chargirlgenius

There is a cricket in our office. In the ceiling, actually.

I keep having this funny feeling that I'm camping. And then coming to my senses and getting awfully disappointed.

I’m in the market for a new laptop, for work and for play. It’ll be my personal laptop (purchased by me), but it has to perform well enough to handle being a work laptop twice a week as well. I get a bit of a deal on Dell systems from work, so I’ve been looking in that directions. Don’t know exactly what kind of discount yet.

All of the cheaper, home-use Dells have glossy screens, and after using the glossy on the Vaio, I’ve realized that I hate it. I’d like to be able to work outside or at the kitchen table, and glare is a big problem there.

We don’t do a lot of heavy gaming, really, Jeff just plays a lot of Mafia Wars and the like, but that’s about it. I don’t game at all. I know myself and don’t want to get addicted. :-D

Some video editing capabilities would be nice, but it doesn’t have to be high end. We’re talking home movies stuff.

I tend to have lots of windows open at once. Our current laptop acts like a dinosaur in that regard, though it’s only a couple of years old. I’m thinking I want 4GB of RAM. What kind of performance difference am I going to see between, say, 2.26GHz, 3M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB, and 2.53GHz, 3M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB? If I’m not gaming, does that matter more, or memory matter more?

Can you tell I’m a computer moron?

Integrated mobile wireless with Verizon is a nice-to-have, but not necessary. If it’s not included, I’ll probably just tether my crackberry to it.

I won’t be carrying it back and forth to work, but I don’t want a brick either. Can’t afford a Macbook Air. :-D I want a decent sized screen, though I’ll eventually get a second monitor and dock it. Needs to be able to dock. Can all laptops dock?

So, recommendations? I'm open to Mac, but price is a consideration. I’ve been leaning towards a Dell Latitude E6500, with XP instead of Vista, upgraded to 4GB RAM, and the Verizon built-in Mobile Broadband (they have a rebate so it’s free).

ETA: For that matter, is Vista really that bad?

Tomorrow is bike to work day, so I rode in today! There’s a chance of thunderstorms today, but this morning was just cloudy and cool, so I made the trek anyway. It’s really just day 3.5, as the last time I rode in Jeff picked me up in the afternoon. If it’s storming this afternoon, that’s what we’ll do again.

Jeff was out of town last week (even aside from the rain) and he had off site meetings the first part of this week so I had to pick up the boys. I’m hoping that in the next couple of weeks I’ll be able to ride almost every day, so I have more energy for all of that walking in Belgium.

There are a couple of local people that bike in all of the time. One of them works in my building and he is BAD ASS. He rides, every day, rain, shine, or snow. During the last snowstorm, I followed his bike tracks into the office. This morning I turned onto the main road just a few hundred yards ahead of him. I stayed ahead for a bit, as I blasted down the hill, but going up the other side, he breezed right by me as if we were on flat. He wasn’t the least out of breath as he greeted me with a cheery “good morning!”

I’m in awe.

( Cut in random place for more bike rambling )

GAH! Our new employee, who I’m sure is very sweet, seems to like country music. And plays it in her cube. Next to my cube. And she’s not even IN her cube, she’s organizing equipment OUTSIDE of her cube.

I’m thinking it’s NPR time. For more than one reason. Save me Carl Kasell, you’re my only hope!

Back later… Huh. An hour of the Diane Rehm show with a discussion on gay marriage seemed to clear up the problem.

I did the FitTV yoga last night, and managed to injure myself in the process. It’s not exactly a challenging format, but I strained to look at the TV while I was on my knees, had my head on the floor and my hands flung behind my back. Ok, I don’t know *how* to describe it in 50 words or less, but it’s not important. I did something stupid, should have known better, and managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder.

So while my back felt better sleeping last night, my shoulder ached something awful. I broke down and medicated – I slept way too little the night before to risk it again.

Right now, I’m just craving a good cup of coffee. I’d do a coffee shop run, if there was anything I could get in less than an hour. I don’t have the coffee press with me at work, since I gave it up and started drinking tea, instead. Some days, I think that a longer commute would be worth it, just to be working in civilization.

I seriously need a non-desk job. Or at least a much-less-desk job. Ideas?

Gah! Get me out of my office! I just want TEA, dammit, and I think I'd get it quicker over a campfire. We do have a water cooler - the type that also heats the water for tea. Does it work? No, of course not. Neither does the replacement cooler. No problem. Use the microwave? Sure! But I don't know if it's the microwave, the surge protector, or the coffeepot, but the circuit blows after a few seconds of microwave. The other day, after it died 10 times in a row, I gave up. Today, I kept hitting it. 10-20 seconds at a time, and eventually I had hot water.

Love my government facility. At least it's not over 80 in here (this week).

Yet again, I'm brainstorming about career choices. I tend to do that a lot, but that's what you do when you're feeling undereducated and not really thrilled about what you're doing. Well, it's what *I* do.

This time around, the career of choice is in Law. When I was in high school, I'd thought about going into law - after all, my favorite class was debate. I loved working through the logic of the cases, and putting together something clever and foolproof. I loved tearing apart other arguments bit by bit, using nothing but logic even when I had no contrary evidence or articles to back me up. Sure, it was all very contrived and didn't follow any rules of reality, but it was fun. Problem solving is my thing.

I was supposed to shadow a lawyer during my senior year, but it didn't pan out. It was likely because of my involvement in the school play or taking a job, but in any case, I didn't do it. And I should have.

This weekend, I learned that my old high school debate partner has just finished her law degree, and is working a judicial clerkship in Madison. Hmmm.

That sparked a little thought. ( What if...? )

I know there are many on my friends list who are lawyers, in law school, or married to lawyers. I'm interested in hearing your experiences. Is juggling full-time law school and a family going to leave me with *any* time? Does every job out of school involve regular 90 hour work weeks? Average starting salaries look slightly lower than what I'm earning now, do things look better with 10 years other work experience? Is the class (not study) schedule for a full time student usually during the day, like when the boys would be in school? I'm thinking that my ideal schedule would be 2-3 hours per day of public transportation to whatever city, during which time I'd take care of some of my studying. Am I off my rocker? What kind of lawyering do you do? Anybody know anything about urban planning?

ETA: I just googled ENTP Lawyer and got the text for the first hit:

"The ENTP personality type is sometimes referred to the "Lawyer" type. The ENTP "lawyer" quickly and accurately understands a situation, and objectively and ..."