Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

I have a tendancy to ignore the most immediate of trips and then focus on the ones ahead of time. This week involved me getting my hotel for Dubai through other channels. I bought hotel points off of a friend to stay at a hotel that I wanted to stay at but was $350 a night. I paid less than that, and that’s taken care of which is a big relief.

I leave for Australia and New Zealand in about 6 weeks, which tells me I’d better figure out what I should do while I am there. I did sign up for a vineyard tour, which should be interesting. I don’t know much about wines other than “good” and “not so good.” I guess I don’t have that much of a sophisicated pallate. It should be interesting nonetheless.

So in the Nick improvement month, I’ve gotten a lot done. Today I talked with my orthodonist, who coincidentally, studied under my alleged whoremongering dentist. Phase 1 involves me getting braces – $4950. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Insurance covers $1500. Phase 2 involves some cosmetic worth to deal with the teeth grinding down. I’m starting to think I should just get these instead.

Ask me why I didn’t get a good night’s sleep…

I had my sleep study last night and it sucked. I mean, you try getting a good night’s rest while having 20 or so electrodes taped to your head and face. I did take a picture and when I work up the motivation, I’ll post it.

Two stupid “rainy day” projects:
1) I want to make a profane version of Sudoku. This post from b3ta has inspired me to work on this over the weekend.
2) Everyone’s seen the Chuck Norris facts or the Jack Bauer facts.
I want to do the same but for Karl Rove, who is blamed for pretty much everything that goes on in the world today – stuff like “Karl Rove masterminded an alliance between the Israelis and Saudis just to piss off Michael Moore” or “Karl Rove didn’t get indicted because he threatened to punch Patrick Fitzgerald so hard that his dog would bleed.”

I’m having a sleep study done on Tuesday and for the last week, I’ve been journaling my sleep behavior. But it’s 2am and I’m wide awake despite a comfy bed with lots of pillows, I can’t get tired despite trying for the last hour and taking Tylenol PM and avoiding caffiene this week.

Since I’ve been journaling my sleep habits, it’s become increasingly depressing. One night this week I managed to get 6 hours of sleep, but woke up 4 times throughout the night. Last night wasn’t that bad – 7 hours and only 3 times awake. Looking back, I’ve never been able to get a quality night’s sleep and have always found myself dragging myself to the next cup of coffee. Even as a little kid, I was teased because of my sleep habits. Of course I’d be depressed – I’m not sleeping! And I keep thinking about Fight Club. Isn’t that how it got started? :)

Hopefully the study will help figure out what’s wrong with me. It sucks to lay awake at night and not be able to get sleep even after 18-20 hours after waking up.

For those who are lacking on current events on Israel and Lebanon, here’s a nice Flash presentation on the history of the region.

Oh, and you can donate pizza and burgers to the IDF. Neat!

Well, I’ve got my next two post-AusNZ trips planned already. Well, I booked the flights. That’s about it – just the flight. I’m on-call in October so that means I’m kinda obligated to sit around town just in case. My first weekend in November means a weekend of debauchery and castles in Dublin. I have a fun time there – it’s interesting and it’s fun to get to know Ireland better, even though I’m consistantly told that I should “find myself a Colleen” while over there (generally by older Irish women, which is interesting).

And in December I’m finally getting a week on the beach. Most people do something like Cabo or Cancun or some Carribean isle. Not me. I’m not down with that by any means. And everyone knows that about me. I’m off to Dubai to finish off the year, spend a week in the desert (I’m already excited! cakes and pies and chocolates! yummie!) and get awesome photos and sunburnt. Now comes finding what to do while there. I could go to Kish Island (Iran), which is like going to Guam and saying you went to the US. I could spend a week at the Burj-al-Arab, but that’s way beyond any normal person’s price range ($9300 and change for a week). Eihab pointed out that the Arabian Airpass, which seems like the best fucking deal in the world for Mideast travel, is only good if you fly Emirates Airlines. Lonely Planet lied to me. Bastards!

Oh, and Adobe Lightroom beta is out for Windows. Get awesome.

There are times in the IT business where I think I know everything and then there are moments where I realize that I’m a complete idiot. I took Andy Bigg’s guide to upgrading his MacBook’s drive and was ready to go with more balls than brains.

It looked simple on paper, and it really is. I just messed up one little thing and it took me 3 days to figure it out (I wasn’t trying during two of those days though).

This is what you will need:

• Torx T9 screwdriver. I had to buy one of these suckers at Ace Hardware.
• A quarter.
• A tiny flat head screwdriver. My Swiss Army knife comes in handy again!
• Super Duper to dupe your hard drive.
• An external USB SATA enclosure like this one.
• A new hard drive. I was lazy and went to NewEgg and got this one.

First, install the new drive into the USB enclosure and plug it into the USB port. Mine didn’t need additional power to drive the newer drive so I was all cool there. I fired the MacBook up and was all good. Andy’s directions say to Erase the drive by going into the OS X Disk Utility under Utilities (clever, eh?). BUT, you need to check the drive’s partition type first. This is where I went wrong and was left scratching my head. You need to change the partition scheme to GUID Partition Scheme and make sure that it’s that way when you erase the drive otherwise it won’t boot. The walkthrough is found here at Apple’s site. Just make sure before you click Erase that you’re erasing the new drive, not the current one. Otherwise you’re fucked.

Super Duper was cake to copy everything over. It works without a license but I’d cough up some cash to the developer. Make sure you’re selecting the new drive as the destination and the old drive as the source and then click Copy. For me to copy 30gb it took close to 2 hours, so I took care of those two hours by getting aquainted with a few bottles of my good friend Heineken.

My SATA enclosure was a pain in the ass. The board inside the enclosure wasn’t seated right so it would become disconnected with the USB connector and I’d have to start the process all over again. So I got lazy and pulled the board out of the enclosure and used the plastic as my little holder.

Once it was done and my hands were a little bit more stable, I went into System Preferences and made sure that my new 120gb drive was the Startup Disk. Then I powered the sucker off, flipped it over, and I pulled out the battery by using a quarter to turn the screw to unlock and unscrewed the 3 screws that cover the RAM and the hard drive. Once that’s done you should see a white tab that’s folded under the drive. Pull the drive out by the tab and remove the drive from its caddy with the Torx T9 screwdriver. Attach it to the new drive and slide it back in. Good luck with putting the little cover back on because of the foam pieces that go into the little slots for the RAM. I had to push them in so the screws would fit nice and the entire thing looked cool. I put the battery back in and then fired her up and all was good. Now I’m happy – 85gb of free space which means lots of photos to shoot while I’m on the road or a lot of movies to keep me entertained on those fun plane rides to wherever it is I go.

You know you’ve hit lameness when your Saturday involves a trip to the Apple Store, Lush, BB&B and 5 hours for your Fantasy Football draft. I officially suck.

Everyone that knows me knows I can’t sleep for shit. I can get a lot of sleep and lay in bed but it’s never restful so I suffer from a case of dragging ass. I made an appointment for a sleep study on the night of the 24th. It doesn’t sound fun – sleep in a strange bed with electrodes and other various sensors. And the fact that they’d wake me up at 5:30 sucks.

Between that and seeing an orthodontist, July is shaping up to be Nick Maintenance Month.