Catrien's thoughts

Sandy

While we're waiting to hear how bad Hurricane Sandy will be, I wonder: how did people evacuate if the subways, trains etc. in New York were closed? Not everyone has a car.

Jump!

OK, disclaimer here: I have no particular thoughts about Justin Timberlake or Jessica Biel, or pink wedding dresses. I *do* spend too much time surfing around. Hence: I have come across the couple of wedding photos that have been released so far. My question is: Did JT spend the entire wedding weekend jumping? JB seems pretty cool with it, but for me it's bringing back scary memories of the Tom Cruise couch jump. And we all know how creepy that was.

Just had it up to here!

My mom always used to say that. "I've had it up to here with [fill in whatever here]!" Well, today I've had it up to here with all the mindfulness/coaching/realize your potential/take time for yourself/unplug/organize your life blogs. Jeez. Maybe I've been reading too many of them, but the last couple of months, man, they...all...say...the...same...thing. Pffff. It's not that I'm against the lesson, I'm just tired of everybody copycatting each other. So I've cleaned up my RSS feed and may or may not fill it with other things. Like iPhone tips. Or nail polish.

Anybody else tired of hearing "the message"?

Hiatus (but somehow still about varicose veins)

Hey. Haven't posted for a while, as so many bloggers post. A lot of traffic is going to my varicose vein posts (no. 1, no. 2, no. 3 and no. 4), and frankly, there's no news on that front, though I suppose I could post a One Year After the Operation photo. Who needs one? Show of hands?

Upgrade to Lion (2)

Yep, definitely having the WiFi problems. Haven't found a permanent solution yet. It's easy enough to re-establish the connection, but very annoying when I have to do it three, four, six, seven times in a few minutes. I'm looking for permanent solutions, but haven't yet found one that seems 100% reliable and is doable by me (I love gadgets, but I'm not a programmer). I'd love to hear any suggestions that meet these criteria!

Upgrade to Lion: how's that working for you?

I'm going to note my experiences since upgrading to Lion and migrating to iCloud from MobileMe; I hope they can help others!
Luckily I had no trouble with WiFi or TimeCapsule. You do need to be prepared for the fact that the first backup after the upgrade will take a r-e-a-l-l-y long time. At first I even thought it was stuck at "preparing...". I think the first backup ended up taking about 7-8 hours total. So try not to panic unless it's the next day and there's still nothing happening. (Subsequent updates have been fine as well, yess!)
As is almost everyone else, I am annoyed that the list of calendars in iCal doesn't appear in the sidebar. Apparently there's no workaround. It's not a fatal flaw, but it's annoying.
Speaking of iCal, while nosing around I noticed that the calendars I had in MobileMe (I have six calendars for different purposes) still seemed to be in MobileMe and not in iCloud. To avoid possibly losing them when MobileMe ends (I don't know whether that will be the case, but just to be sure..) I migrated them to newly made iCloud calendars with the same name. Use this excellent article by Jordan Schelew to do it yourself. Again, allow some time for this to synchronize if you've got lots of calendar items.
I hadn't thought about Office for Mac not working under Lion, so be prepared for this as well. I knew that I'd need to get the 2011 version sometime, but I was doing OK with the 2004 version plus add-ons for converting .docx files. The 2004 version does not work with Lion. I understand that 2008 works in general but may show some glitches. I knew there was a reason I waited for a work-free week to upgrade to Lion! :-)
Key repeating has been changed. Instead of being able to repeat (almost?) any letter by holding the key down, only certain keys repeat (like the dash). Mildly annoying, especially since you would have to use Terminal to change that, and I haven't dared doing anything in Terminal yet.
What you do get when you hold certain keys down is a little menu thang so you can choose a diacritic mark. I have always used alt-[diacritic]-[letter], but the menu-ette may be handy too, once I get used to it.

I'll post more remarks as I think of them.

Hang in there

Hey, I've been swamped and sick, but haven't forgotten you! Still chuckling about how much traffic the varicose vein posts (here, with link to updates) are getting. :-) I've got pics in the camera to post for a new update (dissolvable stitches! woohoo!).