It shipped

My netbook shipped on Monday. In five to seven days I will have my new toy (er, computer).

I've spent a bit of time pondering one of the reasons the netbook is significantly lighter than my laptop - excepting the obvious 17 inches verses 11 inches - is the lack of an optical drive. Since I have no plans to burn cd's or watch movies, it was not much of an issue. I can always watch television on hulu (Stargate SG-1, Bones, Warehouse 13, and Eureka). Something I did not consider was loading software on said netbook.

Luckily, my laptop has Sync Center and the netbook is compatible. I should not have a problem with my wireless connection.

Netbook ordered!

I placed the order for my netbook this evening. I have a little over two weeks until my next conference and should have the computer in my hot little hands prior to departure. Even better, there will be opportunity to load my ISP and play for a while. It will be much simpler to present, attend, and teach online while attending conferences - and not drag my work computer or personal laptop along for the ride.

Yes, yes, yes, I did change the blog template again. I like the book shelves, but am not thrilled with how long it takes to load or the fact that IE seems to hate the image.

Dithering over netbooks

I have had my wonderful HP Pavilion dv7 Entertainment laptop for ten months now, as was the case with my ten year old HP dinosaur, it has been problem free. I love my laptop. But ... I find myself a bit greedy. I have several conferences on my schedule for spring and would like to take a computer; a computer that is significantly lighter in weight and considerably less in price than my laptop.

My price point would ideally be under $400. I've looked in brick and mortar stores, online at QVC and HP, and kept a close eye on advertisements in the Sunday papers. At this point, I like the selection direct from HP. However, since I have dithered so long choosing the components to meet my personal specifications and having it arrive before the first conference, is not an option any longer. To be honest, I'm not sure is a bad thing. Enter the HP Mini 311 pictured here, it has an 11 inch screen, runs Windows XP (I'm not sold on so many of the net books with Windows 7 Starter), has a built-in web cam, and weighs under four pounds.

HP says it's ready to ship within 24 hours. I can at least wait until payday to decide.

Another day, another template

I think, maybe, I am having a bit too much fun playing with the new templates in Blogger Draft. I have been investigating the photo background options and some are a bit less blog friendly than I imagined. There is a library stack full of books just begging to be used for a background image. Unfortunately the image does not lend itself to readability of text once it's applied. I tried messing with colors, the transparency factor, and even choosing different color palettes.

Today it's polka dots. They are cheerful on a rainy day and make me happy. At least for now, I can be fickle.

Cranky Bloglines

Several times this afternoon, at work and now at home, I logged in to view my bloglines. At first, I was unable to open displayed blogs as my account kept timing out. I figured the network was slow due to planned maintenance and moved on to other tasks. This evening the blogs are not displaying in the feed pane. Guess I'll try again later and continue to remind myself patience is a virtue. Right now I'm just annoyed.

Sunny day book purchases

Happy first day of spring! I don't think I'll be burning any socks.

I did a bit of book shopping this morning, enjoying the sunshine, spring, and the relative settling of vitreous floater in my right eye (it is like looking through wax paper). I have missed enjoying reading books of all sorts, recreational reading and juvenile alike; hence the six week moratorium on book related blog posts. I managed to read the new J.D. Robb and Jayne Ann Krentz titles, Fantasy in Death and Fired Up, but it was a challenge. However, since I re-read my favorites numerous times, the second and third time through these titles will be like the first time.

But, I digress.

My morning travels included shopping for chocolate treats (worth the distance) and three books, Wild Ride, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, Split Image, by Robert B. Parker, and Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages 1985-1995 from the bargain table. I love Calvin and Hobbes.

Imagine that ...

I have no idea why, but replacing the Yahoo videos with identical YouTube videos fixed the sidebar problem. Now I'm satisfied and will relax this evening watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on ABC family.  It's another Harry Potter weekend and there are to be clips from the Deathly Hallows throughout the evening.  Even though I am fairly certain they will be the same clips on the Half-Blood Prince DVD set, it is enjoyable watching and amazing to see how they have grown.

Once more with feeling

I spent time this evening again re-arranging blog elements, tweaking colors and sidebar placement, even adjusting the size of videos within the last few posts. Pleased with with the overall look of things, especially since the text blog is a bit larger over all, the sidebar oddity still confounds me and I spent a bit of time trouble-shooting posts currently displayed on my main blog page.

When looking at the blog in its entirety, the sidebar remains at the bottom of the page. When looking at individual entries, the sidebar displays normally on all with one glaring exception, the Super Bowl ad post. It contains a bit of blathering and two embedded videos. The only thing different about the videos in that particular post is they originated on Yahoo as opposed to YouTube.

I'm tempted to switch out the existing videos with the same content found on YouTube instead.

Trying Something New

Forty five minutes later I have a new blog layout, courtesy of new templates in Blogger Draft. Oddly enough, the sidebar works fine in Mozilla Firefox, but still displays in an annoying manner in Internet Explorer 8.

For now I will just be annoyed.

So, why?

For the last few days, my blog sidebar has been displaying below the posts instead of in it's usual position on the side regardless of the computer or browser used for viewing. Why?

If I choose individual posts for viewing, the sidebar is in it's correct place. When I click on the header to return home, the sidebar moves again. Why?

I've also noticed the template arrows next to the date at the top of each post are displaying mashed together. Why? It's certainly not attractive.

Since changing templates no longer strips all sidebar information, it might be time to log into blogger beta and take a look at newly available templates and make a few changes.

Blogger Templates

Blogger Buzz posted yesterday about a new template designer available to users; Express yourself with the Blogger template designer. The post had key things to draw my interest, a way to reinvent my blog layout (toys to play with) as well as a video explaining how things work. Remember, it's a Beta, aka Blogger Draft, option.