Add to that the fact that I would be buying this computer at some point anyway. And the fact that when I go to visit clients I didn’t have a notebook and would often actually have to take notes.

My life is so much about multitasking. I need to be able to blog and watch TV at the same time. Many of my blog posts are about what’s on TV. And I need to be mobile because sometimes I just need to be outside the apartment, because I’m here too much when there’s work to do.

It just kind of struck me yesterday that I didn’t need to get this computer because I wanted it, but because I really and truly needed it. I kept trying to come up with excuses not to buy it, or to postpone it. But I need it. It’s kind of a bummer, because it doesn’t feel like the fun new computer, it feels like the new pencil. It does the same things as the last pencil. But it’s great to have a pencil.

And I’m so thankful for a couple of technologies. Syncing with my iPhone will keep all my bookmarks, contacts, and calendars up to date on both machines. I’m backing up to a drive connected to my Airport Extreme and it backs up so fast of 802.11n. And I’m thankful for Subversion repositories which will keep all of my work related stuff in sync between the two computers. I’m thankful for gmail and aol mail for using IMAP which will keep all my email for way to many email accounts in sync. I’m sure my syncing technologies will get even better very quickly. And for that, I am truly excited.

“Hi, my name is Kristy McNichol and I approve of Ratio 2.0™.”

This morning I woke up and it had happened, my all-time transfer ratio was 1.27. If you don’t understand BitTorrent, here’s how it works. When you want to download a file, you get a small torrent file. This file will help you connect to everyone else who’s downloading that file. Then you download a small piece from each of them so it goes really fast. At the same time, others are downloading small pieces from you. When I was downloading this file, I was downloading from up to 50 other people at the same time.

Now once you’ve downloaded the file, you can just shut off your client and screw everyone else. But the general rule of politeness is that you should at least wait until you’ve uploaded (given to others) until you transfer ratio is at least 1. This isn’t a problem because it doesn’t take much bandwidth or processor power so you just leave it going for a few days.

I had not totally trusted BitTorrent in the past, so had usually shut it off pretty early, but now I’m OK with it. I wanted to make up for all the times in the past I had shut if off early so that means getting my ratio to be greater than 1. And now it is. Notice that my transfer ratio for this one file is 7.36, meaning I had uploaded 7.36 time what I had downloaded. That’s what it took to get my overall ratio higher.

By the way, in BitTorrent terminology downloading is called “leeching” and uploading, or sharing with others is called “seeding.” That’s why it says “Seeding to 6 of 6 peers”. That means 6 people are currently getting parts of the file from me.

Quick side note: you know how it’s so hard to wash and especially to dry fitted sheets because everything gets all balled up? Well, I bought some mesh laundry bags, put the sheet in and it washed fine with socks and underwear that normally would have gotten wrapped up in the sheet. It’s all drying now, we’ll see how it goes. Anyway, I just love the idea of not having to deal with that anymore.

I’m going to try to keep the cone on until next Monday. He’s actually doing OK with it, so I don’t feel any need to take it off earlier. He also doesn’t seem to be interested in that area, so I’m not too concerned.

I still will have to carry him up and down the stairs to potty. But I didn’t like leaving his sleeping kennel outside while he went. I had been wanting to get a second kennel anyway because he is always in the kennel in the car and it’s a pain to keep moving it back and forth, so I got another one. After he’s healed, that will become the full-time car kennel.

Tech Note: I’m using Google Reader now for RSS. It’s great because it synchronizes all my feeds and has an awesome iPhone interface.