Greetings following my first week of sabbatical, and what a week it was!
First thing I did was that I went looking for a new personal laptop to take on my adventures, since my MacBook from 2011 was not very peppy anymore and I didn’t want to take my work laptop out on outdoor adventures and my iPad doesn’t cut it. I looked all around for something that had dedicated graphics and performance as well looked nice and lots of functionality. I looked at both Macs and Windows machines and found my sweet spot. I tried out the Microsoft Surface Book 2, and loved it.
The I7 processor based laptop has 16Gb of RAM, 512Gb SSD, a dedicated GPU, and the screen detaches and you can use a pen or touch the screen. It runs most any desktop software I want from AutoCAD to Revit, Fusion 360 to Photoshop.The magnesium shell, battery life, tablet conversion, pens responsiveness as well as high resolution screen is perfect for me. So far so good and nice to edit photos and videos of my sabbatical.
Last week I spent my time on a road trip in central and eastern Oregon. Some of the location I visited on my hiking adventure were:
Little Crater Lake up by Mount Hood
Sparks Lake
I found Justin Bieber and fed him some alfalfa.
A nice sunset hike at Smith Rock State Park
The beautiful Ochoco National Forest. I’m already thinking of going back there this week.
The Painted Hills
A nice beautiful hike at Blue Basin in the John Day Fossil National Monument.
A friend gave me a nice VIP tour of the Portland Japanese Gardens. So beautiful and zen.
Biggest surprise on the road so far, there are still Blockbuster Video stores open. This one in Bend Oregon.
Time to get back to my sabbatical and the road.
A sabbatical is provided for Autodesk employees as a generous benefit every 4 years to take an annual 6 week break and get away and recharge and return fresh.However I do miss my coworkers, my office, partners and our customers and will stop by the office briefly this week to pick up some books as well check out that sweet Portland office view again.
If you would like to submit a unique Autodesk product tip or trick guest post, please email me.
You can see more updates on my Instagram feed @ShaanHurley
