Croatian Inspiration; Overcommitment Redux; Smackdown: Nicholas Negroponte vs. Steve Jobs; and Yet Another Failure

When I started a blog, I wondered if anyone would actually read the damn thing. Initially, my reason for blogging was to work in a medium in which I could write on a daily basis. There are, of course, other forms that my writing could have taken: a diary, daily free-writing, a notebook of musings and thoughts, &c. But the public nature of blogs somehow made this particular medium more compelling for me than others, despite my belief that any feedback I might receive was irrelevant to my purpose of quotidian composition. Of course, anyone call tell at a glance that I have failed miserably in my attempt to write each day. But in the course of my occasional posts, I have found that I am most compelled to write when I have received comments, whether they be feedback on writing, a response to particular argument, a reflection, or simply a friendly recognition of the post. Having said this, it is therefore not surprising that I compose this post just having received word from a good friend of mine suggesting that I write more often. Knowing that there is at least one person who attends to my musings makes them worth all the while.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post. I've committed myself to working some sixty to seventy hours per week for the last few weeks of August. I have I have yet to earn a considerable amount of the money necessary to cover expenses for living in Budapest, so in addition to a full-time position working on data migration for the Department of Public Health's Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, I've taken a half-time position at a public university, assisting a graduate college in preparing for a major accreditation review. These positions, along with doing various paid work for my family (I'll be installing insulation in our attic this week), should minimize the amount I'll have to obtain through loans.

One of the major expenses in my budget is a laptop. Supposedly the computer labs at Central European University (CEU) have rather inconvenient hours, so the purchase of a laptop is requisite. I am torn between a desire for something elementary and inexpensive (think Nicholas Negroponte's XO design for the OLPC project, retooled for adults) and a desire for something completely over the top: a 17-inch MacBook Pro. I'll probably settle somewhere in the middle: something not quite as simple as the XO, but considerably cheaper and lower-end than a Mac.

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Finally, I sadly report that, as a result of a lack of both discipline and time, I have officially resigned from my efforts to learn Hungarian before my impending trip to Budapest. Thankfully, CEU offers a two-credit course in basic Hungarian for which I intend to register come September.

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Eagerly awaiting an underfunded trip abroad, I remain,

-M