Just thinking

Today I've caught myself on a few occasions thinking about my future. Here I am 41 years old, and I'm still dreaming about things that I want to do with my life. Back when I was 20 or so, I thought that I already had it figured out. I wanted a big house, 2 cars, big paycheck, etc. You get the idea. I have a house, I have 4 cars, and my paycheck is of a decent size -- not one of mammoth proportions, but definitely enough to sufficiently provide for my family. I have those things that I wanted when I was 20. Yet after achieving those things, they seem to be small, unimportant things. I don't want you to think that the things I have aren't important to me, because they are. It's just that when I was 20, those things seemed so far away. I guess I expected it to take the majority of my adult life to reach those goals. I reached those goals in my 30's, though. So what now? Where do I go from here? Which leads me back to the subject -- just thinking.

I've started back to school. I attended both summer sessions this year, and I loved it. There was a time in my life, not so long ago, that I could never have thought about going back to school. I did not have the discipline. I didn't have to try very hard when I was in elementary or high school. I crammed, I took tests, I got A's. It all just seemed very simple to me. It was a rude awakening when I went to college, though. I had no idea what it meant to really work at something. I had no work skill -- if that makes any sense. I didn't know how to work. I'd never had to. I'd never had a job, and I never had to work at school. This definitely made college difficult for me. Instead of putting forth the required effort, I just complained about how the instructors gave us too much work, until finally they'd curve our grades.

Now, though, I've learned what it means to work hard. I have a very strong work ethic, and it has definitely helped with my school work. Instead of complaining about all the work, (the workload has not decreased at college, by the way) I just do the work. Wow, there's a thought, huh? How about just doing some work? Give it a shot. You'll find that doing the work isn't nearly as bad as the dread you have of doing the work. Most things in life are not as bad as we perceive.

So anyway, I've not really gotten to the point of this post -- which is that I've been thinking about what I want to be when I grow up. I think that I want to be a couple things, if that is alright. First, I'd like to be a professor of business at a small college. Second, I'd like to be a financial planner and counselor. I'm going to leave it there for today. I hope to return soon and elaborate on how I plan to achieve these goals.

MacBook/DVD Player/Leopard/Kernel Panic

Ok, I've been doing some troubleshooting of sorts on this DVD Player kernel panic problem. Along with the crucial RAM, I've also been wondering if Parallels could be causing this problem. Here is what I've done so far:

1. I mounted a DVD image and then started DVD Player, and it played with no problem.
2. I then started Parallels without booting the Vista VM, mounted a DVD image and then started the DVD player, and it played with no problem.
3. I then started Parallels and booted the Vista VM, mounted a DVD image and then started the DVD player -- KERNEL PANIC.
4. Rebooted and mounted DVD image and then started DVD player, and it played fine.
5. Started Parallels, booted Vista VM, then shut down Vista VM, then exited Parallels. I then mounted a DVD image, started up DVD player, and it played fine.
6. Started Parallels, disabled the CD/DVD Drive in Parallels. Next, I booted the Vista VM, then I mounted a DVD image, started DVD player -- KERNEL PANIC.
7. Rebooted and mounted DVD image and then started DVD player, and it played fine.

CONCLUSION: At least on my system, this has to a problem with Parallels, but only if the virtual machine is booted up. Even if I have had the virtual machine booted, if I shut it down and exit Parallels, then the DVD player works as expected. In my opinion, this is a Parallels problem.

My new MacBook

I got a new MacBook one day last week. It was a stock model black one. Has 2GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive and 2.4GHz core 2 duo. I bought a 4GB RAM kit from crucial.com and have successfully added that in. I have also installed a trial version of parallels, and am running MS Vista Business in a virtual machine. I'm trying to decide if it is even worth my while to try out VMWare fusion after this parallels trial is over. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

One problem I'm having is that if I start up DVD player and the disk or image is already mounted, it crashes the computer. I'm wondering if this is a result of the Crucial RAM or if this is some sort of bug.