Snapshot Chronicles - Susan Getgood's personal blog

So you say it’s your birthday

07.05.2007 by Susan Getgood //

Today is indeed my birthday. Douglas and David did a wonderful job of surprising me with birthday presents this morning:

Flowers selected by Douglas.

This is a digital photo frame, very cool.

I did not expect either of the gifts as I knew David had already ordered these dishes from LL Bean and we had also gotten each other a Broadway in Boston subscription (Dave’s birthday is two weeks after mine.)

I guess that’s why they call it a surprise 🙂

Now some people worry that having a birthday in a holiday week is a no fun. I’ll admit, having a birthday near Christmas, as my brother does, isn’t too great. Folks either forget or give you just one gift for both birthday and Christmas, which really sucks for a child when quantity of gifts is the preferred measure.

But Fourth of July week. Man, oh man, Mom-101, do not worry about Thalia. Even if you don’t read her my comment about the benefits of this birthday week, she will figure them out for herself.

Here’s the deal:

If you live in North America and your birthday is in the first week of July, you can pretty much celebrate the whole week.

In the US, it is easier if your birthday is in the few days after the 4th, and I imagine in Canada, it works best the closer your day is to Canada Day. You start with family celebrations on the relevant holidays, and sometimes that takes a couple of days. If any of your friends are around, maybe your mom will take you all to the movies or something. And then, when the holiday week is over, and your friends are back in town, you get the birthday party.

The fireworks?

They’re for you.

(From flickr under a creative commons license. Photographer has great fireworks shots. )

The rest of the country may be celebrating Independence. Your family…. it ends up being all about you. Don’t believe me? Ask my mom. When she asked if we could come over for a cook-out this week, it was for my birthday celebration, not the Fourth of July.

Born near the Fourth of July? It’s not bad at all.

Gearheads Are Us

07.04.2007 by Susan Getgood //

While I don’t plan to write product reviews on this blog — not my thing at all — we use a variety of equipment here in Geek Central and now is as good a time as any to give you the current equipment list. Everything on our list (located at the end of post) has been purchased at retail, except for one printer which I acquired in a charity auction. When we add gear to our inventory, I’ll update this post, and indicate whether it was purchased or donated.

Apart from the fact that I really don’t like writing product reviews, a major reason why I will not do them here is that I occasionally do projects for HP. While I expect I will mention the company and its products on this blog, for me to write detailed reviews of their gear, or anyone else’s, would be a conflict of interest. Ain’t gonna happen here, folks.

I will however be using all sorts of hardware, software and “consumable” products in the course of writing this blog, including things from HP. I’ll always clearly state if something I am writing about is related to my professional work, and you, dear readers, can evaluate my words accordingly.

My brother, who is even more of a gear head than I am, has expressed some interest in writing the occasional post for Snapshot Chronicles. His posts will be more about features and functions than mine will ever be, but on the lines of buying advice — what features you should look for in a camera or software if you wish to do certain things — than comparative product reviews. There are tons of other places you can go for those, and we’ll have some in the blogroll eventually.

The Gear List, July 4, 2007

Printers: HP LaserJet 4ML (this baby’s almost an antique), HP Photosmart 375 compact photo printer (from charity auction, autographed by actor Alan Cumming), HP Color LaserJet 2550n and an HP Photosmart C6180 All-In-One. We’ve had other printers, and they just don’t hold up the way the HP ones do. I think I bought the original LaserJet in 1993, and the thing is still chugging away. To put it in perspective, I had a Mac SE or Mac II when I first bought the printer, and have since burned through those machines, plus maybe another Mac and at least two Windows machines. The computers couldn’t keep up but damn, the printer can.

Computers: Three Sony Vaio Laptops of various sizes and configurations and a Compaq Presario tower.

Cameras: Susan, a Canon SD450 Digital Elph; Douglas, a Nikon CoolPix 775 (David’s old camera); David, a Sony CyberShot 5.0.

Update, July 13, 2007

Thanks to the fine folks at HP, one of my clients, we are messing around with an HP Photosmart A716 compact photo printer, an HP Photosmart Pro B9100 printer and a Photosmart R837 digital camera that has in-camera red and blue eye removal. And Douglas has his own M537 digital camera, which looks a lot simpler and easier for him to use than the hand-me-down Nikon from his Dad.

We’ll see if we can get some pictures of the dogs that don’t look like they are possessed 🙂

BlogThings

07.02.2007 by Susan Getgood //

I’ve always loved BlogThings, and couldn’t resist these two. Ruby is my birthstone, and Buffy… Well, I do love the show and Buffy got Spike. What else is there to say?

Your Gemstone is Ruby