Wow.  What an exciting weekend.  I spent a good hour or two re-ripping some CDs I had on hand into my iTunes library.  When I had originally ripped them,  iTunes default import settings converted the tracks to ACC files.  I need them to be MP3s.  Why you ask?   Because my car’s CD player plays MP3 discs.  Which means?   It means awesome.  Instead of being limited by the 1-hour or so audio CD, I can burn a MP3 audio disc with folders of music.  For example, I can burn all of Bayside (Sirens and Condolences, Bayside, Bayside Acoustic, The Walking Wounded, Bayside Live at the Bayside Social Club, The Walking Wounded Gold Edition, and Shudder) all on one CD.  Which also means safety!  I won’t be fiddling around with multiple discs; I simply can just switch from folder to folder.  Are you bored yet?

Earlier in the day I was going to update my budget (seriously, I’m going for the most boring post ever), while watching the amazing Brett Favre and his Vikings, but my computer shut off after being away from a power source for 10 minutes!  WTF!  I wanted to chuck my computer to the ground.  I’ve had this thing for 3 and half years and it has eaten like 3 or 4 batteries.  And batteries aren’t cheap.  At 120 bucks a pop, I would like a battery to last more than one year.  There’s an application called Coconut Battery that monitors battery life.  This is mine.  Only 96 battery load cycles.  Now, I understand.  You buy a car you’ll eventually need to change it’s tires.  So I shouldn’t get too upset when I need to change the battery.  However, my situation is a little ridiculous.  Get it together, Mac.  Finally NewerTech, a third party manufacturer, is making replacement batteries for the MacBookPro.  They are cheaper and presumably better.  (There’s no way to go but up?)

Tip: Batteries should be changed in a Mac about every 300 cycles.  If you want to know your cycle count, you can use Coconut Battery, or within your mac go to Apple –> About This Mac –> More Info –> Power –> Under Battery Information –> Health Info –> Cycle Count.  Of course, that is just a gauge.  Rate your computer on it’s performance.  If it’s sluggish, and you’ve never changed your battery, a fresh piece of power might help.

So after I watched Favre put away the Cowboys, I putzed upstairs, plugged Conrad (my computer) in, and finished updating my budget.  Here’s another tip.  There is a gorgeous finance application for a Mac called Squirrel.  Yes, I just said gorgeous and finance in the same sentence, and yes the software is called Squirrel.  It allows you to set up accounts for your credit card, cash, and checking accounts.  You can set up categories to sort your expenses and income.  There’s charts and graphs and say you’ve set up $100 to spend on recreation, and you’ve already spent $90, well you know it’s going to be a movie rental weekend.  Yes, I know it seems very tedious and boring and who the %&*$ has time to do all that, but the dividends are great.  At the end of the month you see where the hell all your money went.  And then when you get really good at it, you know where your money’s going before you even spend it.  And maybe you save it. (I’m working on that.) And like I said it’s much prettier than an excel spreadsheet.

So, with the knowledge that my computer battery is a piece of crap, and with the knowledge that I don’t have much room in my budget to spend on things other than food, gas, and rent (no new battery anytime soon), I decided it’s a good idea to back up my computer in case it explodes.  That didn’t take too long because I’m actually pretty good about backing up.  (Had a hard drive crash once.  After that, you become pretty proactive with making sure your data is protected.)  Then I did some more maintenance.

I have a 100GB hard drive, so I try to free up space when I get a chance.  There is a free application called Grand Perspective that scans your hard drive and gives you a visual of the data.  The screen shot is after my initial clean up, but I had some huge blocks of video files that I ended up getting rid of.  Following the space scan, I ran TechToolPro’s computer suite tests.  Surprise, surprise Conrad failed the temperature test.  Seriously, he gets up to 190 degrees.  Luckily, other than that he was fine.

This is what happens when it rains on the weekend and I am unable to unwind with a nice long bike ride.

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