So, I decided that I wanted to play with the Windows 7 beta, but that I didn’t want to overwrite my operating system on either computer.

I started with Bob 1.0, my poor sweet 5 year old computer with Windows XP on it. I used GParted off of a CD-Boot of Ubuntu to shrink the partition on my main drive and then partition the new, un-partitioned space left by the shrink process. Windows 7 took ages to install, and ran a little slow on Bob 1, but certainly ran much faster than I expected it to run in the first place. I half-way didn’t expect it to install at all.

So last night I decided to shrink the partition on my storage drive in Bob 2.0 (my much newer computer) and poke around on that. I have no idea why, but the process didn’t go NEARLY as smoothly on this computer. Some of you may have seen my panicked Tweets about it. Oh, then then to make it worse, I discovered that Vista has tools to do this built in, well after the fact

So anyway, I guess when Windows Vista first partitioned the drive, it left blank space at the very beginning of the drive. When I went to shrink the partition, it decided that it wanted to move the partition to the left. So it took 2 hours to read my partition (why?!) and another 2 and a half to move it and create the new partition.

So I cleaned my bathroom while I waited, since I’m moving in a couple of weeks and have to clean it at some point anyway. I kid you not, that bathroom is positively SPOTLESS. Even the crazy muddy parts of the bathtub where Xoie puts her paws. I had a lot of time to kill.

Anyway, 4.5 hours later when I could use my computer again, I went to get some pictures of my camera (The bathroom only killed about an hour) and Lightroom started freaking out at me. “ZOMG I can’t find your catalog!” ... well, said catalog is stored on my storage drive that I just manipulated the partitions on. So I go to My Computer, and while I could see the new G: partition.. the original partition was nowhere to be found. I just about died. I panicked and mourned my lost data, then started wondering “well.. if the data is gone… where the heck is the 350 gigs of space?!”

So i went into the drive manager, and found my data partition! Yay! Windows had arbitrarily reassinged drive letters and changed it from Z: to F: which made it get lost, because F belongs to one of my removable devices (I think it’s my Rebel, IIRC). So I changed the drive letter back to Z and I could access all my data and Lightroom stopped spazzing out.

So I did my photo stuff and set Windows 7 installing and went to bed, cause it was about 1 in the morning at that point.

So yet again, I haven’t gotten a chance to really poke around with Windows 7 but it looks pretty sweet from what I’ve done so far. I’ll be playing with it and will likely write a post about it in the nearish future.

I just finished Premiere training yesterday! Included in my Premiere training was Premiere Pro CS3 and CS4 (Mac and Windows), Premiere Elements 4 and 7 (Windows only), OnLocation CS3 (Windows) and CS4 (Mac and Windows), and Encore CS3 and CS4 (Mac/Windows).

So currently, I’ve gotten full on training in all of those, as well as Photoshop CS2, CS3, and CS4 (both platforms), Lightroom 1 and 2 (also both platforms), Photoshop Elements 4 (Windows/Mac), 5 (Windows), 6 (both) and 7 (windows), and installation of all products (CS2, CS3, CS4, both platforms).

How has my head not exploded? I don’t know. Hehe I don’t have to support allllll of those though.

But anyway I am now pretty well versed in the ways of video editing, capturing video, and DVD authoring. It’s pretty fun.

I don’t know how soon I’ll be getting my ACE’s for these products though. I’m not feeling nearly as cocky or even confidant in these programs as I did straight out of training for the other ones.

That’s right. I am an expert. A certified one even! Adobe says so. At least, in Lightroom anyway.

I went on Saturday to take my ACE exam (Adobe Certified Expert, see?) for Lightroom, very early in the morning. I walked in and signed some paperwork and got stuck in front of a little computer. It was very much a “you know it or you don’t” kind of test, so I went through it in about half an hour, because sitting and staring at the questions I didn’t know was no help at all. So I finished and checked my answers and hit submit and got a little screen that said something along the lines of “Basically, you’re pretty much awesome!”

So yeah! I am excited. I’m taking my Photoshop CS3 one in a couple weeks… I hear that one is WAY hard. I need to get studying.

*does the Expert Dance*