I went SHOPPIN'
After work tonight, instead of going directly home, I went across town to the best technical book stores here, Cocodrilo Libros to check out the Spiders, Bots and Aggregators book I wrote about earlier - I checked online first to see if they had it and they did. The shop is run by an English woman who's been here since "the late 80s" and is quite fun to chat with. There's several thousand books there, but when I asked for the book she knew where it was right away. She's not particularly techy, she just thought the title was odd. I explained to her what spiders, bots and aggregators were... or at least tried to. She glazed... I'm sure I'm not the first person to try to explain to her what all these weird technical books are about.
Quick thought: Aggregators needs a cool name like "spider" and "robot"! The word "aggregator" is so boring. How about "harvester"? Or "hunter"? Yeah! Hunter! That's a good one. Spiders, bots and hunters (oh my!).
Anyways, there was only one chapter in the book that interested me so I didn't buy it, instead I walked out with Core Swing Advanced Programming because it's got a LOT of stuff in it that I need and I still have trouble learning from Safari.
Okay, I actually skipped ahead a bit. So I left work to go to the book store, but stopped at PC City on the way. It's a chain sort of like a CompUSA but smaller. I wandered around for a bit, picked up some blank CDs and then noticed a PCMCIA (PC Card?) Firewire card! Yeah!!! That's awesome for my digital camera. I had a firewire adapter back in San Fran on one of my desktops, but those have since been inherited by my brother, so I really missed being able to download video. Watch this space soon for some MediaBlogging. ;-)
I was JUST about to leave and I looked over and saw a sign for WiFi PCMCIA cards for $34 apiece!!!! I was like YES!!! So I went over, confirmed the price because it was just so incredible, grabbed two boxes and went to the counter. Turns out I was wrong (not the first time). That was the price of the PCI adapter, the cards are actually $89 apiece. Still not a bad price, but not for two right this second (what a let down!). Pretty soon though, Ana and I have matching Dell Lattitudes and I really want us to free us up a bit and also play with the tech. Maybe I can become a Sputnik provider here Madrid...
So then I went home, but on the way I wanted to pick up some vitamins and just HAPPENED to pass a Telefonica Movistar mobile phone place, so I went in and asked them if they had any deals on upgrading a phone since my account is with Telefonica. Why yes, yes they do! Take a look at my new Alcatel One Touch 511!! Yeah baby! It's not my dream phone, but I've been trying to get a new phone for a while and this is really nice. Very small and light, good menu, polyphonic ringtones, etc. My old Nokia 7110 has been dropped so much that the WAP doesn't work and the battery becomes unattached all the time (which means I'm unreachable by Ana until I notice) so I had to switch. It was only $100 to upgrade. Pretty rockin'.
So, not to be too much on a consumer high, but I'm very happy with my purchases. I can send video to my parents, do some cool development this weekend and end the daily annoyance of discovering my phone is dead. Hurray!
-Russ