Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

The awesome: I deposited my first check via an app on my iPhone today. I love my credit union. This is awesome as the closest branch is approximately 300 miles away. Since I moved to Pennsylvania, I’ve been depositing expense checks and other miscellany in the joint account for the house but I want to move away from that bank (fees, hassle) eventually. (“Eventually” is a promotion from “as quickly as possible” because they gave out tree ornaments in December that you can plant in the Spring. Yes, I’m a sucker.) I’m hoping to get all our accounts at the same financial institution so we can do easy transfers instead of writing checks to ourselves every month.

The irritating: I also had an unplanned upgrade to Mac OS Lion (10.7.2) this week. My system decided it wanted maintenance and I haven’t seen my system disks since we moved sooooo… luckily I had a copy of Lion hanging around. The Internet told me how to build a bootable disk, and, when the repair failed, I installed Lion fresh over Snowleopard. I was promptly reminded why I was procrastinating the upgrade when Photoshop (CS1), Quicken 2007 and Mouseworks (Kensington trackball software) all ceased to function properly. I found a poor substitute for Mouseworks (Trackball Works – fewer features but I could reverse my scroll direction at least). Intuit promises a rewrite of Quicken 2007 for Lion in the Spring (not holding my breath) and I’ll find another image editing program to replace good ol’ Photoshop as I use very little of its vast functionality.

The amusing: My old MacBook Pro (running Tiger, 10.5) valiantly built the boot disk as requested and tried to remind me of its loyalty and love. I keep pricing MacBook Airs, you see. I think it knows. But the MacBook is a 15″ laptop, heavy and unwieldy rather than sleek and sexy like the Air. Most of the portable functionality has already been taken over by the iPad. (Oh, iPad, you are my own true love.) However I do sometimes want true multi-tasking, a real keyboard and proper OS in my portable device. I’m big on procrastination though, so I’ll be waiting to see if Apple announces an iPad 3 this Spring. In the meantime, I’ll be moving Quicken and Photoshop to the MacBook Pro!

The horticultural, which is utterly unrelated to technology but I’m going to make it fit anyway: My little key lime tree bloomed. My tiny olive tree is doing something. The paper whites were pretty even if it was disappointing that only 2 of the bulbs produced flowers… but hey, they were $2.50 at Home Despot…

Bonus music today! Random Acts of Culture! The Opera Company of Philadelphia and many area choirs got together to sing in Macy’s. The organ featured in the event is the Wannamaker Organ, a National Historical Landmark and an impressive 101 year old instrument with 28,500 pipes. I love events like this and I’m reminded that I miss singing.

Tasha is snoring as she sleeps in the sunbeam on my desk. Even though she’s no longer technically a kitten (and never was, according to Monster Cat), I still think of her snoring as “little kitten snores” and, of course, adorable. The other two tails… er.. cats are sacked out on the chair.

Yesterday, I survived the grocery store! I went over early afternoon thinking that it would be less chaotic. I’m sure it was less chaotic than it will be today but the store was still rather packed. Lines were short at checkout at least! But I have everything I need to make pies and such for the holiday.

I have a rather serious book problem. Putting a book down is difficult, even if it’s not a terribly good book. I found a new feature to using an iPad as an eReader last night: the battery can run out and kick you out of your book thus making you go to sleep by 3 a.m. I think, perhaps, I should never start reading on my iPad unless there’s less than 20% of the battery power left. Sure, a real book doesn’t run out of power and cut you off in the middle of a page… but I think I might need the harsh cut-off to stop reading sometimes.

I’m not sure why I resist the holiday season up until Thanksgiving every year. I try to deny the inevitable and then, when I finally accept the holidays are upon me, it feels like there’s so little time left between “now” and the end of the year. I’m starting to consider what I’ll be baking for holiday gifts and feeling like I’m already behind. Some of that feeling is legitimate since I need to take at least 2 quick trips down to the office in VA before Xmas.

Lastly, if you are offended by the TSA’s latest, ineffective and intrusive security measure, please consider signing the ACLU’s privacy rights petition. There are better, more effective security methods out there. Let’s train TSA personnel to interview people (such as they do in Israel), let’s pay them a little more, and let’s stop taking off our shoes. I guess I’m lucky we haven’t had a “bra bomber” yet, but I’m thoroughly uninterested in being groped by a stranger or scanned by potentially unsafe technology. No, I won’t be flying this year.

books, cats, ereader, holidays, ipad, random, travel