Mer's Tweets of the Day

• 00:11 Mer's Tweets of the Day ff.im/-3IesF #
• 08:31 @ScarSam777 Are you kidding me? She's got more assets than the FDIC! She's a decent actress, too! #
• 08:32 Finally watching Iryu: Team Medical Dragon. It's great to see so many J-Drama faces that I know (from Bambino, Hana Yori Dango, etc.)! #
• 09:28 Anything crossed over with House M.D. has loads of humorous dramatic potential. But add Asada Ryutarou from Iryu into the mix = extra drama! #
• 14:46 Agh, I've been plotbunnied by what could turn into another Sailor Moon epic fueled by politics and drama! Woe! :( #

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Like a flapjack

I've decided what I want to do after graduating from CSUN.

I'm going to give myself a clear goal and a firm deadline: I want to participate in NYU's Summer Institute in Publishing. While it's more expensive than their professional certification program, it's also more in-depth and faster.

The expense is a killer, though: $4500 in the next 11 months would mean SOMEHOW saving $400/month, which isn't possible for me at all. However, if I opted for the M.S. in Publishing Program, I could apply for scholarships, fellowships, and student loans, and the summer program could count for 6 graduate credits. I don't know if they would cover the summer institute, but it's worth trying to find out.

One year from now, I will be in New York City.

I hope thinking this way isn't setting myself up for disappointment. I'd like to think I'm still open-minded to other opportunities, should they come my way; but I'd like to plan for THIS so that I'm not floundering and making excuses for not doing what I really, truly want. I'm obviously still going to network, keep my eyes and ears open, and have a blast with my last semester at CSUN, but I need this goal and a timeline to get myself moving (literally and figuratively).

The next step is to figure out what my next step is.

 Colors by Yoko Kanno from Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaia Soundtrack (Rating: 0)

Why I probably won't be buying the MacUpdate Bundle (or why I might, depending on you)

Yes, it's shiny and inexpensive for what it comes with, but why should I buy the MacUpdate Promo bundle? Aside from the fact that, yes, $49.99 is a damn good price for the software included (retail value of $521.71, according to MacUpdate), and there are only four days left to get those apps at that price, why bother when:

(1) I already own Parallels Desktop. There goes a $79.99 part of the overall value.
(2) I already own Circus Ponies' Notebook. There goes another $49.99 (but I only bought it for $29.99, because I'm a student!)
(3) I already own Quicken, which might not be as intuitive as MoneyWell, but it serves the exact same purpose. Minus another $49.99.
(4) "Posterino - Posters, postcards, and more." Hm, these are things that a) I can do in Photoshop; b) I can do in Pages; c) I can do in MS Office. Heck, I can even do this from within iPhoto! WHY would I pay $24.95 for it?
(5) BetterZip - Okay, so StuffIt isn't perfect, nor is the Mac OS X zip utility. But it does the job, and that's all I really need. I don't zip or unzip TOO frequently (maybe a few times a week), so why would I need this? Hmmm.... minus $19.95!
(6) RipIt - hey, wait a minute, what the heck is DVDRemaster Pro for, then? Minus $18.99!
(7)Multiplex. Useless to me. I watch pretty much everything in MPlayer OS X Extended, anyway. (VLC started to suck a while ago and I haven't looked back since.) If it's got some features above and beyond the default OS X DVD Player, point me at 'em! Minus $35.00!

TechTool 5 might be worth it, except I've already got DiskWarrior AND Drive Genius. Let's be honest here, as awesome as TechTool 5 is, what does it do that those two programs and a good piece of freeware, e.g. OnyX, can't? (I'm not being sarcastic here; if there's a wonderful feature of TT5 that I ought to know about, sell me on it!)

NetBarrier X5 I'm seriously considering, if only because I HAVE to have my firewall down in order to connect to a wi-fi network these days. Due to the fact that none of my external hard drives are big enough for an exact clone of my hard drive (or the bulk of the really important data, which is scattered all over the place), I have yet to do a clean install of Mac OS X 10.5.7 yet! It might be nice to have something protecting my Mac from what few things could possibly screw with it.

DVDRemaster Pro 5 - I don't really duplicate video DVDs. Converting them might be useful though, and if it works with non-video DVDs, like Data DVDs, I might consider it....

Paperless - Reminds me of Notebook fused with NeatWorks. This COULD be useful, if I didn't have that sinking sensation that it does something that other apps that I own already do.

Bearing all that in mind and only subtracting those apps that I truly felt would be of NO use to me whatsoever, that brings the total "value" of the apps I'd actually use to $277.85. That's just slightly more than half the total value if ALL the apps were included, and I subtracted the most expensive apps, AND the majority of the apps (seven out of eleven; not including the two "bonus apps" if I were to BUY BUY BUY like, today).

I'd really only do this if I could split the cost with someone who could use the other items, like Parallels, Notebook, and so on. Considering the high-ticket value of those, wouldn't it be more fair to have that person pay $35 and me $15, and we each get huge savings AND just the apps we want? (Are we even allowed to do this? I mean, I'd buy the bundle if I thought the apps would go to good use, but the other Mac at home is a PowerPC and not exactly state-of-the-art, meaning it can't even HANDLE some of these apps!)

Anyone up for it? It's a pretty sweet deal for anyone that wants to: you get 7 apps for WAY cheaper than their market value, and I get 4 apps (plus the bonus ones, if you don't mind) that I could actually use.