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    I bought a Goal Zero Yeti 500X portable generator at REI this weekend, and it seemed like a great excuse to write about it. I picked it up because I've always wanted to play with solar power, and I have at least one 10 day hiking/camping trip planned for the fall this year. I had been stressing about my photography stuff being off the grid for so long. I didn't want to deal with trying to charge my camera batteries (which are old) off the car alone. I also like backing up my photos to a laptop when I'm on trips, just in case. With all of that in mind, below are some initial thoughts.      I have known about the company, Goal Zero, for years now. Basically, they make solar panels and chargers/generators. They have quite the product line, from small phone chargers up to massive generators to run appliances. I'd been drooling over them, and solar power in general, from a distance until now.     Let me start with somewhat of a con, which I noticed befo...

      I wanted to take a moment to discuss some computer stuff. I have always been torn as a computer user. I really like Macs, but I also really dislike macs. I bought a Macbook Air this weekend, and I've been having a lot of feelings.      In case you don't know, I built my own desktop PC in 2011. I still use it today, with minimal upgrades. I maxed out the RAM, added more harddrives, and upgraded the videocard over the years. That's about it. It has been nice for a major base of operations for my photos and gaming. The portability on it sucks though. Because of that lack of portability, I've always kept a laptop around. When I worked at newspapers, we always had Macs, so my first good laptop in college was a Macbook Pro. I loved it. I've had many macs over the years, desktop and laptops, but that Macbook Pro was the game changer. That desktop tower of mine is starting to age out though. The processor mostly doesn't keep up well anymore. However, since it...