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Roll of the dice

The other night my indecision over what to get for dinner was fixed by remembering I had my Foodie Dice with me; a roll of the dice and I had myself some ingredients for a meal. I realized later that I might be able to solve my issue of trying to find ways of getting myself out and about more by using dice to give me a basic headstart. Roll one die to select a DC quadrant (I’d have to have a D4), or perhaps a regular six-sided die to select a DC quadrant + Maryland + Virginia. Maybe another die for basic ideas of things to do. As you might guess I haven’t fully thought of what criteria to choose from. I might try to design some dice to be 3D-printed at the library; it’d be much easier to roll a die and look at what the die itself says to do rather than trying to remember what a particular number equates to.

Today I went out to my gym to enjoy the rooftop pool. It was a nice afternoon for lounging poolside, reading my book for the library’s Twentythirtysomething book club, and since I had to do some grocery shopping as well I was able to stop by the Harris Teeter next door afterwards. I took a Car2Go home, but that was kind of a bad idea; the route I’m used to taking home from that area had an exit completely closed due to construction, so I sat in traffic for much longer than I would have liked.

My original plan for the evening was to just stay in and watch baseball and maybe a movie and cook dinner and relax. Instead, Mom and Anne are coming out this way and we’re heading out to dinner.

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Electronic renaissance

I have to keep reminding myself that tomorrow I’m to go to see Belle and Sebastian in concert. Even though I bought my ticket and have it on my calendar, I keep forgetting that it’s here already. Perhaps because it doesn’t feel like it’s June already.

After sleeping on my Chromebook purchase I’m almost certain I’m going to return it. I like the concept of the Chromebook, but I don’t think I could get over the quality of the device. I think I remember reading a quote from Marco Arment that went something like “If you’re going to spend more than an hour a day using something, get the best you can afford” or something like that. Even if I’m not planning on using it for more than an hour each day, a squirrely trackpad that I may or may not get used to + a display that doesn’t have a decent viewing angle + writing software that doesn’t make writing as easy as I’d like for, you know, a writing machine + a poor web-browsing-only experience due to a lack of synced passwords = I’m not going to end up using it anywhere near as much as I anticipated. I’m sure higher-end Chromebooks might address some of the quality issues, but not only does that defeat the purpose of having a low-cost machine to pound away on, it still doesn’t fix the software issues I encountered. Oh well.

Speaking of laptops, after writing about how my MacBook Pro is a few years old but still runs well, it started randomly crashing hard enough to restart itself. I noticed some display glitches recently, but I’m not sure if that’s because of the display it’s connected to, or the machine itself, or even if those display glitches are related to the crashes. There’s one or two things about this machine that I prefer over the current models (MagSafe vs. MagSafe 2 being the main one), and while they still sell this model, upgrading it to the same specs as my current one ends up costing as much as a new current model; a retina screen, more RAM, and a faster processor for $200 more. I’m in no rush to upgrade, but in the meantime I’m keeping an eye on its reliability and saving my work often. 😛