Windows 7 Launch Party

The Tucson Computer Society held a Launch Party on October 22, the introduction date of the new operating system. Microsoft provided a Party box with decorations, freebies and two copies of Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit). You can see the decorations in one of the pictures here and the screen shows the desktop of Windows 7.
We had about 40 members attending, so it was a big crowd. The conference center at Sertino's Cafe was the site for the celebration.
We provided cake (see the beautiful cake below), ice cream and soda for everyone.
The features we showed included Help and How-To, Search, Taskbar-Pin Programs, Preview of Open Programs, Snap, Shake and Peek, Custom Desktop, Web Slices and Accelerators.
We also had a discussion of the upgrading process from Vista

(uneventful) and XP (specialized action required).

To top off the night, we had a raffle of the Microsoft freebies, plus many of the free items I have picked up at computer shows. There was a prize for every attendee!
The Launch Party was a lot of fun!

Update

I see it's been a while since my last post. I intend to remedy that. Writing a blog is as easy as writing a letter and I can add pictures. Although I could attach picture to a letter, each reader has to download not only the letter, but also the pictures, taking time and bandwidth.

My most recent adventure was San Diego, land of water and cool. The ocean is right next door, of course, but you can smell the salt air and if you're anywhere nearby, the businesses cater in some way to the Navy and watercraft. the cool part comes from the dramatically lower temperatures, at least lower than in Tucson, about 20 degrees. That's enough to be really noticeable!

My purpose was to attend CTIA at the convention center. This show is all about communications, cell phones, service providers and those associated with these businesses. As usual, my press pass gets me in free and gives me entree to special press events.

One press event, Showstoppers, was something of a disappointment. This is usually an exciting and big event for both press and the vendors, but this time there were few vendors and they weren't all that interesting. The food, though, was very good. Showstoppers is usually an evening event, but this one was at lunch, so the drinks were non-alcoholic.

The Virgin Mobile picture was taken at Showstoppers.

Another event for press was put on by HTC, a cell phone provider. Their Hero phone was interesting and I'm hoping to get one for review before long. I'm interested in trying out one or two of the touch-screen phones, like the iPhone. There a quite a number of them now. The Apple product has triggered many competitors.

And a third event was Mobile Focus, the most exciting and interesting. This was an evening event and had a theme of the 20's. There were two women dressed as flappers, the hall was decorated with prohibition posters and things. The drinks were pure 21st century, though!

There were many vendors, all of which were very cooperative. That means that they were willing to provide units of their product to review. While most products were related to communications and services, there were a couple of outliers - HP and Kingston. I got a lot of leads on stuff to review.

The drive from Tucson to SD goes over the desert in AZ to Yuma, the Colorado river, then the sand dunes (big!) in CA, then more desert, then the mountains east of SD, which rise from 1,000 to 4,000 feet, then down again to sea level at SD.

SD is as much a maze of freeways as is Los Angeles. Everyone is in a hurry, of course! And here I am, trying to figure out which interstate to take. I relied heavily on my GPS device to direct me to my destination, a cheap motel.

The return trip is as exciting as the trip over, but both were uneventful, the best kind!

Knees and Rain

Well, I suppose 50 years of playing handball and racquetball should catch up with me one of these days, but it isn't easy to recognize that it's getting to me. I've been having some pain in my left leg the past few weeks, versus none at all prior to that. I saw my doctor, who ordered X-rays and diagnosed "moderate arthritis," and referred me to an orthopedic doctor.
That's not a new diagnosis; I got that some 10 years ago. I was convinced that something else was going on. The ortho guy said it's "bone on bone and there's nothing I can do, other than give a shot of cortisone."
So, I guess dealing with pain is the only answer. I want to keep playing as long as I can. I find that acetominophen seems to moderate the pain satisfactorily for now.
As I've told many people, I've been old and I've been young, and let me tell you that young is better.
On the weather front (no pun), our monsoon season is over, officially. This year the monsoon was a bust! Instead of the 6 or so inches we usually get in the July-September period, we got 2.5 inches, a substantial shortfall. In my weatherspotter report for September, there was no rain at all during the month!
We now must wait for the winter season for more rain. This is December-February.