The Iced Coffee Blog

The weather is just yucky today. It's drizzling outside and there is no sign of blue skies anywhere. Just low riding gray clouds. Likely to be snowing up the mountain, but it might just as easily be raining up there too and ruining the snow on the ski runs. Wouldn't be the first time, and won't be the last.

It's been just about three months that I've been working the over-night shift and getting into a regular sleep pattern has not happened yet. The days are rare that I can sleep more than 5 hours straight, even rarer when I can sleep 8 or more non-stop. I did get to sleep for 9 hours on my last "weekend", but that was truly rare. Most of the time I'll sleep about 2 to 3 hours, get up for a little while (never long enough to accomplish anything) then go sleep another 2 or 3 hours. This pattern goes on day after day, and being fully awake doesn't seem to happen until evening when I'm running out of time before I have to take off for work. Then I get home in the morning and after about 30 minutes start the whole pattern all over again.

So what's been going on around here that is of interest? Hmmm...

About 10 days ago Danny took me shopping. He had about a dozen photographs that he'd been after me to scan so that he could email them off to friends, and I kept putting him off. The problem was my old scanner that I'd gotten back in the late 90's - try as they might, the drivers just were not fully compatible with WindowsXP Professional. It was a trick and a half to get it to scan anything. The scanner's software kept balking at the job, and I don't like the built in software that comes with WindowsXP. A vicious circle. Anyway, I'd been looking at a couple of all-in-one machines (scan, copy, fax, print) at work but they couldn't handle legal size paper. He took me out with the intent of getting me a new scanner at the very least. We first looked at what Costco had to offer and they had one that I fell in love with but was a bit more than he wanted to spend. We then went to Best Buy (which really isn't) and found a poor selection and none of those could handle legal size. After that, we drove over to Staples and found just about every possible machine available there. They really had a great selection, but no discount on the prices. They did have the same machine that I'd fallen in love with at Costco, but for about $40 more. He realized that he was going to have to buy me that machine, so back to Costco we went. So, after $385 out the door, I am the proud owner of a HP Officejet 7310xi All-in-One. I love it. It does everything I would ever want it to do, and it does it fast and with decent quality. I'm happy.

I've yet to find the solid length of awake time to work on this template. It's coming, and hopefully soon. I'd dink around with it right now, but I'm in need of another nap. Drat.