I like the LA Times editors better now. They're very clever and entertaining in an odd way that makes me laugh sometime.
Just about every time I sit down to these expert level puzzles I get a little angry that the answers don't come so easy. But, if I buy easier puzzles, I get even angrier for not challenging myself. They force me to run word searches through my entire memory system looking for the correct words for their scanty clues. I run into words just about every day that I would probably have lost from disuse. It makes me remember words I haven't run into since childhood sometimes.
I'm looking forward to the Final Four games tomorrow. I've been a Carolina fan since the Dixie Classics. The pundits think they got a real good chance of winning the Big Dance. I'll be watching to see if they do.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
