Saturday, February 14, 2009

Completed #17
(Get internet at my apartment [moving to a new apartment which has internet counts].)

The same day I bought my external hard drive, I bought a D-Link wireless router. (It was the only one Costco had in stock). I bought it at Costco because I had a rebate check which almost entirely paid for the router. Not bad.

It might go without saying, but despite the option I gave myself in this list-item, no I haven't moved to a new place. I'm simply installing a router in my current apartment. Well.... simple might not be the right word.
My roommate's computer has long been the only one with internet as it's the only one Comcast bothered to hook up. It's a total P.O.S. low-end desktop with Vista. I do my best to ignore the warnings and questions that Vista pops up in response to my installing something new. It was definitely the way to go, and I had my laptop working wirelessly within 10 minutes. However, the network wasn't secure. I spent the next hour and more dicking around with Vista and the D-Link software (very poorly designed). Yada yada yada, issue after issue, I finally called Comcast and had them reboot the cable modem remotely. Voila. All the dicking around I'd been doing, setting up passwords and whatnot, popped into effect. So now I finally have internet for my MacBook and don't have to deal with the Vista machine anymore. :)

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Completed #59
(Buy a large [1 or 2 TB] external hard drive)

This one's kind of a big deal. I was torn about buying a such an expensive piece of equipment because a lot of my list items are focused on saving money and spending less. (#7, 8, 9, 10, 18, 21, 33, 36, 66, 68, and 69 so far). However, a good number of entries will also require a large amount of digital storage. (#30, 31, 46, 47, 48, and 65 so far) Plus my laptop is running out of room, and I've been dying to recover some stuff from my old desktop. So, yesterday after work, I took the plunge.
Size-wise I split the difference of my goal and got a 1.5 TB Seagate FreeAgent XTreme. It's working like a charm. Hopefully I'll now be able to knock off a few more list items. I'd tried to do a little on numbers 47 and 48..... all I can say is that iMovie has gone dramatically downhill since I last used a version of it in 2001. With my new external HD, I'll be using Final Cut on my work computer during my "lunch break".