Passport Update

Bea called our congressman, Representative Sullivan, today and we received some good news. Our passport is being processed in Charleston, SC instead of Houston, TX, which means it's not as far behind schedule. Representative Sullivan's people are calling Charleston to have our passports put on priority and we should know something by Friday, which is a good thing. I am spending next week writing curriculum and Bea is grading AP essays, so one of us (me) would have needed to give up the extra paying jobs (which we need because I'm not part of the grant team for Ireland!) and travel to Houston to stand in line for a day. It sounds like one of the team members, Brian, will have to do that. Luckily, Kim already has her passport (she expedited it earlier this spring), so at least one person will be going!

Read our main travel blog: Three Amigos and a Tech Guy

Passport Stress

No passports yet. I keep telling myself not to be worried, but all the news stories are beginning to get to me. We've got 2 weeks - it should be OK.

Wi-Fi Worries

I've spent an incredible amount of time researching on the net, trying to find maps of Dublin Wi-Fi hotspots. It's been pretty difficult. It looks like the city is going to total wireless sometime in the near future, but for now, it's catch as catch can. A few places have it, especially fastfood, cafes and some hotels, but not that many. What's interesting in the search, though, are the number of blogs I've come across lamenting the lack of public wifi. Reading deeper into the blogs, I keep coming across warnings about pickpockets and the homeless who are roaming the streets. It should be an interesting time with all of the equipment we're planning on carting around.

New Toys

The technology purchases went well. The new laptop has a nice widescreen, which helps me forgive it for being significantly heavier than what I originally wanted. I've stripped quite a bit of software off, but still need to do quite a bit of work on the Start menu and such - I need to do some research, but it seems like I should have more than 448MB of 512MB available for use.

The camera is amazing - the video is exceptionally clear and the sound is far better than I anticipated. I'm curious to see how long the battery will last, but it recharges by USB, so I'm not worried about running out.

It looks to be an exciting time.

tech video

Tech Report 1

The grant checks were picked up this evening, so the laptop has been ordered. We were looking at a $600 Gateway that was on sale through BestBuy, but with tax and shipping the price was climbing and the team reiterated their desire to do this with the cheapest machine that would get the job done. In light of that stipulation, I ordered a Toshiba Satellite from OfficeDepot for $650 with tax, minus $150 rebate, so it's a $500 notebook - just what they wanted to spend. It's a Celeron M processor instead of Dual Core Pentiums, 512MB of RAM instead of 1GB, 80GB HD instead of 120GB, and a 15.4" screen instead of the lighter 14.1". As much as all of that pains me, it's still more machine than this P3, 256MB, 30GB 5-year old Vaio that cost 3 times that much, and this machine would do everything necessary, except it has a bad habit of freezing up and could die any day. Plus, the savings covers most of the cost of the digital camera I'm trying to get them to buy. I've been fiddling around with a $20 refurbished Aiptek I bought as an experiment - the grainy video on this site comes from that machine. Its big brother will do a considerably better job and these things take up no room and are very easy to use, so I hope they go for it. In the meantime, we'll pick up the new notebook tomorrow and we'll work to strip the bloatware off and get it running smoothly.