That should­n’t be worth post­ing about, but it took more work than it should have. Sum­ma­ry: I prob­a­bly should have stuck with Log­itech wire­less keyboard/mouse com­bi­na­tions, because I did­n’t have a prob­lem with the pre­vi­ous set I had and nev­er had occa­sion to call their tech­ni­cal sup­port. But since I bought a Microsoft prod­uct, it was worth­while to hound them until they came through on their war­ran­ty, despite the fact that the expe­ri­ence was some­what painful.

Sam and I spent most of our date time look­ing at lap­tops. Yes, we’re final­ly replac­ing the one that died last sum­mer. Yay!

I find it eas­i­er to put what I find online in con­text after hav­ing actu­al­ly played with a bunch of machines tonight, so I’ll be doing a lot of research online.

Any­body have any strong rec­om­men­da­tions or good/bad expe­ri­ences to share? Knowl­edge of any places that give “edu­ca­tion­al dis­counts” that aren’t just “steer your stu­dents to us and we’ll give you a lit­tle low­er price on your own machines” deals? Sure expe­ri­ence exor­cis­ing Vista from a “Vista-com­pat­i­ble” PC? Please speak up!

Is that how the lyric goes? I know, I can Google it. I should be in bed. If I get any­where near a lyric archive, I’ll get sucked in and there’s no promise that I’ll get any sleep at all!

That’s impor­tant, as I have my first class tomor­row! It should real­ly be some­thing that I could sleep through, hon­est­ly, as the school insists that I take “Com­put­er Appli­ca­tions” in prepa­ra­tion for my oth­er cours­es. Despite the fact that I have used the MS Office suite for years (well before it was a suite), and have trained count­less oth­ers to use Word and Excel, I haven’t had any for­mal train­ing in using the appli­ca­tions. Because I can’t show any col­lege work that proves that I can use the appli­ca­tions, I have to take the course, like every­one else.

I’m try­ing to think of it as an easy A, but that nev­er works out on these things that I feel I should be able to comp. Did you know that if you know a pro­gram so well that using key­board short­cuts is sec­ond nature to you, the com­put­er­ized tests used by temp agen­cies and the like will decide that you don’t actu­al­ly know the soft­ware very well? They’re look­ing for an exact series of mouse clicks, not the key­board short­cuts. I have this dread­ful fear that the course will use com­put­er­ized test­ing in this course, and there will be prob­lems like that.

Any­way, on a brighter note, after I’ve tak­en that class, I’ll be able to log in and start work on my oth­er class’s assign­ments. It actu­al­ly start­ed Tues­day, but I was­n’t enrolled ’til Wednes­day. The school’s com­put­er sys­tems don’t offi­cial­ly “know” a stu­dent ’til she has swiped her stu­dent ID through the atten­dance what­sis in a class­room at least once. Very frus­trat­ing — I’ve been try­ing to get in to that sys­tem since I was reg­is­tered, and nobody actu­al­ly fig­ured out why I could­n’t do so ’til late today. I’ve yet to get any­one to tell me how to con­tact the pro­fes­sor, either, as the idea of just talk­ing to the human (and I assume there is one) to ask about assign­ments seemed an out­ra­geous notion in that world of ultra-com­put­er­i­za­tion.

The oth­er class is def­i­nite­ly going to stretch me. I’ve nev­er tak­en a sta­tis­tics course before. It’s been, um, near­ly 20 years since I took ANY math class. Please don’t tell me any hell­ish sto­ries about that sub­ject, as I’m ner­vous enough already. If, how­ev­er, you under­stand this stuff are will­ing and able to help me, for good­ness’ sake, speak up! Any help is much appre­ci­at­ed!

I’ve still got to go through the joy of work­ing with the dis­abil­i­ties office. I did meet the coor­di­na­tor, though, and she seemed down­right friend­ly. That was such a shock that I could hard­ly remem­ber the ques­tions I need­ed to ask her! (Good argu­ment for always writ­ing them down ahead of time.)

I am going to have to upgrade my com­put­er, as every course at this school is part­ly online. The min­i­mum tech­ni­cal require­ments start with a proces­sor and video that put my much-loved lit­tle lap­top to shame. I’m unclear as to what they’re expect­ing to do with all that pow­er — it isn’t as if my major is one that involves CAD or any­thing of that sort — and I’m rather annoyed. The geek in me, of course, is thrilled — but the rest of me says, “We can’t afford that!” It’ll mean going back to a desk­top, most like­ly.

It isn’t as though my par­ents were pay­ing the first time around, so they aren’t going to help now, either. Any­body wan­na adopt me to send me to school? You’ll get the world’s most mar­velous grand­daugh­ter, and she’s old enough that you would­n’t be asked to babysit, even.

Yes, I’m only tak­ing two class­es. I’m try­ing to be more rea­son­able about pac­ing and tak­ing care of myself this time. Maybe I won’t end up with pneu­mo­nia again 🙂 And to that end, I’m off to bed now.