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You know, when I was without a laptop, I forgot some of the ways in which having your primary computer be portable is awesome. (Technically I own a desktop, but it's at my parents' house and hasn't been plugged in in months; also, it's about three years older than my laptop, so it's a slower computer anyway, with a smaller hard drive and less memory.)
Today's example of the usefulness of portable computers is that I can get a bunch of tedious crap done while I travel to my psychiatrist appointment (my regular appointment to check in on my ADHD meds dosage and get a new prescription). I'm installing Adobe CS4 today, and while I was messing with stuff that I figured would require reboots, and had everything shut down anyway (my computer goes many weeks between reboots, normally, and I usually have a bunch of programs open that I don't want to close), I'm getting other things done.
While I was walking to the train station, I uninstalled Microsoft Office 2007. (A trial version came with my computer. I've never even gone through the setup thing, but occasionally I find a file that still has a default association with an Office program, and Office tries to wake up when I call the file. It's annoying. And I use OpenOffice anyway.)
Alas, hard-drive-heavy stuff nukes
pause after train arrives to get off and walk to psychiatrist's office
the battery, but I'm now plugged in to a powerpoint at my psychiatrist's office while I wait. Which means I can work away and even regain some power while I wait. (My psychiatrist is always running late. However, as I have seen him before, I know to expect this. And the reason behind it can be kind of pleasant - the reason being, while you're with him, it feels like he has all the time in the world for you. He chats.)
No, Adobe, you can't has internet access right now. The network is turned off because I'm nowhere near a wireless point to which I have access. THERE IS NO INTERNET FOR YOU HERE.
My laptop is also useful for uni, obviously, but also for keeping me occupied and productive a lot of places I have time to kill. For example, my recent Sulu ficlet was mostly written while I was waiting at the hospital Emergency Department to have my possibly-infected injury looked at. (And, as it turns out, my stitches removed.)
gets home, does something for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) velithya, returns to computer
On my way home I got a message from her asking me to let her know when I got home so I could check something for her. I got home, called her, did it... and established that the reason she knew I was out at the time was that she'd checked this journal and seen my mention of going to see my psychiatrist.
I find this oddly hilarious.
Tomorrow is the pre-trial conference for my legal thing. This evening Oliver is coming around to make confirmed plans for the day - he's coming with me, because he's awesome. I'm trying to stay calm about it, mostly by not thinking about it. I intend to try and get an early night tonight, and until then, I'm going to watch a video, play guitar, maybe start looking into learning how to use Photoshop, etc, or, if I start to feel tense, I'm going to play Left 4 Dead and shoot zombies.
later, because I still didn't hit post
So, today I've cleaned up my hard drive somewhat, both c:\ and d:\ partitions. Lots more free space than there used to be, and the removal of MS Office, which was there since install...
I have a sneaking suspicion I really need to defrag now.
Currently backing up all my crap on d:\ to my external drive (not least cleaning my /Downloads/ directory, which, since it contains a zillion executables for software installers and patches and drivers and so on, currently takes a MILLION YEARS to open sometimes, because my damn antivirus software wants to scan it, and there's so much to scan)
... or, apparently, Disk Defragmenter is scheduled to run at 1am every Wednesday, and has been doing so, and is therefore next scheduled to run in about four hours ANYWAY, so I may as well leave it to defrag while I sleep. (Since I plan to be in bed Early tonight, due to long day tomorrow.)
Meanwhile, Microsoft seems to be moving back to command lines to harden the divide between "advanced users" and plebs - in order to generate frag reports and suchlike, it seems, you need to use defrag.exe at a command line, on Vista.
ETA: Running Disk Cleanup not only made my computer start running at its normal quick speed again, it also reclaimed more than 20 gig of drive space on C. (Mostly previous system restore points.) Sheesh.
Still, this is the worst problem I've had with Vista that I can recall, so I can live with it.Current Music: Bow To Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva
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Unlike just about every other photo I post, this one had been edited somewhat - I installed Photoshop today, and I've never used it before, so I was playing around with it. (Impression so far: Gah, incredibly counterintuitive and not what I'm used to at all. I've been using iGrafx Image forever. But I am awesome, so I will learn.)
( Image cuts are still for nice people. )
Bedtime.
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