I was a little concerned when I ordered it that it would end up being another gadget that I rarely used; I love gadgets, but have a tendency to tire of them fairly quickly. Very few of the gadgets that I have bought over the years have withstood the test of time. I needn’t have worried, though, I *heart* my Kindle and wonder how I managed to go so long without owning one.

Things I love about my Kindle:

1. It’s lightweight – I don’t tire of holding it
2. Easy on the eyes – I can read for hours without eye strain
3. Easy to use – I was up and running in minutes and only needed to skim the users manual
4. Variety – I can have a library of books at my fingertips
5. Built in dictionary
6. Easy to notate and highlight

Since the iPad came out, I know a few people that prefer that gadget or are trying to decide between the two. Although I do not own an iPad, I have been asked from time to time my opinion on which to buy. In my mind, the Kindle and the iPad serve 2 different purposes. The Kindle is for reading and it excels at that purpose. The iPad is a very portable computer. Yes, you can get Kindle software for the iPad, but I wouldn’t want to read for very long on one. I can’t read for very long on a computer screen and still actually enjoy what I’m trying to read. If you can, though, more power to you. Personally, even if I owned an iPad, and they certainly have their strengths, I’d still do the majority of my reading on my Kindle. For those of you trying to decide between an iPad or a Kindle, you might find this post by Mark Jaquith helpful.

Now, I think I have some reading to do

I like the pretty interface (Aero) and as long as the machine can handle it, it doesn’t slow things down.  I love the gadget dock, too and even added a gadget to monitor my memory and CPU usage (and yeah, I know that both the dock and the usage monitor do contribute to the memory usage.  I’m ok with that).   Oh, I should mention that I am using the 64 bit version of Vista.  I doubt I would be writing this post about the 32 bit version simply because Vista is a resource hog and only having a max of 4GB of memory wouldn’t exactly leave a whole lot for other things.

Here are the hardware specs of the new machine:

• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920  @ 2.67GHz
• 8 GB Tri Channel RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
• 750 GB Hard Disk
• 700W Power Supply

It’s a DELL Studio XPS from Dell Outlet, to which I added 6 GB RAM, the kick ass video card and the power supply.  I’m quite happy with it.  It was really time to buy a new machine, my 3+ year old laptop has been having problems for about the past year and was getting more and more frustrating to use.  I decided to go back to a desktop system for 2 reasons:

1. Ease of hardware maintenence — it’s much easier to upgrade and fix desktop systems
2. I can finally have a nice, big monitor — I bought a 23″ widescreen HD Acer monitor with 1920X1080 resolution

The past week I hve spent a good bit of time playing Sacred 2 with the graphics on high and the PhysX on.  It’s beautiful.

Yesterday, we took a trip to visit 4 wineries. Village Winery, Lost Creek Vineyard & Winery, Hidden Brook Winery and Fabbioli Cellars. I linked to the Virginia Wine pages rather than the individual winery websites here because the info given is consistent and compact. The individual winery websites can be found at the end of this post.

Our first stop, Village Winery, wasn’t much to look at. The building is weathered and the barn next door looks like a strong wind would knock it down. The owner is in the process of restoring the farm buildings.  For wine, he specializes in apple and elderberry wines, but he also make some more typical cabernets and merlots.  Both the apple and elderberry were quite delicious summer time wines.  They both had a very casual feel to them and were sweet without being desert wines.  We marked this winery for future visits and recommend it.

The other 3 wineries we went to were all practically next door to each other.  This allowed us to visit more wineries than we normally do in one trip.  Lost Creek Winery is very modern and has a large tasting area and a gift shop.  Their wines were quite good, particulary the Chambourcin and their two desert wines – Late Harvest and Courtney’s Christmas Blend.

Next door to Lost Creek is Hidden Brook Winery.  It was opened by one of the children of the Lost Creek owners.  It’s in a log cabin building and is fairly modern.  This winery was the most bland (ie uninteresting) we went to.  And the only one where we did not purchase any wine to bring home.  Their wines were good, but nothing really unique.  They also seemed a bit unorganized.  I don’t think they had a system worked out for paying for tastings because unlike every other winery we’ve visited in VA, they asked for payment before the tasting and then as we were leaving they stopped us and asked about payment again — and then realized that we had already paid.  That was just weird.

And lastly, we headed down the road to Fabbioli Cellars.  It’s run out of the finished basement of the family’s home.  Of the 4 wineries, we enjoyed the atmosphere of Fabbioli the most.  Also, we liked every wine we tasted there.  It was actually difficult to choose which ones to buy — well we are on a budget, so we couldn’t really buy one of each.  The people that run the place are all nice and personable and love a good chat.

I love this time of year.  It’s finally warm and there are so many wineries to visit.

Winery Websites:

Village Winery

Lost Creek Winery

Hidden Brook Winery

Fabbioli Cellars

Since I decided to take today off work, I thought I should get out of the house and enjoy this gorgeous spring weather we’re having. So, I went to the zoo. I know I was just there last month but that was part of a field trip with the photography class I was taking. And, although I got some good panda and tiger shots, there was a lot I didn’t get to. So, today I went to get some shots of the animals I don’t normally photograph and just to see what I found.

I did ok, but I wasn’t really in the zone today. I got there a bit later than I originally intended, so there were school groups and families here for Memorial Day Weekend already there. Not ideal. I really should have gotten there by 9am to really do what I wanted. I still didn’t manage to get into the Reptile House and the Small Mammal House was also just too crowded. I also didn’t go see the seals and sea lions like I meant to. Next time, although I doubt I’ll go again until at least the fall.

My best shot of the day is of a waterfall. I was experimenting with the shutter speeds to get just the right softness to the water. I like the result of that one. As for the animal shots, I got a couple cute ones of one of the orangutan’s, but overall not my best photography day ever.

Here’s the gallery if you’d like to see some of the photographs I took today:

National Zoo – 23 May 2008

Edited: Well, I’ve used it and ………………………………….

……… I love it! It makes exercise so much more fun than just hitting the tread mill. I tried several of the balance games – which the silly little board told me I wasn’t terribly good at. And I tried some of the yoga postures, which I was surprisingly good at. And, man can I feel that I did a little workout! I haven’t tried the aerobics or strength training yet, but I will get to those tomorrow.

It also records your weight and, after entering your height, gives you your BMI and encourages you to set goals. While BMI is not a good judge of ones weight level, it is used by pretty much every diet plan on the planet, so I can see why they went with it.

As you exercise and gather points, you also unlock more things. It’s a very cool way to exercise! I’m actually looking forward to tomorrow!

Update 26 May: I was pretty busy for a few days and skipped 3 days from using the Wii Fit. It actually guilted me a little bit for skipping days! Snarky little board. LOL. I have tried out all of the yoga postures I’ve unlocked so far and some of the balance games and strength training stuff and I must say this is a pretty neat thing. I’ve been using it as a warm up tool before my regular workouts the past couple of days and I’m liking that so far!

The nice weather makes me want to actually get out of the house and go do fun stuff. I recently got a few new camera toys to play with, so I’m thinking about heading out to the National Arboretum or the Botanical Gardens or something like that in the next week or so just to be somewhere pretty and play with the camera a bit and the new macro toys I got. Another option would be to take a drive to the mountains, but I prefer doing that in the fall when all the golden colors are really bright.

There certainly is a lot to see around the DC area that is photo worthy – and for as long as I’ve lived here (about 8 years), there is still so much I haven’t gone to see. So, I’m thinking it’s time to get out of the house and get some practice in.

Ahhh spring!

Yesterday my photography class met at the zoo for our second field trip. I love the zoo. I’d love to go there more often. So, anyway, I cleared off my memory cars, charged the camera batteries and off we went. It was a beautiful morning. We got there around 8:30 and met by the panda’s. They were all out and chowing on some bamboo. Mmmmm…..breakfast, said my stomach, as I remembered I forgot to pack that granola bar.

In spite of the fact that the panda’s had the tendency to sit with their backs toward the zoo goers as they ate, I managed to get a few really good shots. I even got a couple of the red panda’s — and they are just so cute!

After the Asia Trail, we all headed for the Bird House, where I absolutely suck at getting any shots worth anything – but the birds are always lovely to look at. And then the Small Mammal House. We were going to practice our flash through glass technique, but it was really too crowded to be able to do that. The zoo was hosting a special even that was drawing more people in than normal. Great for the zoo, not so good for our practice. Well, I’ll try it out another day.

Because of the extra people brought in by the special event, I’m assuming, there was a line to get into the Reptile House. Too bad, because the last time I was at the zoo I skipped the Reptile House because it was too crowded in there. It’s on my list for next time, for sure. So, I set off for the Big Cats. My favorite parts of the zoo are the panda’s and the tigers, so those are always a must see for me. It matters not how many times I have visited them in the past.

The lions were lounging in the shade where it was difficult to get any good photos of them. It was about nap time, so who could blame them. One of the tigers was also hanging out under a tree at the top of the habitat. So we headed around to the other side and the tiger there was a bit more active. He wandered around and played with a big ball that was in his habitat – he dragged it up to the top, which is always fun to watch and then he found a smaller ball and gnawed on that for awhile. I took a great many shots of him and got several that I really like.

One of these days I’m going to have to take a day off work and get up insanely early and take the metro in and see what shots I can get before it gets hot.

I put up a gallery of yesterday’s visit, that you can look at, if you’d like:

National Zoo – 26 April 2008

Black Theme:

Fog Theme:

Lake Theme:

A friend at work started roasting his own coffee. It’s pretty easy to do, he said, and inexpensive, too. I was luke warm to the idea until he brought me enough roasted beans to make a pot of coffee. It was some of the smoothest, tastiest coffee I’d ever had. He used a hot air popcorn popper (the kind with a metal bottom, not mesh). Later he added a thermometer, which cost just a little more than the popper.

Well, having tasted the freshly roasted coffee, I was sold on the idea. I got a popper and a thermometer and last Tuesday I gave this roasting thing a try. It is so easy! I set myself up on my porch to do the roasting because I didn’t want to do it inside (I’d hate for my smoke detector to go off or anything). It only took a couple minutes per batch, I took each batch up to 445 degrees. Since I’m using a popcorn popper, I can’t roast that much at a time (about enough for a full pot), but that’s ok since it doesn’t really take that long to do.

Today I roasted up some more. This time I roasted them a little darker (455 temp). I’ll make some from this batch tomorrow morning.