I really haven’t won very many things in my life. The only thing I can remember winning relatively recently was a Palm at Youth Conclave, but even then I won in kind of a shady way because I was technically a vendor and vendors aren’t supposed to participate in the giveaways. So sue me.

Anyways, all that was to say that I won a pretty dang cool (and much needed) prize at a local web designer meeting last week. I won a Lacie 500gb hard drive with triple interface! Now, I suspect that most of you are thinking, “A hard drive? Doesn’t your computer have one? Why would you need another one?” The truth is, I was beginning to cramp up my Mac’s hard drive with all of my Photoshop files, designs, photography, music, and iPod video. Things were getting very tight. I was hoping to hold out until next Christmas, but now I don’t have to!

This thing rocks. I know it’s difficult to imagine a hard drive being “cool” or “fun” but that just shows you how nerdy I am. I spent the past few days making a full, bootable backup partition on it to protect my digital valuables should anything horrific happens to my Mac. I also shifted some of the heavy weight over to the “Big Boy”, as I now call it. Videos, iMovie projects, GarageBand files, etc. are all now safely tucked away and I’ve recaptured the comfortable 50% mark on my internal 80gb hard drive’s capacity. Things are running much smoother now. I’ve marked the Big Boy as a scratch disk for Photoshop, which makes that hog run almost twice as fast on my PowerBook now. I hooked it up with a FireWire 800 connection, so I’m transferring files at a blazing 80mb/s!

I know by now, most have you have lost interest and have gone on to check some other guy’s blog, but hey, I just wanted to spend some time reflecting on the fact that I’ve (legitimately) won something and I appreciate the blessing. I’m sorry if most of you think it’s dumb, but just know that my life is now a bit easier and I’m more efficient thanks to this big brick sitting on my floor. That should be enough.