Friday, September 26, 2008

New MacBook

Well, not exactly new new, it's a refurbished laptop, but it's got what I need. It's fast and able to handle all the stuff I need for work. iPhoto, Word, Bento, MacSpeech Dictate, and everything else work great on the new machine. No more waiting minutes, literally, for a program to load, to switch between programs, or doing any other day-to-day tasks. It will probably take a day or so to get everything transferred to the new machine and get it back to where the old one was. Nevertheless, it's great to have a new machine. I don't think it's absurd to get a new machine every 4-5 years. It's been 4 years since I got my iBook, and it's been a great computer. Let's just hope that I can get another good 4 years out of this MacBook. But right now, I'm really excited about being able to dive in headfirst to my research and writing (Does that make me a geek? Probably, but that was never in doubt.)

The other thing I need to mention, and I'm sure any one else in graduate school can agree with this, is that Interlibrary loan is the greatest thing ever. I'm working on part of one of the main chapters of my dissertation at the moment. I found a book on the subject I'm currently writing about (housing for Irish ex-servicemen) that Loyola did not own, naturally. A few quick clicks and interlibrary loan had the book for me in a few days. The book is a great complement to the primary sources I have, by filling in some of the administrative history those sources lack. Needless to say, the folks at ILL will be getting an acknowledgement when this thing is done!

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