Mark’s Notes On The Go

All in all, when I travel, I like to stay in a given place a few days.  Much of my selection of the Intrepid trip I chose to Egypt earlier this year was that every night was not a different city.  If I had longer than two weeks, I would have waited to languish even longer in some of those places.  I could have spent a week alone on that Red Sea beach, and I’m not a big beach person.  It was just a place where we were so thorgoughly disconnected.  Funny to type that on my laptop, that I enjoyed being without connection to the world.  Ha!

At any rate, my latest trip plans are anything if languishing in a given spot.  It just worked out that I will not spend more than two nights in any given place.  I arrive and spend a night in London.  The next morning, I’m on my 4 day Cornwall trip.  This translates into two nights in Newquay and a night in Bath before getting back to London in the evening.  I spend another night in London and get up bright and early for a 5:30am train to Paris.  Two nights there before returning to London for two nights before coming back to the US.  This, I think, is my version of plantes, trains, and automobiles.

Paris was sort of an afterthough.  I had a few days and I didn’t want to spend them trying to get somwehere.  And believe me, I looked at everything from the northern isles of Scotland to the reaches of Italy for a side trip.  Paris is one of those places that I always figured I’d go see but never had concrete plans or mainfest desires.  Hence the short two days there.  Just enough to get a taste.  Since then, though, as I’ve read and looked at photos of Paris, I’ve wished I had been able to toss another day or two in, so if the actual city leaves a lingering impression as I’m told it will, I may be back that way one day.

And yet, I’m also so looking forward to my days in the old city of London again.  Over lunch today, I looked at the lists of events that I could check out my first day there, and there were 60 PAGES of things to do.  Well and truly a ton of stuff, and so much of it, museums and galleries, free to boot.  As I poured through my options, it was with much sadness that I can’t spend longer there.  Alas, my remaining vacation time off and the exchange rate does not encourage it right now.

This weekend will be spent home with the folks, hopefully a bit of relaxation before my whirlwind through Southern England and Paris.

A few weeks ago, I got a macbook pro, as previously mentioned, and partially left the world of windows (my media center PC is still a PC).  I found out (before I made the switch) that Adobe will allow you to swamp from windows or mac when you chance PCs if you already own their software (considering the price of photoshop, this was a big factor).

So, sure enough, I contacted them and spent about half an hour on the phone taking care of the swap.  I had to fax a “letter of destruction” to them after the call and the cost of the swap was only the cost of shipping the new software to me.  All and all, at this point I was fairly happy.

I faxed the form saying that I would destroy the windows copy of my software and waited for the new software.  Two weeks passed…  No word…  finally, I went online and submitted a request for an update on the status.  Four days passed, and I received an e-mail response that they needed an order number and the Serial # for my software.  I had givent he case number for previous call in the status request…  I sighed a bit and replied back with the extra requested information.

Before I got a response, literally the same day, the software arrived.  There was never any communication to let me know it was coming.  I had to sign for it and yet had no idea it was coming.  If I didn’t work at home, of course, I would have missed it.

So, kudos to adobe for allowing me to trade in my windows copy for Mac, but you get a C for communication.

Well, first to follow up on my post about the old laptop, yes, I bought a mac.  I splashed out on a macbook pro, but I bought a refurb.  They carry the mac warranty (and I used the savings to get the three year Apple Care, so I’m well covered).  The refurb looked completely new.  Who knows what horrible thing it got returned for but it’s dreamy for me so far.  And if it goes bad in the next three years, back to Apple you go sir.

It’s taking some adjustment.  If I hit the control key when I want to copy and paste a few more times, I may scream.  But it seems to be taking to my brain somewhere considering I started getting all confuzled on the work laptop (IBM thinkpad - lousy picture but a workhorse, I give it that - the lousy screen doesn’t sell to my photog side).  Kept trying to click the wrong keys, etc.

I took a two day photoshop class on Saturday/Sunday with ye olde laptop one last time.   I have a licensed copy of photoshop CS3 on it.  I started the ball rolling with Adobe on the cross-platform thing.  They will allow you once to swap out for the cost of shipping.  Adobe for the mac is on its way but not before the class.  Well, the smart part of my brain didn’t point out to me until Sunday night that I could install the 30 day trial on my mac while I waited for the new software to arrive…  duhhhh…  At least the old Fujitsu didn’t embarass me by calling it kaput during class.  It threatened a lot in the past week.

My trip to the UK is now less than a month hence.  In fact, a month from now, I’ll be getting back into London from 4 days on my Cornwall Crusader trip.  And from there, I officially have no clue.  The time back into London is evening and an approximate time, which makes it hard to plan the next step.  I’ve thought about just hopping straight onto a train bound for… uhm… that’s the hard part.  But does it matter when you’re not realy sure what the arrival to London time is?  So maybe a night in London before moving on to other parts?  Still where is an excelent question.  I’ve toyed with Paris either via train or perhaps a Ferry from Dover to Calais and then working my way down before heading back up to London.  I’ve thought about Ireland but keep thinking it should be a a trip unto itself some day, not a few days squished in betwixt coming and going.  I’ve thought about heading to North England, maybe seeing York, which I’ve read good things about.  Then the brain turns further northward inexorably to Scotland.  I love Edinburgh and there’s still some of the Highlands I’d dearly love to see.  I will return to Skye some day, and I want to see the other islands.  And again, is this really the right trip, unless I take a sleeper train ($$$), killing days of my trip coming and going.  I’ve also pondered getting a Britrail just for the south and maybe hugging the southern coast for a few days before back into London.  I know I could spend all the rest of my time in London and just see the sights there and take in some day trips as well, but this is the 4th time I’ve been to London.  As much as I know there is to do and that I’ve yet to do, I feel like I need to get out a bit.

Where does ADD come into this?  I swear, I must have it if nothing else for travel.  No sooner than I sat down to do research on my options, I found myself looking at Latin American options for New Years this year.  I haven’t finished this trip yet and I’m already down the road on the next one!  Just sad!

And then to further compound the momentary distraction, I wrote this post!

After the post about considering a mac, I feel like I’m confessing to  a religious conversion here!

Yes, I was one of the sheep who stood in line on the day the new iPhone 3G came out.  In my (admittedly slim) defense here, I have had the same old motorola V400 for 4 years.  I haven’t been under contract to AT&T for two years!  I resisted the urge for a new toy because I was out of contract and that made me feel all giddy inside.  I could drop AT&T anytime I wanted.  And yet I didn’t.  So, it was kind of a moot point.

The iPhone appealed to my inner geek.  It does cool things and it goes wherever I go, and no, I don’t have to have any of them, but you live once.

A month later, not a lot positive or negative to report.  It does what it’s supposed to.  It’s a good phone.  I can check my e-mail on the go.  I can pull up a map and find places I need to get to.  Even get directions to get there from wherever the heck it is I am now (love that).  In time, it appears an app will come to make it a true GPS navigation device (if the rumors hold out).  I’ll have to see the prices before I decide how much that means to me.  Right now, I don’t travel enough here in the states to worry about it.

The only bummer is that when I travel overseas, if I use any of the data services (web, e-mail, maps, etc), I will pay out the nose for them.  I mean, literally, hand over an arm to read a few emails if I don’t get wifi access.   I’ve considered popping the sim in my old phone just for that possibility (i.e. don’t carry temptation wth me).

For the record, I only stood in line an hour.  My timing (between work and dinner) was perfect and I missed the early and later crush of people.  The truly amazing thing is I was at Nortpoint mall on Saturday, and there’s still a line!

That’s something I never thought I’d say.  I’m actually considering a mac.  I don’t mean that in a negative way, just that sometimes I’m a creature of habit, and I’ve spent over a decade using Windows based PCs and most recently laptops.

I’ve had a fujitsu for nearly three years now.  I still love the picture on this laptop. It’s incredible, when it’s not crashing.  And the bad thing is I’m fairly certain it’s the integrated graphics that’s giving up the ghost on it.  I won’t bore with too many details, and after I mended from the hard crash this morning, I thought maybe I could delay it awhile longer, but I just had another abrupt crash that’s making me think maybe I shouldn’t be so optimistic.  I’ve burrowed my way through the lists of laptops.  Mostly looking at the ones I halfway liked when I looked for this one, and I”m not finding any windows based ones that are saying anything to me.

I’m really seriously thinking about a macbook pro.  How nuts am I?  The only thing I need to look into more is the possibility of getting  a license for CS3 which I bought last year for the mac.  Supposedly it’s possible.  I also need to look into what the mac equivalent of MS Money is…