You’re gonna love this. Especially if you’re a shopping-loving, Mac-loving junkie like yours truly.
I was messing around with my Safari Extensions this evening. Extensions are little things you can add to the browser, for free, that give it extra functionally. I run many, and hardly ever update them, but as I did, Coupons at Checkout took the cake for me today.
Before I head out tonight, I wanted to share with you all a little tradition that I’ve had for the past few years. At the beginning of each semester, I have a tradition to spend a night before classes begins just…getting ready. Pretty normal, I’d say. You know, sit down and print out syllabi, tidy things up around the house, do a little reading (that didn’t start until graduate school), get my books, etc. Well this semester I had a little extra time on my hands, so as I was making a new playlist earlier I cleaned up over 60 gigs of space on my hard drive by transferring non-essential files over the external hard drive that I told you about earlier.
As I read articles on how to most securely and effectively do that, I found an article about changing the icons on your desktop on a mac. I found a website called Icon Archive and with the help of some past knowledge from Get Connected friends, and having worked there for two summers, I enjoyed spending a few hours scouring the net for some new icons for my desktop.
I love the style of the icons. So simple. If you didn’t already know, I prefer to have my desktop background match my iPad background, iPhone background, and Facebook cover photo. Again, very detailed I know, but I just like the unity across all the devices.
From left to right, the most essential icons I use stay on my Dock. They are Finder (not optional), Safari, iMessages & Messenger, Mac Notes, iTunes, iPhoto, Microsoft Word, BusyCal, Mac Mail, Settings, GoTasks, the App Store, my home printer, and my desk printer. Then, there’s the divider for the non-apps: a link to my blog, my folder for all of my class work and notes, a folder called “films to watch” that I’ve downloaded but yet to view, the folder for downloads, and finally the trash can.
If you’re interested, this article will show you how to change the icons on your mac (go ahead and scroll down to the little blurb titled “Changing Icons”). It really only takes a few moments. Make sure you are using the .icns file extension, plenty of which are on the aforementioned website for Icon Archive. Have fun!
Easily, one of the questions I get asked the most when I am not at school is, “what do you do at your job?” In my spare time, I work for the Department of Homeland Security. I began this job in June of 2007 as a summer internship in between my junior and senior years of high school. I wanted a job and to make money, so I just decided to something that was very interesting to me – working in IT. At the time, I was very interested in computers (still am) and I thought that if I could land this internship, it’d be a great way to make some connections before graduating high school.
For the most part, people always, ALWAYS will ask – what in the world does this job have to do with your schooling? I began as a public and urban affairs major. I switched to sociology. Now I’m getting a master’s in education administration. Let’s be real – it has absolutely nothing to do with my job in the truest sense. However, this job is the one that I’ve had for the longest and the one that I’ve undoubtedly learned the most from. It taught me that while I love the office environment and I do, reasonably, enjoy the responsibility of commuting and what not, I do love smaller cities more and I appreciate the ability to sleep in until 20 minutes before you have to be in the office. There are also other times where I’ve realized that I like education more than technology, but both hold a big, big place in my professional heart.
My job deals, primarily, with technology. I work with customer relationship managers and projcect managers on numerous things. Each summer or winter that I go back they have a new project waiting for me to complete byt he time I return to school. The work environment is very fast paced and more importantly autonomous. There aren’t a lot of jobs where an intern is allowed to telework, for example.
For example, the above award I received to do long, long hours spent on a project in the summer of 2011, which involves the Department moving to a new campus and somewhat consolidating as well.
I really enjoy this job because of the connections that I’ve made – there are just a handful of people who still work there that were also there on my first day on June 25, 2007. My boss, Ben, is the one that wrote me specifically asking me to come back for the winter and assist with some projects they were working on. I think you know you have a fantastic job and an even better relationship with your boss when THEY are asking YOU to come work.
The main function of our office is to make sure that everyone in the Department can do their job. My roles are mostly in support of other managers and employees but I do love the aspect of not always having a large, important, security-threatening deliverable to be responsible for. But, you can tell, that service really is at the heart of this job. While I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to return to this job, it will always have been my first job (obviously, important) and has taught me a majority of the lessons that I now use professionally.
I’m so grateful for such a fantastic job & this part of my life is probably something you didn’t know about me.
Not sure if you all remember, but when I was in Fredericksburg for the long winter break, I accidentally deleted every. single. photo off of my computer. Luckily, I keep many back ups of my hard drive (I’ve set it to back up to my 2 terabyte hard drive on the daily. Yes I’m on the paranoid side because I do dumb things like delete all of my photos) so I was able to recover the photos. I made a few folders so that over the coming few weeks, whenever I have some down time, I can finally make every single blog post I’ve wanted; there are at least a dozen in the queue!
This post will be, simply, a photo blog of when I decorated for fall in 2012. I never decorated for Christmas last year, so when it warms up I’ll be excited to make it homey for spring. I’m not sure where I’m living for my last year as a student in Blacksburg just yet, so it’ll kind of be like a last hurrah.
I know it’s atypical for a guy to do, but I think it’s important to love where you live – thus, I love making places homey and seasons are a great excuse to do it.
So, I’m a bit of a nerd and the way I do my music is pretty different from most that aren’t total computer nerds (and I sometimes am one, myself!). I keep all of my music on an external hard drive that sits on my desk in Blocksburg. So, for the past five weeks I have not been able to download any music because I did not want it to bog down the hard drive on my MacBook Air while I was at my parent’s house.
So, one of the first thing that I did it when I got back home was download some new music. I had literally been dying to since before I headed out of town, I just never had the time. Instead of posting links or YouTube video, I decided to share the most recent playlist I made. This is a playlist that I burn onto a CD for my car and also keep a copy on my iPad and my iPhone so that I can listen to it whenever I want.
I just thought I would give you guys a little bit of a glimpse into my very random music tastes. There is everything from Maroon 5 to Alicia Keys to Justin Timberlake to David Bowie to David Shreeran to Rihanna… And then of course some rap and country music, too.
I obsess over my playlists, usually listening to a lot of the music in order to make sure that it has a good flow. For example, one transition I completely missed – the transition from 14 to 15….Drake & 2 Chainz, followed by Mumford & Sons? While that represents my music tastes pretty succinctly, it’s also really illogical.
I hope you guys enjoy. What’s your favorite song lately?
You know, I’m just sitting here Facebook chatting with a good friend, and I started wondering about ways to say thank you. For no real reason, I just love that phrase – thank you. It’s also a big theme in the book I’m reading right now, being thankful for the little things and appreciating whatever progress is made.
Speaking of being thankful, I’m curious: do you feel like you thank everyone that you have the desire to thank throughout a given day? Is there any one that you feel like might go unnoticed?
Random thought: what about your post man?
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On the surface, you probably don’t even think about this person. But, male or female, they deliver a whole lot for you and the best part is they do it without you even asking. They come around, deliver what you need (packages, clothes, letters, bills, whatever), and do so without a lot of praise.
Something I’m going to try in the near future, because I am very thankful for my delivery men and women, is get a gift card to the local coffee shop. I’m going to tape it inside my mailbox so that they can have a little gift and know that I am thankful for all that they do. Try it?
“It is worth while also, from time to time, shaking off the anesthetic of
familiarity and awakening to the wonder that is really all around us all the time.”
— Richard Dawkins
I’ll never forget how I met Sky. It was the funniest situation. I was strolling around with Kristin one night, it was a lazy night – we had been downtown, but didn’t drink in excess like we (I) sometimes do. We had a lazy night at home, and decided we wanted sushi – we got up, went out, shared a bottle of wine, and went back home. In the process, though, I encountered one suave-dressed man who stopped me dead on the street.
Hey…is your name Justin?
Yeah…that’s me. Definitely me. Sky had recently heard about my TED talk that I’d be giving in a month or so. We had never met before but I was honored that he knew who I was! Ever since, Sky has been one of the more interesting people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet. In response to my most recent blog post, he shared that quote with me. I’m not going to elaborate at all. I’m just going to let it stand alone because I really do think it is really THAT succinct and eloquently constructed.
Last night, a friend forwarded me this column from the Washington Post. I definitely encourage you to read it on your own. The man who forwarded to me, I only know him as “VT Dad,” which is how he he signed off his e-mail, appended a note to his link to the article.
Justin – Thought you might find this column of interest, especially in light of your 11 January blog entry. Keep up the great work. A VT Dad….
He is referring to this blog post from last week that was written as I had been inundated with several unique, inspirational “look at the world differently” kinds of stories. The Post article is no exception – I was reminded of this idea, this stop and embrace your environment kind of mentality, as I had lunch with a new friend just yesterday. She was a friend of a college friend, and they had met in France. She is actually from Poland and came to the states to visit, and my friend had taken her across D.C. to get sight seeing. She constantly talked about how impressed, in a bad way, she was that we didn’t know D.C. any better than we did. For example, Namrata tells me about how they went to the zoo to see pandas and I exclaimed,
I’ve never been to the D.C. zoo. Where is it?
I also began to recall how I took my first visit to the White House just weeks ago. Obviously, I’m guilty of it too. There really is so much art and entertainment that I don’t always take the opportunity to enjoy whether it’s in Blacksburg or in D.C. In Europe, apparently people come to visit you and you could pick out numerous attractions int he area to go see, because of course there is such great history but also you, as a local, know your area very well. For me, whenever I move to a new locality I rely on iPhone apps and locals to tell me about the local hotspots. It makes me thirst for Europe, to really see and understand all of their un-handicapped-accessible history. But no really, I think that’s on my bucket list – to find a way to travel there and do so reasonably independently.
I think it’s a very interesting, unique, and different mindset – but it IS very important to stop for a moment and really embrace, enjoy, and appreciate the environment around you. After all, you ARE living in it!
Side note: I’m sitting in a local Barnes & Noble as I write this post, and Draw a Crowd by Ben Folds Five is the song of choice – I’m pretty sure it’s an entire Ben Folds playlist. He’s one of my favorite pianists, alongside Gavin DeGraw. Check them out, especially DeGraw’s 2003 album Chariot, if you haven’t before. The song off of that album titled “More Than Anyone” has been on repeat at least 30 times in the past 3 days for me. It’s feeling pretty special. But both artists are definitely music for all ages.
Also, thanks to VT Dad for reading and enjoying!
