A Revolution in the Vollmer House!

The kitchen laptop has officially been REPLACED!

Finally!

I haven't been this excited about computer stuff in a really long time -- I've been looking forward to getting a new laptop for many months, and for once I was going to save up and get something I REALLY wanted.

After those months in the desert, getting kicked off the WiFi just because someone with a Macbook sits next to me got quite old.

So today I marched down to the Apple Store in West Omaha, took advantage of their "Personal Shopper" service and walked out of there with a Macbook of my very own!  It's AMAZING!  It immediately hopped onto my WiFi (yes, after I gave it the security code) and I was surfing SO FAST!

A couple weeks ago Dave's laptop ran into some troubles with the hinge that keeps the computer open, so he's contemplating getting a Macbook of his own.  They're offering a military discount, which made it even more appealing!  He's taking a trip in a couple weeks so it'd be nice if he had a new computer to take along.

The Macbook I got was the most basic of the aluminum models (there's a white model that costs less, but the aluminum seemed more durable), which has a special multi-function touch pad, it doesn't work like a typical PC-laptop touch pad, you have to learn some new moves for scrolling and zooming in and out...much like what you can do with an iPhone.  It has a built-in webcam, which is nice, and when I plugged in my iPhone to it, it automatically synced with iCalendar, iPhotos, iTunes and my Address Book.  I didn't have to do a thing!

Surfing the web has been like lightning, and even task-intensive sites like Facebook have been a breeze to navigate.  I haven't had this easy a time with our PCs since we moved to Omaha.

So it case you hadn't noticed, I'm pretty excited about this.

I'll leave you with this silly picture of me, taken from the built-in webcam. You can see how happy I am:

Weather Webcam Fun

Now that I'm home, I'm slowly getting back to normal. One of the things that was on my mind while I was away was setting up one of our webcams (that we used to keep in touch during my deployment) as a weather webcam, that connects to our home weather station.

So here you go. Have some fun and scroll down on the webcam page to the calendar and select "View Video" to see a daily 24-hour loop. This will look better in 2-3 days when we have some steady-state views. I've been adjusting the timestamp, viewing angle and resolution so it isn't perfect at the moment.

You can also look to the right and see the new, improved weather sticker for our weather station. The weather observation is from our backyard, while the webcam is pointing out our front window, aimed towards the north-northwest. It's supposed to auto-update about once a minute.

If you want a quick look at the past 24-hours' weather, play the video below. Pardon the quality if you view this before mid-day Thursday: