Its all in one post!

November was a good month. Well December is a tough month. I am used to having December as time off. Mostly in South Africa my exams are done mid November and December is Vac Work/Interning. Here its work until Christmas eve. Anyways it all comes with the territory.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a good time. It really is the beginning of the festive season in America. I spent it with an old friend (I guess I can say that now), Agnes and her family. Agnes was my art councilor when I was at Camp Rising Sun here in the USA in 2002. It was great to catch up with her, her husband (also met in 2002) and the great Quigley family. It was also a good time for me to take some time off school work. So took a train up to Newark Penn and then took a bus down to Forked river on that day. I studied on the way there but I had to kill 2 hours, shoot me. I spent the most wonderful day in Forked river. Had the best lunch I have had since I have been here and really relaxed. I am grateful for the new friends I made, even more grateful for my better half, my family, my friends old, new and still unknown. One more thing. Thanks to Bobby and his wife again for a second Thanksgiving on the Saturday. Headed out to meet new people and also have a second late Thanksgiving with some new friends I met at Rutgers. Weekend was long.

Camp

We never grow out of camp. Meeting Agnes again after 7 years was surreal. We got the stories about camp going again and I also go to know about how she experienced camp as a councilor and this had some contrast to how I experienced it as a camper. Its hard to explain to others what we went through when we were at camp and it is always so great to have others you can talk to about it who understand. I also an even more proud of the new team that is now working in South Africa also preparing for the 2010 camp season.

Le iPhone

For my birthday and also out of trying to stay sane while I am away from campus I got myself the dreaded iPhone. I have owned 2 iPod touches now and have used them extensively while here at Rutgers, mostly using some of the apps, web surfing and email. My problem normally came in when I left campus, no free Wifi and I had T-Mobile prepaid, so no love for the interwebs. It got really annoying when I went to Chicago mid November. I was disconnected and had a group project due. So on my return to New Brunswick I decided to get a contract and a smart phone. I first tried out the HTC Droid (Less than 24hrs) and actually returned it to the store, my fingers where too big and the keyboard really got annoying, maybe I should have stuck with it longer maybe not, well never know. I ended up at AT&T the same day and then got myself the iPhone 3G. Since then I have been happy. I have a lot of apps. The network coverage is comparable to Verizon in New Brunswick. Way better than T-Mobile (everytime I went into a building it cut off). So all in all it was  a good birthday present to myself. On that note thanks to David and Tarek for all the cool Rutgers stuff they got me, I wear the beenie everyday now. RU Rah Rah! Ohh before I forget, Apps I heavily recommend if you have an iPhone

  • TIME Mobile (I dont get print anymore 🙁 )
  • Wikipanion
  • Pandora Radio (Internet Radio and the Music Genome project never sounded so good)
  • ShopSavvy (Great Barcode scanner that then checks for prices on the interweb)
  • Dragon DIctation (Voice to text dictation, awesome app)

Windows 7, Linux Mint 8, and Google Stuff

I installed Windows 7 on my laptop replacing my Windows Vista and Linux Mint 7. Linux Mint 8 is now installed as a virtual machine in the Windows 7. I could not stay on with Vista anymore, it was falling apart. Windows 7 has been a life saver and has such a smaller memory footprint than Vista with the same applications installed. So far it has been a good revelation from Microsoft. Would recommend it to anyone. Linux Mint 8 is out. I run it at the moment inside Virtual Box. Its another solid release from the guys. Review hopefully soon in the future. Google Ohh Google. Well first big news, Firefox has now officially moved to number 2 on my browser list, I started using Google Chrome a long time ago and slowly started using it more than Firefox. Now it is also available for Mac OS and Linux and the extensions are GO! Firefox at the moment is just installed for some of its extensions but as soon as they are all ported thats it for me Firefox uninstall. Chrome is faster, recovers from faults better and is less a memory hog than Firefox. Then there is Google Voice and then there is Google ... Well its been a great month for Google and December is not over yet. But there is still that question about privacy. Well that was a talking point during a seminar I attended and a class 2 weeks ago. Maybe I will write something on that.

Wow that was liberating. Now I have to get back to work. Last week!

Peter Maher was here visiting from Wits last Week! Good friend.
Peter Maher was here visiting from Wits last Week! Good friend.

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