Books in 2009

Well, I haven't really been keeping up with the blog much, but school was taking up most of my time. I didn't even get to read any of my books! Fortunately, now that school is done, I've been busy remedying the situation. So, I figured I'd list the books that I've read since the beginning of 2009, rate them, and write a few comments about some of them, as well as writing about a few of the ones that I've been waiting on. I read about a 100 book challenge, and though I'd keep tabs on what I read this year, and see how I do. 

1. 1984 by George Orwell -- 5/10

2. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling-- 6/10 -- It's a nice book to pick up every once in a while and read a story from, but that's all it's really meant to be.

3. Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter -- 8/10 -- These books are fun to read, and one of a kind. Looking forward to the next one.

4. The Host by Stephenie Meyer -- 9/10 -- After reading the back, I wasn't too sure about this book, but my mom read it, and told me I needed to read it. It was much better than I'd originally thought, though a little slow to get started.

5. Brisingr by Christopher Paolini -- 8/10 -- Better than the last two, and I can't wait for the next one! Only complaint is a little too much detail in parts.

6. The Eye of the Forest by P. B. Kerr -- 8/10 -- This series doesn't disappoint! I'm hoping that there will be more.

7. The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong-- 9.5/10 -- The much anticipated sequel to The Summoning didn't let me down! Loved it, and really loved all of the parts with just Chloe and Derek! <3

8. Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks -- 10/10 -- A unique book, although it did have elements that reminded me of Artemis Fowl and I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You. Very good story.

9. Genius Squad by Catherine Jinks -- 10/10 -- The sequel to Evil Genius, it was very entertaining, and held up to the standards of the first book. Can't wait for the next one!

10. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead -- 10/10 -- Excellent book! Kick-ass main character, and an interesting take on vampires. Not your usual vampire novel.

11. Frostbite by Richelle Mead -- 10/10 -- Another success in the Vampire Academy series. I liked the addition of Adrian, but I was a little teary at the end.

12. Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead -- 9.5/10 -- The most recent book in the Vampire Academy series. It was just as great as the other two, but I didn't like the way it ended off... I don't have much hope for what many of the fans wish for in the next one. So it lost half a point.

I've also taken some time and re-read a few books. They were Twilight and New Moon (and I plan on re-reading Eclipse and Breaking Dawn at some point), as well as Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In retrospect, it wasn't as funny as I remembered, but then again, I had since read the Dirk Gently books.

Here's some books that are coming soon that I'm looking forward to:

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan -- The last book in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. It's already out, I'm going to pick it up tomorrow... so excited!

Kiss of Life by Dan Waters -- The sequel to Generation Dead, comes out May 12.

The Soldiers of Halla by D. J. MacHale -- Ohh! So excited! Comes out May 12th. It's the 10th book in the Travellers series. I think it may be the last one too. I love the series!

Well, I'm going to head off. Hopefully I'll remember to write something about the Last Olympian when I'm done it, and maybe gush a bit about the Sims 3!

Much Love for Tablets!

Towards of November of this past year, I finally got fed up with my "dinosaur" laptop. I got it in May of 2006, on sale for $1200 CAD. It had a 120 Gb hard drive, and 1 Gb of RAM, and runs Windows XP Media Edition. It's an HP dvc4000. Since then, the hard drive crashed, and I got a new 160 Gb one, because I really want to get my pictures off of the old one, if nothing else. I have pictures from a trip I took to Alaska on there, that were never backed up, but that's another story. So, when I got fed up, I went out and bought an HP tx2000 tablet laptop I'd been eyeing. It was $999.99 CAD, with 4 Gb dual-channel RAM, and a 320 Gb hard drive. It's got voice recognition, a built-in mic and webcam, among other features. I love it. Except I didn't know about the difference between 32-bit processors, and 64-bit processors, which has since given me a tiny bit of grief. I know that 64-bit is the way of the future, so hopefully I won't have to worry for much longer. For one thing, I can't get my Google side bar, with all of it's great gadgets. I'm stuck with Vista's low variety of gadgets. Another problem is that I can't use our newest printer with this computer, because I can't find the CD, and the website with the driver's supposedly has drivers for both 64-bit and 32-bit, but there is a problem on the website, that makes the 64-bit driver inaccessible.

Even though I do love the laptop, it's been making Mac's look more appealing to me, because my friend's Macintosh laptop is so much sturdier than my HP. For one thing, the monitor has a lot of room inside it's case, and if I put some pressure on it, I can feel it give a little, which worries me. Another problem is that my CD drive keeps falling out! I popped it out once, because I wasn't sure what the slider on the bottom did there, and once I'd seen that, I pushed it back in. A few months later, I'd shut down my laptop, and was turning it around to put in my bag, when the CD drive goes flying out, across an aisle in my lecture hall! I freaked out, but the only damage was a little dent on the corner of the door, that doesn't make a difference. Since then, the problem has happened a few times, and I've made a habit of always securing the CD drive by placing my hand over it when I move my laptop. My only other complaint is that it's malfunctioned on me before. Two days before I left for vacation in December, the keyboard and volume buttons on my laptop stopped working. I did chat with HP's tech support, uninstalled and redownloaded drivers, restarted and other things, but nothing worked. So I brought an external keyboard on vacation and they sent me a box for the laptop. I still haven't done anything with the box, although I probably should, but a Christmas miracle happened! I turned on my computer on Christmas day (5th day of the problem), and lo and behold, everything's functional! The only other time the keyboards done something, is once it stopped working when I took the laptop out of stand-by. I simply shut the laptop again and reopened it, and it was fine. And of course, the common problem of the keyboard language randomly switching to French. A few friends of mine as well as my dad have all had this problem with laptops running Vista. 

Over all, I don't think I'll be going back to normal laptops after this. And I really love the Wacom technology for the touch screen (I've heard some bad things about the digitizer on the tx2z model), it's got an eraser on the end of the stylus, and detects how much pressure you put on the screen. I'd just really love to see a sturdier design on the body. I really don't care if it's plain matte silver, at least my old laptop doesn't have scratches all over the top like this one (4 years vs 6 months!) and is still completely sturdy. HP, if you're listening, please, PLEASE go back to the older dv4000 style bodies for the laptops! 

A List of Teen Books, and Other Randomness

I just happened to come across an interesting post on WORD for Teens, which came from The Page Flipper. 

Hmm, maybe this could make up for my lack of book posts. Although in my own defense, I've read 2 books (not including Twilight, which I was unable to put down once I picked it up, even though it was in the middle of exam season!) since September, what with school and all.

Instructions:
Put an "X" next to the books you've read
Put a "+" next to the books you LOVE
Put a "#" next to the books you plan on reading
Tally your "X"s at the bottom
Share with your friends!

1. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams X+

2. Kit's Wilderness / David Almond
3. Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian / Sherman Alexie 
4. Speak / Laurie Halse Anderson 
5. Feed / M.T. Anderson
6. Flowers in the Attic / V.C. Andrews
7. 13 Reasons Why / Jay Asher 
8. Am I Blue? / Marion Dane Bauer (editor)
9. Audrey Wait! / Robin Benway 
10. Weetzie Bat / Francesca Lia Block
11. Tangerine / Edward Bloor
12. Forever / Judy Blume
13. What I Saw and How I Lied / Judy Blundell
14. Tyrell / Coe Booth
15. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants / Ann Brashares 
16. A Great and Terrible Beauty / Libba Bray X
17. The Princess Diaries / Meg Cabot 
18. The Stranger / Albert Camus
19. Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card #
20. Postcards from No Man's Land / Aidan Chambers
21. Perks of Being a Wallflower / Stephen Chbosky
22. And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
23. Gingerbread / Rachel Cohn
24. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist / Rachel Cohn and David Levithan #
25. Artemis Fowl (series) / Eoin Colfer X+
26. The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins #
27. The Midwife's Apprentice / Karen Cushman
28. The Truth About Forever / Sarah Dessen 
29. Little Brother / Cory Doctorow
30. A Northern Light / Jennifer Donnelly 
31. Tears of a Tiger / Sharon Draper
32. The House of the Scorpion / Nancy Farmer
33. Breathing Underwater / Alex Flinn
34. Stardust / Neil Gaiman X
35. Annie on My Mind / Nancy Garden
36. What Happened to Cass McBride / Gail Giles
37. Fat Kid Rules the World / K.L. Going
38. Lord of the Flies / William Golding X+
39. Looking for Alaska / John Green 
40. Bronx Masquerade / Nikki Grimes
41. Out of the Dust / Karen Hesse 
42. Hoot / Carl Hiaasen 
43. The Outsiders / S.E. Hinton X
44. Crank / Ellen Hopkins
45 The First Part Last / Angela Johnson
46. Blood and Chocolate / Annette Curtis Klause
47. Arrow's Flight / Mercedes Lackey
48. Hattie Big Sky / Kirby Larson
49. To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee 
50. Boy Meets Boy / David Levithan
51. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks / E. Lockhart 
52. The Giver / Lois Lowry #
53. Number the Stars / Lois Lowry #
54. Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie / David Lubar
55. Inexcusable / Chris Lynch
56. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things / Carolyn Mackler #
57. Dragonsong / Anne McCaffrey
58. White Darkness / Geraldine McCaughrean 
59. Sold / Patricia McCormick
60. Jellicoe Road / Melina Marchetta
61. Wicked Lovely / Melissa Marr #
62. Twilight / Stephenie Meyer X+
63. Dairy Queen / Catherine Murdock 
64. Fallen Angels / Walter Dean Myers
65. Monster / Walter Dean Myers
66. Step From Heaven / An Na
67. Mama Day / Gloria Naylor
68. The Keys to the Kingdom (series) / Garth Nix X+
69. Sabriel / Garth Nix X+
70. Airborn / Kenneth Oppel
71. Eragon / Christopher Paolini X
72. Hatchet / Gary Paulsen X
73. Life As We Knew It / Susan Beth Pfeffer 
74. The Golden Compass / Phillip Pullman X+
75. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging / Louise Rennison X+
76. The Lightning Thief / Rick Riordan X+
77. Always Running: La Vida Loca / Luis Rodriguez
78. how i live now / Meg Rosoff
79. Harry Potter (series) / J.K. Rowling X+
80. Holes / Louis Sachar 
81. Catcher in the Rye / J. D. Salinger X
82. Push / Sapphire
83. Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi
84. Unwind / Neil Shusterman 
85. Coldest Winter Ever / Sister Souljah
86. Stargirl / Jerry Spinelli
87. Chanda's Secrets / Allan Stratton
88. Tale of One Bad Rat / Brian Talbot
89. Rats Saw God / Rob Thomas
90. Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien
91. Stuck in Neutral / Terry Trueman
92. Gossip Girl / Cecily Von Ziegesar 
93. Uglies / Scott Westerfeld X+
94. Every Time a Rainbow Dies / Rita Williams-Garcia
95. Pedro and Me / Judd Winick
96. Hard Love / Ellen Wittlinger
97. American Born Chinese / Gene Luen Yang
98. Elsewhere / Gabrielle Zevin 
99. I am the Messenger / Markus Zusak
100. The Book Thief / Markus Zusak #

Total: 17/100

Well that's not a very good total. However I'd like to read a lot of them, if I ever get the time, and I haven't even heard of half of them!

I tried not to put too many +'s, but they picked some good books to put on here. One that I would switch would be The Outsiders. I prefered Rumble Fish; if that one had been on there, it definitely would have had a + sign. I'm not sure exactly why I loved Rumble Fish so much, I mean The Outsiders is a good book, but something about the darkness of Rumble Fish got to me, and kind of wiggled it's way into my brain. It's become one of those books that I always want to re-read. 

In other news, just before I bid thee farewell, I've been working on a website for my Internet class. So far it's going well, my only problem is my darn image map! For some reason it randomly stopped showing up in Firefox, which happens to be the browser it's being marked on! Otherwise it's okay, although I'm using tons of tables to organize my pictures and information. 

Well, I'd best head to bed.... I'm going to be tired in the morning -.-

Geek Out. 

CUPE Is Making Me Mad

I’ve been very disgusted by certain unions in Ontario recently that affect me specifically. The Ontario leader of CUPE, the union representing public employees, is now trying to put through a proposal urging all universities in Ontario to boycott and cut ties with Israeli universities that are working on projects that benefit the Israeli military, while the conflict in Gaza is happening. This is a revised proposal, from the original idea to have the universities boycott any Israeli universities that do not explicitly condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza. This brings many things to my mind. The first thought I had was “well this sucks for all us Ontario university students; geeze, thanks” because Israel is a home of innovation, a think-tank. I don’t think that Israel would particularly lament the loss of some collaborations with a few Ontario universities. Another thought that comes to mind is “Hello? What about all of the other wars that are going on? I don’t see you boycotting any US universities for invading Iraq...” or Africa, or the Czech Republic, etc. Yet another thought, where’s the government here? I’d think that if I were in government, I wouldn’t want the employees that represent me, and as a taxpayer, I don’t want the employees who get paid on my money, to take this position. It does not represent my desires. And as a quick note, in the newspaper, the leader (*ahem-Sid Ryan-ahem*) who’s coming up with these great ideas said something about “Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza”. Well helloooo, since when has the occupation of territories been legal? I’m rolling on the floor laughing over here!

Another thing that’s getting on my nerves, is these people... People like those who say that people who support gay marriage “oppose traditional marriage”, make me laugh and vomit at the same time. You know what, I support traditional schooling, so let’s get all of the blacks out of the schools, and into special ‘negro’ schools. And you know what else, I also support traditional families as well as marriages, so let’s fire all women in the workplace, and send them packing, back to the homes. They need to watch the kids, clean the house, cook, and make themselves look nice, and not bother their pretty little heads with any manly things like politics or science. If supporting gay marriage means opposing “tradition marriage”, I don’t want anything to do with this so-called “traditional marriage”. Marriage should me marriage, between two people who love each other. Wow! Look at that, I’ve just written what should be written in all government books, ‘marriage is between two people who love each other’. And voila, problem solved!

While I’m in this late night ranting mood, I might as well throw in one more thing on rights; the rights of atheists. Why is it, that an atheist cannot hold office in some states in the USA? It can’t just be because we can’t swear on the bible, because there was such an uproar about a Muslim swearing on a Qur’an in court. Even before I became an atheist, swearing on the bible would not matter to me, it wasn’t my bible. Having me swear on the Torah would be a different thing. I think that atheists in office would be a good thing; we come from many different backgrounds and religions, we think logically, listen to evidence, and would keep church and state very separate.

Okay, that ends my rant... gotta get up and go to my Ontario university tomorrow. I'll definitely be at the protest about this CUPE thing this week.
As my favourite webcomic artist, Mookie says, "Geek Out".

Motivation, or Lack Thereof

You know, at 2 am Friday morning, while I was trying to fall asleep, I had the perfect idea of what I wanted to write about today; I'd even composed the first paragraph, which sounded witty and was very good, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, I won't be posting that wonderful blog today, because as per the nature of such things, I cannot remember anything about that blog I'd thought up. Oh great, and now I can't even remember any of the other topics I'd decided I wanted to write about.

After a bit of time ruminating on what to write, I think I've got something. Motivation. A rather timely choice actually, I just finished a psychology quiz on motivation and emotion. But I chose this topic because as I was playing my new Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades, I found my mind wandering back (my mind wanders an awful lot, in many directions at once, at any one time), and running through a story. But it wasn't just any story I'd read, it was one that I'd written. I wrote it in Word on my old Dell that now resides in my basement. Over a few months, I'd finished about 3 or 4 chapters of my novel, and stopped for a while, and when I went back to write some more after about a month without writing, I couldn't find the darned thing anywhere! I checked every folder I could, and I opened every Word file in my computer, to make sure I hadn't messed up the name, and I never found it. I was so put off by this, that 5 years later (approximately), I still haven't tried to rewrite it, even though I can still remember the images I'd had in my head while I wrote it, the names of the characters, their backgrounds, and the changes I made to my original one page intro, which I wrote when I was about 7 or 8 years old, fooling around on my mom's old type writer. The storyline is very close to me, as it revolves around a recurring dream I had when I was very young, and has aspects of what I thought the world might look like one day (yes it was a futuristic novel, those are some of my favs). Thinking about this though today, it occurred to me, why don't I just start rewriting it now, surely my writing has gotten better, and I won't lose anything by rewriting it, but also, what's stopped me from writing for so long? Is it that I have no motivation to write it now? Because that's what it feels like. It is so easy to lose motivation, yet it takes a lot of work to become motivated. That's the main "moral of the story", the idea that sparked this blog post. Maybe it's just me, and it's true what my step-dad says, I'm just incredibly lazy, but really, I don't think it is. If anyone happens to read this blog, this would be a good time to think up something to say in a comment ;)

Now that I've mentioned this, I'd also like to add a little thought about my... well my thoughts. I've heard this about Geminis (at least I think it was about Geminis), that our trains of thought are erratic. Sometimes when I'm talking to someone, and I bring up something completely random, I'll explain to them where the thought came from ("well we were talking about Ireland, and that got me thinking about my step-dad's family, which lead me to this relative who I haven't seen in a while, and it got me thinking about his dog, who my sister loved, and that got me thinking about our other dogs..." etc). Usually these trains of thought happen in milliseconds, and they really do go everywhere, following less closely related paths than that in my example. Again, I'm just wondering, is it just me? Or maybe there's a fair amount of people out there who think like this. I rather like it. It keeps things interesting... and it's just fun following the trains of thought in my own head. Sometimes if I don't know where I got an idea or thought, I'll trace it back through what I was thinking about before... :P

Anyways, I think I'll end this post now, I'm getting tired, and I think I've rambled enough for now.
Oh, and for my next post, I've already thought out a topic, title, and first few lines, but don't worry, I wrote them down!

I wonder if I'll be able to motivate myself for the next 20 days or so I have left of the semester...

Archos 5

Well, I finally got it... or maybe I should say that I've already got it. I hadn't planned on getting it for another 2 weeks, but I got too excited to wait, and bought it yesterday. And now it seems like a good decision, but not for good reasons. I'm going to have to exchange my lovely Archos 5 250 GB for another one... maybe the power going out just as the clerk rung it in was an omen... well it was a foretelling of what was to come anyways.

I brought the Archos home (to my dad's that is), opened it up, and plugged it into the wall. Now if you know the Archos 5, you'll know it doesn't come with a wall charger. I just went to The Source and bought a little USB wall charger for $5, and it did charge it in less than 8 hours (as it would have taken through a computer). While I did the initial set-up, when it asked me to configure the wi-fi, it would give me a pop-up saying to press the button on the wi-fi access point, and then press ok. So my dad hit what he thought was the right button on the router, and I hit okay, and it said WPS configuring. While it was still configuring, it would stop and say "wi-fi error". So I would retry it, and again the same thing, though instead of an error, the whole thing would just turn off and I'd have to re-do the set-up once more. After about the third time this happened, I skipped the wi-fi, and finished the set-up. Then I went on the computer, and manually downloaded the newest firmware update. I tried the internet again, but the same thing would happen, so I gave up, and decided I'd try at home, where we have the simpler WPA security on our wi-fi. I became optimistic when it let me put the password in, but as always, I got a connection error, this time just "connection failed". After trying tons of time, to this very moment, I still cannot access the internet on my INTERNET media tablet.

My dad noticed another big problem with my Archos shortly after I'd plugged it in; the USB cable was broken. The part of it that plugs into the Archos is open. It's very worrisome, and I know that even if a miracle happens, and I get everything to work before I bring it down to exchange it at Future Shop, I'll still need to exchange it because of that stupid cable. You can see what I mean in the pic below. It's not supposed to be like that.

The biggest problem though, is the unstable-ness of the device. I was innocently enough watching a movie on it this evening, while it was plugged into my computer, and all of a sudden it turned off. I hit the power button --> nothing. I tried holding it for 15 seconds to restart it --> nothing. I even tried the master reset on the bottom with a paperclip, and still nothing. Finally, just as I was going to write this blog, i tried charging it on my laptop, and when eventually the laptop saw the device, I tried the power button, and it came on... in troubleshooting mode. So I hit repair files, and it told me to install the new firmware... but wait, hadn't I already done that? NOPE. Let me just say, I'm very embarrassed for a supposed techie, and feel like a very big dolt. I downloaded the previous firmware, 1.0.87, not the newest, 1.1.01. I guess that the 87 caught my eye, and I figured it was the newest... it was the last on the list after all. Then the player installed the firmware, turned on, and viola! all of my files and settings were still there, and it worked! Yet still the internet would not connect, and now, while I was writing this blog, trying to connect to the internet, it did the "fatal turn-off" as I shall call it, and will not turn on. So this time, I'm just gonna leave it plugged in, and let it charge. I'd really like to try the wi-fi at school tomorrow, on an unsecured network, and see how/if that works. I'm also a little reluctant to return it right away (as in in the next 2-3 days, unless this "fatal turn-off" continues) because now that I've bought this Archos 5, the only one's that my local Future Shop has in stock are four of the 60 GB versions.

Now for the good features. I found the touchscreen to be absolutely delicious! It is very intuitive, and they keyboard works beautifully. The picture/video quality is also excellent. I watched some TV shows from my computer on there, and even my mom liked the video quality (she can't stand watching small screens like that normally). The transfer rate over the USB was fast enough, and I'm very happy that you can change the device to act as a hard drive, instead of a Windows Media Device, because I'd much rather drag-and-drop my files from my computer. It just took my a little while to figure out how to change that setting (Settings-->Info-->Storage). I also really like all of the pre-installed backgrounds, and I have no complaints about the sound quality, through my Skull Candy head phones, or even the built-in speaker (which isn't even stereo!), although I must say, I'm not that picky.

I'm optimistic about the Archos 5 still. On forum.archosfans.com, a fair amount of people really enjoy their products and haven't had any problems with them. Others have had great luck with replacements, and a select few have had no luck with multiple replacements. We'll see how it goes, and I'll give an update later on (hopefully at a better time, rather than 1 am on a school night).

--UPDATE--

I've returned my beloved (broken) Archos 5. Instead I paid about double the price and got a 320 GB HD, 4 GB RAM, HP Tablet Laptop, which will be written about in another post.

Ohh, and by the way... and I'm pretty surprised at this, they raised the price of the Archos 5's here in Canada (not sure about the USA... probably)! It's now at least $50 more for the 250 gig.

More Geekiness!

Ever since I "discovered" the Archos 5 (pictured below with the battery dock), I've been completely obsessed. I've read oodles of reviews, and I've looked through all of the pages on the Archos website... heck, I even read a bit of the online manual! So, I've pretty much decided that I'm getting that darn IMT (internet media tablet) one way or another. During my readings though, I've seen a fair amount of bad things about the product, however most sites still rate it high. It seems that there are a lot of little problems that add up to devalue the IMT. It seems that some of these problems have been addressed in recent firmware updates though. However, I'm not very happy that the AC power adapter is an add-on that you need to buy separate from the player. I don't want to waste one of the three USB ports on my laptop to charge the IMT. I guess when I've saved up enough money, I'll just get the battery dock, so that I'll get a little extra battery power on the go, as well as an AC charger. I'll definitely write my own review of it on here whenever I do get it (hopefully before my flight to Florida for Christmas!)


Now onto another techie topic... One of the most used programs that I've downloaded for my computer is definitely my Google Desktop. Not only does it do an infinitely faster search for files on my computer than the one supplied by Microsoft (sorry cute lil' puppy), but it also has a great sidebar feature (same idea, but fairly different than the one found in Windows Vista). I've got a very handy clock at the top, my Google Calendar right there, where all of my scheduled events are only a roll-over away, a handy-dandy scratch pad where I can jot any notes that come to mind, or phone call messages when I don't have paper around, Web Clips from my favourite blogs (jewishatheist.blogspot.com and baconeatingatheistjew.blogspot.com being my main ones), a calculator gadget, because I'm sick of going through the start menu to get the calculator every time I want it (and it has a scientific mode... yay!), my wireless connection strength, and my battery power. I just don't know what I'd do without it (well actually I do, I'd be very sad, and inconvenienced).


I really love the Google Calendar. My only complaint is that you can't make different events different colours in one calendar, you have to make a new calendar to do that. So I've got a separate work calendar, for my work schedule (which I don't display on my sidebar calendar... it'd all be days with events!), and the automatic one I use for school and everything else. I love that you can choose to only view one calendar or another, or have them both, and how easy it is to add an event. And the repeating feature is even better than I'd hoped for. You can choose how things repeat, like every day, week, month, year, and then choose how often, like the event "pay day" repeats every 2 weeks. Another fun feature is adding pre-made calendars to your own. No need to worry about adding holidays yourself, there's national and religious calendars that you can add, among other calendars. You can choose to make your calendar public if you'd like, or make specific events public/private. You can even give permission to select Google Calendar users to layer your calendar with theirs by entering their e-mail addresses. This way friends or family members can co-ordinate events, and know each other's schedules. I suggest this to anyone who wants a calendar that they can access anywhere with an internet connection, and especially to those who use a Google Desktop sidebar (unfortunately, the Google Desktop widget is not available for Windows Vista sidebars).


One last subject... Halloween was yesterday, and even though I'm too old to go trick-or-treating, and had a midterm to write, I still dressed up. I was so excited about my costume. I decided to be Doctor Who! (the tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant, as seen above) I even wore a pair of Converse All Stars, although mine were blue, and the Doctor wears white ones.
Happy belated Halloween everyone... now prepare yourself to be bombarded with Christmas!