There and Back Again

About a week ago or so my old laptop died on me.  Too many years of abuse and rough handling had finally done it in.  I know of at least 8 times when i was watching a video on my laptop before i went to sleep, and awoke in the morning to find it lying on the floor… needless to say the harddrive suffered a head-crash, or something similar.  Hitachi even has audio clips of the various dying harddrive noises!

Yesterday i finally got tired of lugging my work laptop home, and ordered a new hard drive from newegg.  Top of the line 80 Gb Hitachi drive, and it only cost me $99.28 after shipping.  It arrived at my work today (gotta love newegg’s fast shipping!) and i have spent the evening getting it re-installed and running.  My last major task i want to undertake with this sucker is to figure out a way to improve its air-flow.  My silly old emachines laptop has one major shortcoming – the case was not designed with airflow in mind, and when ever doing cpu intensive things, such as video editing, my laptop tends to overheat and shut off to protect itself.  This overheating may have contributed to the initial hard drive failture as well.  I hope to figure out some fancy way of cuting strategic holes in the laptop body to improve this situation… maybe a custom paint job would be fun too?

Well, my dinner needs to come out of the oven, and then i am gonna watch last nights episode of 24!

That is just one of the many things that has probably changed since the last time i sat down to write a post. I turned 24 last month, that felt odd. errr, even i mean. I had my yearly performance review at work, that was encouraging, and brought about some much needed evaluation of my focus. It kinda snowed once, and despite this being the warmest winter ever, it is just now starting to get chilly again here in camp hill, pa. I have turned up my heat one notch tonight.

Here is something interesting that mel shared with me. Check out this funky pic of a baby Slender Loris. The bbc had an article about these things, as well as various other ‘edge’ species. that is, endangered species that have no close genetic relatives.

The slender loris (Loris tardigradus), found in southern Sri Lanka, is another to benefit.

The ZSL says the fossil record of the lorids extends back to the Early Miocene (20 million years ago).

Populations of this small primate are declining because of deforestation, and conservationists plan to restore its habitat and establish corridors between fragmented areas of forest.

Well, I have a few things to wrap up before i head to bed. That is my other new thing, kinda going with the refocusing thing i mentioned earlier. I am resolved to be a responsible adult this year, and part of that involves no super late nights. and since i have to travel to the PA Department of Environmental Protection tomorrow, (earlyish, 7 am), getting to bed before midnight is a priority.