Based on Kate’s recommendation, I ordered the same kind, only in white, as they were on sale.  The black are, too, for 24.65 (so I would have spent more for free shipping) but the white are 26.59, so already, free shipping!

I liked the price of the over the ear kind much BETTER, but in the reviews it mentioned being annoying for glasses-wearers, which I am. Not a lot of real estate behind my ears, and vision trumps iPod, so 26 dollar earbuds trump 7 dollar clips. Dammit. But, I figure (in my constantly rationalizing mind) that since the iPod was FREE, and the phones were on SALE for 35% off, I win.

Also, I have a UPS tracking number for Dave’s guitar, it left Earth City, MO this morning, according to my new package tracking widget, and yet, my card has not yet been billed. If this is some sort of "oh, we sent your free catalog first and thought you’d like the tracking number" BS, I will be SO PISSED.  (ETA: The weight of the package is consistent with ‘guitar’ and not ‘free catalog’ so I’m confident the guitar is on its way.  If it arrives and I’ve still not been charged, I’ll call them. I so do NOT want to fuck with karma in the 2WW.)

Dear God, like I needed anything else to waste time with. . . . but someone on IB linked to SuDoKu, and it sounded interesting, and it totally is. Well, if you like weird little logic puzzles.  Apparently out there in the great beyond, they print these in the paper!  I’ve never really been into crosswords, but I do like the Jumble and Scrabble games (and will race Andy on Jumble if given the opportunity, we are both really quick at that type of thing so it’s always like "Dirge! Fetish! Loins!" and then we struggle with the punnery a little more, simply because it’s never really funny.)  Anyway. Highly amusing little puzzle.  I’ve been using it with the help option at times, completing a bunch of squares and/or lines and checking my work, which has led to lots of wondering how different personalities would try to solve the puzzle. Are there people working within the cubes only? Or in lines? Anyway, it’s pretty neat.

In iBook news, I really noticed a difference in the new iBook (G4, 1.33mhz, 512mb RAM) compared to the old (G3, 500 MHZ, 320 RAM) when I was uploading images to iPhoto and subsequently batch processing them in PSE3.  I had 222 pics (I never reformatted after I downloaded my NYC pics, plus all the others I’ve taken this summer) and what would have taken a good half hour to do, took less than 10 minutes, tops.  I had the images up in maybe 5-7 minutes? And the batch processing was painless, I would say 3-4 minutes from choosing the images and setting up the new folder to completion of 10 pics.  Very cool. It makes me want to empty my card more frequently, and do some more with PSE3.  I mostly use Elements for batch processing and basic editing (cropping, adjusting color, etc) because it was such a memory hog — it often took 2 or 3 tries to even get it to OPEN.  Now that I have MORE MEMORY, it’s much easier, and much more tempting.

Also, I just did a massive organization of our product manuals and warranty cards and such.  We’ve been stashing them ALL in a drawer in the kitchen, and I just organized them by room: Kitchen, Living Room, Basement, Upstairs, and Garage.  Each stash was put in it’s own ziploc bag and labeled, and tossed back in the manual-drawer. Very proud of that.  ANyway, while I was doing that, I came across all the info for my camera, and it included, holy hell, a remote!  I have been DYING to do long exposures and practice with that, but the shutter button doesn’t have threads for an old-school shutter release cable, and with long exposures, the tiniest motion fucks it up.  I took the remote and camera out and did a few test shots in the dark, and it looks so cool! I need to dig up my tripod and hit the streets.  Very exciting.

Ahhh, she is home. Home, Home Home. YAY!

They’ve changed the keyboard; no more translucent keys.  Now I won’t be annoyed by the junk underneath the keys. Whee. I uploaded all of my new software, ran software update, and got everything on all systems go.  I even downloaded some music, and tried out the mini! It’s all too cool.

I went with Limewire, which seems to be working fine for my random searches.  I also downloaded some widgets, and customized my dashboard. Definitely loving the Tiger update.  My old iBook was on Jaguar, which is all well and good, but the finder organization that Panther (and Tiger, now) is far improved. Really do like the panes, and having the usual suspects right up front.

Widgets!

Okay: Of the preinstalled ones, I saved the calendar, weather, and calculator features. Calendar is one I’m ridiculously excited about — I have an old checkbook-back-page calendar next to the bed that I’m always referencing, especially in the world of TTC, and to have that simple piece of info on my desktop without having to open iCal is fabulous. The weather report is good, of course, and I also use ForecastFox on my browser.  Calculator — again, not having to launch a whole new app for calculations is nice (though I use google for most of my basic calculations now, anyway.)

I downloaded:

• Hot off the Press: updated NYT headlines
• Onion: Updated onion headlines
• To Do tracker: a to do list. Pretty basic, but yay!
• Gas: they have info for my city, so they must have it for yours.  I’m interested in seeing how accurate it is, though.  (It finds the cheapest price for gas in your area.)
• Recent Widgets: as widgets get developed, this keeps track.  As it’s still fairly new tech, I want to keep abreast of any and see if any that I think should exist, ever do.
• Google Maps. I love the google maps, anyway, so this is nice.
• Ovulation calculator. Gotta say, not a fan. But I’m leaving it up for now because I was so excited about it.  It’s really big for what it does, and I can use the calculator at babycenter just as easily. I’ll leave it for the month and then probably delete it.
• TVTracker: My favorite!  We don’t have cable, so we don’t have the TVGuide channel, or digital menus, or what have you.  We will usually look up on TVGuide.com what is going to be on, but we have to sift through ads, and channels we don’t even GET, to get to our info.  TVTracker let me add in only the 5 channels we get, and if I want to know if it’s a rerun or whatever, I can click on it to go to Yahoo! tv for the details.  Definitely, definitely a great little tool. Especially for us geeks that have more interest in broadband than cable.

I haven’t activated FlightTracker, but I totally would if I was coordinating an airport pickup.  that’s nice, because the results don’t cause you to leave the dashboard environment, as many do. (Such as AirCompare, one that checks prices for plane tickets. It’s okay, but I’d probably use orbitz first, since they’ve always been a great source.)

I haven’t adjusted to the scrolling trackpad, yet, and I assume it’s like the curve of learning the trackpad, anyway. I haven’t yet figured out how the speed feels, but that will show up once I download some photos, I’m sure.

The mini is cool, and lime green, and the rebate form is READY to go, which was sort of imperative for me to fill our before moving on to anything else.  We are notoriously bad at getting rebates out on time, but when it’s an almost 200 dollar rebate, it gets prioritized, quickly.  So, that’s all set.

On the flip side, Dave’s guitar is still backordered… until a MONTH from now. FUCK. I was counting on that to sort of ease the blow of "gretchen is surrounded by new technology, wheee!" but no, it won’t. 🙁

My first day was okay too, I was there long before he was, but I’ll be helping out tomorrow. I got my GA parking pass, which gives me access to commuter AND staff lots, which is nice.  There’s more commuter parking, so I imagine I’ll use that mostly, but the staff lots are closer to campus.  If I do end up knocked up and uncomfortable, it might be nice to have that option of slipping in and parking close.

Speaking of, have now had two really positive babyish dreams.  I don’t believe I’ve ovulated yet, but I dreamed 2 nights ago of a baby girl, no big plot, but I was changing her diaper and that’s how I knew it was a girl.  Then last night, I dreamed that I was in my doctor’s office with the ultrasound machine, and I decided to give myself a scan, and was amazed to see (and hear!) an embryo and it’s beating heart.  It was very positive, I started to worry about getting caught playing with the technology and wondering if I was just seeing a pre recorded ultrasound, but in my dream, I knew it was all going to be okay.

It’s interesting, because I had ultrasound nightmares before the Ultrasound of Doom, that even in my DREAMS, I was trying to justify as me just being neurotic again. When it happened, though, it was very similar to the dream I had, which is partly why it was so traumatic.  Instead, I feel like the next round will be positive, and the dream last night really helped with that.

And, holy hell! iBOOK! YAAAAAAY! Pictures of furniture tomorrow, I hope.