How I’m Spending My Summer Vacation

I’m typing this on a new computer.  After months of FDI sessions (several more in the GIS track than I needed to qualify for the computer), weeks of stress whether they would deliver it, and days of prodding and begging our department IT administrator so I could get it and take it on my summer research, I now have a 15″ MacBook Pro sitting in front of me.

This is a huge stress relief because my old one was in such bad shape.  I’ve got a 13″ MacBook I bought with my dissertation completion fellowship in 2009.  Last summer it fell of a ledge while I was in London and I’ve been living with a big spiderweb of cracks in the screen ever since.  Add in a few instances of my son pulling it off surfaces in Rome and we were in rough shape.  Over the last month it started to randomly blink off, forcing me to restart.  So, I’m in much less danger of ruining my students’ presentations, as I worried would happen on the last day of class, for example.  Now I’ve got to download all of the software and add-ons I use, like Dropbox, my new trial of DevonThink, Mozilla Thunderbird for email, and the like.  So while it is a relief, it’s not that exciting, because it takes a lot of time to get things up and running.  I’m not sure why ITSU doesn’t just ask if I want to import my existing system, THEN install all of the software, which would make things a lot easier.  As it is, I can’t just use my last Time Machine backup or it would get rid of all of the software they have installed, some of which I want to use.  Soon I will be using some VirtualMachine software to run Windows and I will install ArcGIS on my machine, as well.

All of this is to say that tomorrow is the first day of summer.  Within the next hour I should have my grades submitted and attention will turn to frenzied packing so I can get to Evanston this weekend and see my wife and son.  For the summer, my plans are to make some serious headway on my book manuscript.  This will involve two two-week trips to Boston for research, and possibly a week to either Washington, DC, or Austin, Texas.  In addition, it will involve several Detroit Tigers baseball games, as I haven’t seen the Tigers play since either the Spring of 2010 or maybe Summer 2009.  It’s been too long and it’s good to be able to take public transportation to Comiskey U.S. Cellular Park to see my childhood team, even if they’re the away team.

When I’m not sharing child care duties privileges with my wife, I plan to do some research down at the University of Chicago, too, despite the 90 minute commute it entails from Evanston.  And blogging! [EDIT: And learning Javascript]