« 2007-02 | HomePage | 2007-05 »
03/31/2007
First Entry Written on an Alphasmart
Hello! I got my Alphasmart this past Wednesday and wrote my first blog entry on it on Thursday, which I'm just getting around to posting. But here it is, in all its glory! This Alphasmart thing is great!
***
My alphasmart has arrived, and faster than I thought! It's great to be able to finally do something useful on the bus. All I have to do now is get used to typing on a moving vehicle. It's a bit of cramped quarters, but I'm just so happy to finally be able to make someuse of this amazingly long commute! So now, I have all this capacity to do loads of writing. It's great. Too bad all of a sudden I can't seem to think of anything terribly interesting to write. I guess my brain really doesn't operate quite this early in the morning!
(Later in the day, on my way home from work...)
Well, today has been a pretty good day. At lunch I took the time to go for a walk on the Old Quarry Trail, which is only about a 5 minute walk from where I work. It's a wonder I haven't been down there before! The people I usually eat lunch with were away today, which is just as well, because the weather is currently glorious and I'd already decided I was going to take a walk. I guess it's part of the plan to get rid of the feeling that I'm living in a body cast now that I have a day job! It felt great to be out and about, though I don't really think my body is quite used to it yet. It was awesome though, especially as the bugs aren't quite out yet! The area is beautiful, and I think it probably would make a nice running trail too. The particular loop I did was 2.8 km I think, and it nicely fit into my lunch hour. There are interconnected trails, though, that go all through the Greenbelt of Ottawa, so if I hadn't followed that loop I could easily be in there for a day or two in that network of paths! I'm definitely going to do that walk more often. Anything to get up off my butt!
The afternoon went by quite quickly with meetings and whatnot. It's great to be doing something proactive. Actually I was supposed to find time to sit down and read some QA type documents, which I didn't get the time to do, but oh well. I'll find out all about them tomorrow in my 2 hour training on "the incredibly torturous path to getting stuff changed at this company" (or something in official-talk to that effect). Should be interesting. My co-worker recommended I bring lots of coffee - that's never a good sign!
Wow, this blogging on the bus is the bee's knees. I can totally get used to this!
22:08 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
03/27/2007
8 to 5 job with 3 hour commute: incompatible with life
Hi everyone, and sorry I haven't been posting lately! Just to confirm or disclaim any rumours or suspicions, yes, I am in fact still alive. (Bodily anyway...) For those who haven't heard, I got a job starting January 29th. It's a decent job, but the problem is, it's on the complete opposite side of the city, and it takes 1.5 hours in each direction just to get there and back. Plus, the official hours are 8 to 5, not 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 like most other jobs I know. So this job takes a HUGE chunk out of my life. Actually, I feel like I'm on an work-eat-sleep cycle. Any time I have an evening activity (orchestra, dance), which seems to be often, it eats into my sleep time. I'm just thanking my lucky stars that I live at home, so my parents do the cooking. I can't imagine how I'd do this if I had to do my own cooking. I'd probably be eating breakfast cereal for dinner every night!
Anyway, to try to reclaim some of my life back, I've bit the bullet and bought an Alphasmart Dana. Or, I should say, I've paid for it; I can't wait til it arrives in the mail. Alphasmarts are basically portable word processors - they have a full size keyboard, a small screen, and batteries that last way longer than laptop batteries. They don't do much that a laptop would (no games, flashy colours, etc), but all I want to do is catch up on my writing, so hopefully this will allow me to at least get something done in those 3 hours a day that I'm on the bus. Hopefully that also means writing up more blog entries!
I'll post again with more news about the Alphasmart and my bid to reclaim my life.
Did I mention I currently plan to apply for the paramedic program in 2008?! Well, that's a whole other topic I can talk about later too.
For now, I'm off to bed!
22:54 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this