Harry Potter

Kudos for Canada Post! I received my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this Saturday at noon despite not signing up for special saturday delivery!

I pre-ordered the book a few months ago and chose the free delivery option. A few weeks ago Chapters contacted me to ask if I wanted to change my delivery option to ensure I would get the book on release date. Nah - I said - I'll probably be out and miss the delivery guy anyways. Turns out I was out and did miss the postman by a few minutes. I saw his truck down the street and ran over. Yonge street was closed because of some parade and I waited by the truck until the postman finally arrived. He said I was lucky to catch him there - he decided to take a break when he saw the street closed. Anyways, he handed in the book and I'm now almost half-way through. I tried working this morning but I've given up any pretense to work and have decided I might as well finish the book.

OS X Tiger - Installed

Upgrading to Tiger was easier than I thought. Since I wanted to do a clean install (wipe out the hard disk) and needed to safely backup my files & applications I went out and bought an external hard disk (LaCie 160 GB Firewire disk). Installing the disk was painless enough - no drives, all I had to do was plug into the power let, plug to firewire port and turn it on. I then used Super Duper! to close my computer to the new drive before running Tiger's installation. Once intalled, I ran Tiger's Migration Utility and set it to import all files/user profiles/application from the external hard disk. Once that was done, all settings/files/app were like in the old system. I didn't have to install a single application and so far everything seems to work fine. The new search capabilities of Tiger (not only Spotlight but the new revamped Finder) were well worth the trouble of upgrading. As a researcher, information retrieval is crucial to what I do and I'm overall very pleased with the new system.

Another hot, smoggy day in TO

It felt like 35 degrees (celsius) at 8 in the morning and with the humidity it will reach 42 by midday. It hasn't rained in weeks and Queen's Park is starting to look brown... I wonder if this will be the trend for the rest of the summer... It's starting to feel like summer in Brazil. Not a good sign.

flickr

Xanda4
Originally uploaded by Alexandra Guerson de Oliveira.

Just got a Flickr account so I can post pictures to this blog. I might move the blog to my own webspace though...

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

OS X Tiger

Apple does not cease to amaze me. Wednesday I went to the U of T computer shop and they had a waiting list for the new OS (Tiger). I decided to order online - like the guy said, whatever long it takes to get to me it's how long it would take to get to them since they order from the same source. I placed an order Wednesday night and had a choice of regular or expedited shipping. Since regular shipping was free and I wasn't in a hurry, I chose that. The site said it would be delivered btw 6-10 business days. Thursday I got an email saying my order was shipped. Friday morning a delivery guy from Purolator left a message (we weren't home) saying there was a package for me and he would leave it at an address on Bloor street. I spent all of Sunday wondering what could it possibly be. It couldn't be my Apple order since I had just ordered it! Well, it was! So, next time you need anything and can't get it at the computer shop, don't hesitate to use the online store.

I'll wait until the weekend to install Tiger. I want to do a clean install (the HD needs some cleaning up) and that will probably take half the day.