Update: 8/1/09

This should be a nice update of everything that’s been going on.  Well, perhaps not as thorough as it could be, but maybe a nice overview.  I think this post might be lengthy; I thought about separating this post into multiple posts, but decided not to!  I have, at least, tried to break it up into sections.
Colorado Perceptions
Fun times here in Colorado.  It’s been rainy, which apparently isn’t normal.  I love rain, so that’s alright, plus the temperatures have been quite enjoyable.  Right now, I live in Lakewood and I work in Boulder.  This means I drive about 50 minutes to and from work.  In my 50 minutes on the road, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of bikers!  Driving home in Boulder yesterday, I saw 11 bikers and 7 mountain bikers on trails.  I obviously need to step up my biking game.  And by step up, I mean, put air in my back tire.  And I think I need to fix the chain, something’s off.
Roads are different here.  Or at least road signs are.  The signs for state roads and interstates are much more helpful here than IN.  The signs tell you which lane you need to be in for each direction, dead useful.  It might be the fact that I’m driving almost two hours a day, but everything seems farther away here.  I haven’t had much time to explore downtown, where I assume things are much closer.  This is my first weekend here, and I’ve decided to wile it away by unpacking and taking advantage of the Gap and Banana Republic Friends and Family discount.  Can you really ever have enough business casual clothes, especially when that’s what you wear to work?  Exactly, I think not!
You, loyal reader (one of the four), may have followed my Twitter/Facebook updates and therefore, you are aware that I live close to a neighborhood of ranchettes.  Seriously, they’re like little castles, just down the street.  With horses!  And a zillion-car garages. That’s about all I’ve done as far as neighborhood exploration.  I suppose I also know where a SuperTarget and Panera are too.
Conferences
The past month I’ve spent quite a bit of time at conferences, which I love!  I love meeting people and attempting to follow-up with them.  Most recently, I went to the BlogHer Conference in Chicago and the Microsoft Worldwide Partner’s Conference (WPC) in New Orleans.  Going to both of these conferences makes me realize that I just don’t have enough time.  At WPC, I worked with Microsoft Students 2 Business, which provides training to students in Microsoft technologies.  I wish I had time to do the training, since a lot of it is stuff I want to know.  Really, I wish I had taken advantage of MS2B while I was still a student.
When I went to BlogHer I met lots of amazing women!  It quite enlightening for me.  Ever since interviewing Elisa Camahort Page, one of the co-founders of BlogHer, for Ed & Ashley’s 5 Minute Show for being awarded the 2008 Anita Borg Social Impact Award at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, I’ve been very supportive of it!  Going to the conference was great!  Although it did make me realize that I am sorely lacking in my own blogging department.  It also made me wonder if I want to do some different things with my blog.  Maybe do a couple of travel posts, since that’s one of my true loves, and maybe some food posts on the topic of cooking for one when you lack general culinary skills.  Of course, those would still be along with my personal posts, which I know have you sitting on the edge of your chair.  Feel free to share any thoughts you have about this with me.  Perhaps after I get into more of a life-rhythm and unpacked, I can start writing on a more regular basis, which I think would be nice.
My Laptop
Briefly, let’s discuss my laptop.  It’s a Dell piece of shit.  I thoroughly dislike it right now.  It has heated up to flesh-burning temperatures.  I need a new machine and I need one very soon.  I have no space left on my hard drive and I don’t have much space on my external hard drive.  This means I can’t do anything for the show and I don’t have some of the video that I need for the show, which is very upsetting.  Anyway, any thoughts on what I should do as far as a new machine?  Should I go with a desktop option and get a netbook for portability or get a powerful laptop?  I kind of like the idea of a netbook, but at the same time (the Palm Pre commercials with the girl from the Disney channel move Step-Sister from Planet Weird creeps me out) would I be shuffling all of my stuff between two machines and how would I feel about that?  Right then.