Last week was Seth's birthday. I bought him some stuff from Petco for his fishtank. He has one 9 gallon tank with our 4 firebelly toads but Dad also gave him a 55 gallon tank we had hanging outside the house in River Grove for a long time. I wasn't sure if Seth could do something with it and I knew it was no good just sitting outside. So Seth cleaned it out a while ago and brought it down to ISU. I wasn't sure if maybe he was going to move the toads in there, but the lady at the store said they didn't need a tank that big. She talked to us about getting a Bearded Dragon a few months back. So that's what he decided to get. My birthday gifts for him went towards setting up a home for the new baby 'beardie'. Though we have no actual picture of her, here is a picure of some I found on line. Ours looks just like the ones in the picture. We named her Clementine. She is just the sweetest thing! Bearded Dragons are known for their great personality. They are not like other lizards at all. I have heard lots of stories about how good tempered they are. Clementine sure is. We have only had her a few days and she has already learned to crawl into Seth's hand when he puts it in the tank. She is not as easy to take care of as the toads are, but she's well worth it. Last night we had a few friends over to see her and she was great with them, too. We put her on the carpet and let her walk around. She never tries to bite or run away, she actually seems to like the attention. She's just a little thing now, but she's going to get a lot bigger.
In other news, school is going just fine. Though I missed two days of class this week due to my flu, I still was able to keep up with the homework. So far, grad school isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I think that I really made it a bigger deal in my head than it was, which is kind of a good thing. Now it doesn't seem as bad. Oh yes, I do have plenty of work to keep me busy. I'm not saying its easy at all. We really do get treated differently than we did as undergrads.
My financial aid check is lost somewhere out there in the mail system. Mom said she read about this in the Sun Times. A lot of schools are suffering from the same problem. I need that check! The roomates and I are planning on getting DSL for the apartment and I'm trying to wait until I have a little more room witht the cash. I either have to get DSL or I have to buy a modem, each costing me about the same amount in the end. I also need a new hard drive. I know my computer is old. Do any of you know if buying a new HD would even be worth it?
The weather is supposed to be beautiful this weekend. I don't plan on doing much, just some homework.
I bought you that hard drive. What is wrong with it?
Posted by: Chris at September 5, 2003 02:45 PMWell I know I can't get more memory and for the last year, it just keeps freezing all the time, and does all sorts of messed up stuff. So I'm not sure if actually need a new one, or if there is a better solution
Posted by: Suzy at September 5, 2003 03:19 PMIs the hard drive freezing or perhaps the computer? The beauty of it is, it can be hard to tell: Is it the drive, the drive's controller, Microsoft Windows being... well, Windows. Has Chris recently screened your computer for virus' or extra spyware running secretly in the background. Many of the file sharing programs (popular on college campuses) are notorious for quietly installing some additional "value added" stuff that was in effect spyware.
Glad to hear school is going reasonably well. I didn't think grad school was too bad. The hard part for me was going to work during the day, like Chris is about to do. (Best of luck there, Chris) It certainly helped that Michelle was going to school at the same time. She and I *both* always had homework to do. If it's any consolation, my computer during grad school was also years behind the power curve. Back at that time, my biggest expense was getting a "leading edge" 14.4k modem for around $350, laughable by today's standards when even 56k modems can be had for almost nothing.
If you *do* decide that you need a 56K phone modem, I still have a genuine USR (the defacto industry standard) external 56K modem that I used to use up until a year and a half ago. I'd be glad to mail it to you. USR external modems are compatible with absolutely everything. I used it with my Psion handheld computer, my P133 linux laptop, it'll certainly work with yours if you need to go that route. It's of no use to me because the quality of Milford's phone lines gets me 28.8 if I use a modem (and I already have 2 megabit cable modem connection plugged into a wireless router, but that's beside the point...)
Posted by: Scott at September 5, 2003 04:27 PMNeed proof about how scary Google can be? Go there and type 'firebelly toads seth' (without the quotes). Congrats, Suzy. You're a number one Google hit with just three words. ;-)
Posted by: Scott at September 7, 2003 05:36 AMI meant to tell you that I showed Claire some pictures of firebelly toads and bearded dragons. She said she would freak out if I came home with those and said "these are our new pets". But then, Claire and Abby freak out at just about any bug that creeps into our house, no matter how small.
Posted by: Scott at September 8, 2003 04:31 PM