That College Kid

I am the proud owner of a MyBook external hard drive

I am a serious computer user and I slow mine down. No matter what the specs are, I always manage to somehow make even the fastest computer slow. I’ve had both PCs and Macs and both have needed to be fixed up a few times. I don’t know how to reformat hard drives and for what I’m trying to do, reinstalling the operating system works fine. This is the second time I’ve reinstalled OS X on this MacBook, which I got in January 2007. To make things easier this go around, I bought a Western Digital MyBook external hard drive at Circuit City.

It’s a 320GB Essential Edition, is plenty for me, especially because it was only $100. It doesn’t have a lot of fancy features, but I really just wanted something inexpensive and reliable to back up my files on. I’m going to store my enormous media collection on it, mostly filled with movies and TV shows, as well as keep backups of my very important website files.

So far I’m very happy with it, except it took me ages to move everything over last night, but I think that was because my computer has been incredibly slow lately. When I moved files back to the fresh OS, the transfer went much smoother. I’m going to leave Illustrator and Photoshop on MyBook because they take up a lot of resources and I don’t use them very much. I think I’ve used Photoshop once. Illustrator is more for when I’m actually feeling inspired, which hasn’t been lately.

Posted in Computers with 2 comments

7 ways to save on shopping

We’re all suckers for stuff, whether it’s fancy shoes or video games. When you’re broke, it’s hard to just curb that desire, even though you know you should. I have seven ways to shop smart so you can afford to spoil yourself sometimes.

1. Dealio is your source for the best deals on anything, anywhere. It’s a community that allows you to search for items to find the best deal, whether it’s in a store or on Ebay. They also have coupons for weapons for websites like overstock.com, which is already cheaper than buying retail, which means you save more.

2. Shop around. I can’t stress this enough. Just because you finally found whatever you’re looking for doesn’t guarantee a good price. Sometimes waiting means you find a better deal, or realizing that you don’t actually need the item.

3. Pro Bargain Hunter is a blog full of bargain news, tips and resources. They offer an Amazon discount table, as well as other free tools to find great prices.

4. Retail Me Not is a great website, one of my favorites for bargain hunting. It is a collaborative website offering coupons for thousands of websites. I’ve saved nearly $70 through Amazon with their coupons when I was shopping for textbooks.

5. Use Google Products to help compare between their giant list of stores to find the best price, and then compare with Amazon, Ebay and Craigslist.

6. Always try Craigslist. If you can find it locally, it cuts out the shipping cost.

7. Last but not least, FatWallet.

Posted in Money with 1 comment

3 academic programs for Mac users

Gearfire is publishing an article about his favorite academic programs for Windows and I’m posting a sister article for Mac users. Personally, I don’t use academic-based software that much. I do have these three applications on my computer and use them sometimes, but so far this semester, I haven’t had too many assignments or a difficult class. I use NeoOffice the most out of any program, for word processing and spreadsheets, but I also use Skim. There are other programs out there, but with my experience, these are great for students. Note taking is usually done in a text editor/word processing program anyway.

Genius is a flashcard-based application to help you memorize things. I use this, especially for political science in memorizing hoards of vocab words. It organizes info using the “Leitner “learning cardfile” system, and it quizzes you using a spaced repetition method.” Based on performance, it repeats certain words.

Schoolhouse is the homework manager for Mac. It sorts and organizes assignments, tests and projects. The smart notebook feature introduced in other Apple software is there, as well as classcasts so you can publish subscribable assignments on the web. My favorite thing about this software is the grade calculations. You can input all of your grades for each class and it keeps track of your average. It’s much better than trying to do it myself. Schoolhouse integrates a calendar/GTD program with keeping track of school work as well, which makes this an excellent tool for students.

Skim is a PDF reader (yes, I know, Preview is wonderful!) that lets you write on them so you don’t have to print out notes to take notes. I use this for my political science class (well, when I actually went to his class, I haven’t in over a month.) The professor gives us a copy of the powerpoint in pdf format and I use Skim to write all over it. It saves me from the cost of ink and paper.

Posted in Academic, Productivity, Software with 2 comments

College Alumni Forums

Websites like Facebook and Myspace allow people to connect with their friends and stay current on old ones, especially high school and college friends when you’ve already moved on. Unfortunately, Myspace and now Facebook are teeming with members that are inappropriate for professional people trying to keep up with college alumni.

Websites like Classmates.com and Only Alumni are ways to find friends, but not have to interact with thirteen year-olds and creepy old men. Only Alumni has a college alumni forum, which makes it easy to meet new friends and talk freely. It’s as simple as registering on any forum to be an active user. Not all universities have an active community, but some do, like Union College Schenectady Alumni, but that’s the same as everywhere else.

When you’ve got a well-known social network, it increases the chances of finding classmates, but unfortunately, it also attracts idiots. Since the internet is increasing in popularity with just about everyone and their mother becoming active, it gets harder to keep your online and offline lives separate, which is why I prefer smaller communities like Only Alumni. Even Classmates.com, which is a much older community, has immature people that have forgotten they’ve graduated high school ages ago.

Posted in Misc with 1 comment

How Google Docs can save your life

In Comp I we’re currently writing a research paper. (Mine is over the PATRIOT Act and how it violates our civil rights - go Libertarians!) A girl in my group, who is not a very strong writer, recently made some changes to her draft and later found she she had deleted a large chunk of her paper. Because she had been using Word, she was essentially screwed. So I told her, use Google Docs and this won’t ever happen again.

I’m not sure how many of you have ever heard of or used Google Docs, but it’s a very wonderful word processing application. Besides the fact that your documents would be available anywhere, it saves all revisions. When you click on a document, you can choose to see all the revisions you’ve made to it, which would allow you to fix anything you accidentally did.

The interface is very similar to Gmail and allows folders and starred documents. Although not entirely a replacement for MS Office, it does allow for spreadsheets and presentations at this point. The word processing feature allows for formatting, but some of the more complicated formatting isn’t available. It is great for a simple paper and especially to keep all copies of drafts. Some professors like to see the changes you’ve made and if you simply write over everything, it’ll hurt.

Posted in Tricks with 13 comments

Finally opened an ING savings account

Last night I opened up an ING Orange Savings Account. It’s about time, too, because this entire semester’s financial aid has been sitting in my Bank of America checking account, earning me nothing. I finally decided to make the switch because Bank of America holds onto my money for unknown amounts of time and doesn’t tell me why or when I will get it.

I had already switched my October money over to USAA because Don finally had his debit card for that account and I got my free checks.

The only reason I’m actually going to keep my Bank of America accounts open is because I have an automatic payment for my car that I haven’t gotten around to switching. I didn’t want to sign up for EFT in the first place, but the credit union that’s financing my car required it.

My favorite thing about USAA is the Deposit@Home feature. I simply scan a check and it gets deposited and is available for spending the next day. No having to deal with tellers and then not seeing the $200 cash I put in for three days (unless it’s over a weekend and then it’s more like five days.)

I’m still waiting for ING to verify that my USAA account is mine so I can deposit the rest of the money and start earning interest. It’s 4.3% APY, which is fairly high for an online savings account. I also haven’t heard any negative comments about ING, unlike WaMu and Capital One.

Anyone have any experience with ING? I wanted to get an Electric Orange checking account, but my credit isn’t good enough.

Posted in Money with 5 comments

Getting nostalgic with a Nintendo 64

While I was going through Typo Trawler a few weeks ago, I found a Nintendo 64 for auction on Ebay for $10. It was in perfect working condition, well, as perfect as those consoles could be, so I bought it. I also bought two games, Super Mario and Mortal Kombat for $3 each. With shipping, I got the console and two games for $25.

I know that Nintendo 64 is actually a crappy system. If you’re lucky enough to find a console that does work, half the time the games won’t play. I also had to clean mine really well before it finally played either games. But that’s not the only reason I decided to get one. This along with the Dreamcast was the only video game system I’m familiar with. I remember when I was eight and playing Super Mario with my friends.

Regular Nintendos and Super Nintendos are a lot more expensive. Original Playstations are cheap, but I’m not familiar with any of the games. I’m still not very good with video games, but I’m working on it. While my boyfriend is at work today, I’m practicing my moves so I can finally beat him in Mortal Kombat. He found me the codes to do moves with my favorite characters (the two Asian ladies and the one with the silver hair) and I practice while he’s gone.

Posted in Misc with 3 comments