Author: dbbaldwin (Page 13 of 13)

On Laptops

So I bought a netbook. I’ve been wanting something small that I could use with a real keyboard, and being home sick and unable to sit at a desk finally made me look into my options. I wanted something like a Macbook Air or maybe one of the Windows ultrabooks, but the $1000+ price tag was more than I wanted to spend. I did some poking around on Newegg and found a netbook that looked perfect.

I ended up with an Acer Aspire One 725. It has an AMD C60 dual core processor, a 320 gb hard drive (not solid state), 2gb of RAM, and a Radon 6290 video card. It also had Windows 7 Home Premium. Oh, and an 11 inch screen. When you consider that most of the other machines in the $300 price range had single core processors, 1gb of RAM, integrated video, a 10 inch screen and they were trying to run Windows 7 Starter Edition, this one seemed like the best value BY FAR. From the reviews I read, Windows 7 runs terribly with 1g of RAM, so one of the big selling points to me was that this had 2gb AND it had Home Premium.

So those are the specs, but how does it work? Really well. I’ve been using it non-stop since Friday afternoon when it arrived. The 11 screen gives the case a little extra width, so I have a nearly full size keyboard. The hardware specs have left me with no complaints. I’ve been doing a lot of typing and a lot of (too much) web browsing, and everything has been snappy. I haven’t seen any of the slowness that was a major complaint for other netbooks. Granted, it doesn’t take much to run Word and Chrome, but I’m not getting any lag when switching programs or poking around in Windows Explorer.

Even the battery life is good. I’m getting about 6 hours on a charge. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to write for 6 hours straight, but if I did, it’s not really a hassle to plugin somewhere and keep going. If I wanted to go outside and brave the 100 degree heat, I even have outlets on my deck. The only time I could see the battery life being an issue is if I’m traveling and the airport has no outlets. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. (To be honest, I’ll just run the battery down and then break out the Kindle.)

How does it handle games? I have no idea. I am conscientiously avoiding installing any on it. I really do intend for this to be my writing machine and I’m trying to avoid distractions. I hear that siren call of Football Manager, but I have my body lashed to the mast.

I have two complaints so far. I use the Home and End keys frequently when I’m in Word. On this keyboard, Home and End are only accessible by pressing Function and then Page Up or Page Down. To make matters worse, Page Up and Page Down aren’t on the top right where they belong—they’re on the bottom right tucked in with the arrow keys. I’m working around it, but it’s irritating. The second issue is the touchpad. I find myself typing along and suddenly I’m typing in the middle of a word somewhere two paragraphs above where my cursor should be. I think the problem is that my thumbs are brushing against the touchpad occasionally when I hit the spacebar. The touchpad works fine, but I really wish I had some easily accessible button that I could use to disable it when I’m typing. The worst case is that I end up plugging in another keyboard, but I’m going to try to adapt for a week or two before I take that step.

Overall, I really like it. It’s perfect for my needs and the price was excellent. I’ve already told Carissa that I’m planning to give it to Sophia in a year or two and buy myself an ultrabook of some sort, but in the meantime, this little Acer will do nicely.

It’s Not Cancer

I spent nine days in the hospital earlier this month. It wasn’t a fun experience, but I’m home now and finally on the mend. It started the week after Memorial Day. The Wednesday after the holiday I had some shooting pains in my stomach. The first doctor thought it might be an ulcer, so he prescribed some medication to help with the pain and the acid formation. After a couple days with no appetite and no ability to keep food down, we decided that if it was an ulcer, it wasn’t just an ulcer. I suffered through a tough weekend before finally going to the ER on Monday, June 4.

The ER moved me to the main hospital in the wee hours of June 5 with a premilinary diagnosis of a bowel obstruction. I spent most of week completely miserable. I knew I wasn’t getting better, even though the days were trickling on by. I had a tube down my nose to keep my stomach drained. I couldn’t eat or drink anything. Once the diagnosis was confirmed and the doctor was sure the stomach suction wouldn’t clear the obstruction, I went to surgery on Friday the 9th.

They gutted me like a fish.

I have 6 inch incision down the center of my stomach now. The doctor found a “thick band” of scar tissue that was choking off my small intestine. He also removed some adhesions from my stomach and cleaned up the old scar. While I was opened up, samples were taken for biopsy.

The good news is that I’m on the mend. My digestive system is working again. The better news is that the biopsies all came back negative—there are no signs of cancer. The bad news is that I’m *sore.* I have a minor wound infection, so I’m getting to experience the joy of having a small portion of my incision packed with gauze everyday to enable it to heal from the inside out.

Many, many thanks to everyone that helped us out. Carissa was at the hospital with me almost the entire time. That wouldn’t have been possible without everyone’s help with the girls. It really means a lot to us. Extra special thanks to Carissa for being there with me quite literally day and night. Being in the hospital is a miserable experience. It would have been far more miserable if I had been there alone.

I feel tremendously better than I did a week ago. I no longer have a tube down my nose. I can eat and drink whatever I like. Most importantly, I’m home.

A Eulogy for My Pawpaw

My Pawpaw died on the Sunday before Memorial Day. That’s now two and a half weeks ago. I composed this eulogy in the days after learning about his death, but life has conspired against me getting it written and posted until now.

My Pawpaw had 26 grandchildren. Many of them hardly knew him. Some of them knew him more as a father than a grandfather. Even of the ones that knew him as a grandfather, I’ve known him the longest. This is my story of him. My story of Pawpaw.

When I was little, maybe pre-K or early elementary, Pawpaw ran the FBO (airport) in Flippin, Arkansas. It was the kind of lazy little place that didn’t get too much traffic, and if there was a little boy riding his bicycle across the runway, it wasn’t a big deal as long as the boy had the sense to watch for planes landing. I remember my dad and my uncles brush hogging a path through the field that separated Pawpaw’s house and the airport. I would ride my bicycle through the field and then all over the airport.

Pawpaw used to take me flying. One flight in particular stands out after all these years. Pawpaw had me sitting in the front with him, and he banked the plane way up onto a wing until my nose was pressed against the side window. It was terrifying. Then he brought us back level. Once I calmed down, he let me drive. What did I do? Bank the opposite direction until HE was pushed up against the window. He thought it was just as hilarious as I did, and after he made sure we weren’t going to stall, he let me keep flying.

Without exception, every single person that has ever offered me an opinion about Pawpaw has thought highly of him. My mother’s family attended my grandfather’s church in Northern Arkansas years before I was born. They love him to this day. When I was fifteen, I rode along when Pawpaw made a trip to Teterboro, New Jersey. The folks in the airport, hotel and restaurant greeted him enthusiastically, some of them by name. It was then that I realized that my Pawpaw had never met a stranger. I doubt he ever did.

While we were in Teterboro, Pawpaw took me across the Hudson River and into Manhattan for the first time. We walked around part of Manhattan, though all I really remember was seeing the Empire State Building and walking on the steps in front of Madison Square Garden. There was no particular reason to take me halfway across the country just to go for a walk in Manhattan, but Pawpaw thought I’d enjoy it. He was right.

Once in a while my dad would take us kids over to see Pawpaw and Grandma, even if there wasn’t any particular reason to visit. On those visits, you could catch Pawpaw watching television. When he was around, his TV only had two choices: The Weather Channel and Westerns. I never saw the man watch a movie that didn’t involve horses and dusty men with guns. I never did ask him to explain what it was about John Wayne and Gary Cooper that so enthralled him.

In high school I drove my dad’s old Toyota Tercel for a while. When I took it over, it needed new brakes. I changed the disk brakes in the front myself, but I didn’t know what to do about the drum brakes in the back. Dad sent me over to Pawpaw’s. I pulled the Tercel onto the hill that passed as Pawpaw’s driveway, set my emergency brake, and went inside. Pawpaw followed me back out, wearing jeans and a button up shirt. (This was as casual as I ever saw the man. I think he wore slacks and a button up shirt in the shower.)

We jacked up the car and took off the rear wheel. When we tried to unbolt the drum, we ran into problems. Even unbolted, it wouldn’t come off. After fifteen minutes of tedious work with a screwdriver, Pawpaw loosened it with an emergency release I hadn’t known existed. We got the brake changed with some more work, and Pawpaw suggested we test it before doing the other side. We hopped in the car, I took off the emergency brake and away we went. When we came back to park, he very politely suggested that I leave the e-brake off this time. We had the wheel off, the drum off, and the pad changed in about ten minutes. He never had a negative word to say about the extra work I had unwittingly caused us (him).

A couple years later I was at the end of high school, about to go to college. It was summer and I was broke. Pawpaw came by the house one afternoon and mentioned that he could use some help cleaning airplanes. I was interested in helping because, hey, airplanes, but then he mentioned it was the kind of thing that would pay, and if I did a good job, it could turn into something regular. I cleaned airplanes most every Saturday for four years. I didn’t always do a good job. Sometimes I was tired. Sometimes I was hungover. Sometimes I was lazy. Pawpaw never had a negative word to say. In retrospect, I don’t think he really needed the help. He could clean faster and better than I could. I think he just knew I could use the extra money and cleaning was a way he could help me out when I needed it.

I appreciated it back then because I did need the money. Those weekly trips to the airport kept gas in my car and food in my belly. I appreciate it now because of the thoughtfulness. He created a job out of thin air, just because he saw the need.

Since college I haven’t seen as much of Pawpaw. I’ve had my own family to raise, and I’ve had a falling out with my father. I’m indescribably sad that Pawpaw is gone so soon. The Pawpaw I saw at the visitation and at the funeral isn’t the man I choose to remember. The one I remember was vibrant. He never had a gray hair on his head (I’m told he had a little help on that front). He always had a ready smile, and a willingness to help. That’s my Pawpaw. That’s who I’ll remember.

Picker, grocer, preacher, pilot. Pawpaw.

Newer posts »