@youcee – I would not being to know how to research what it is my son wants in a laptop. I went with him to B&H Photo last winter so he could touch/feel the ones he is considering. He will probably head back to B&H this summer to play around a bit more. He is contemplating a six pound laptop. That strikes me as heavy, but what do I know?
I believe that he will void the warranty the minute he installs Linux, so he will be on his own for repairs and maintenance.
I let my techie S15 pick out his own laptop (gave him a budget and asked him if that would work and he said it would and took it from there). I had him pick out a laptop for me as well. He will help D17 pick out a laptop for her this summer. I view him as my IT department/tech adviser.
I’d get a Surface Book for my son if @STEM2017 would just throw $1000 over my way. Looking like a Dell XPS 13 from the Costco website or an HP Spectre x360 that went on sale at BB yesterday.
@youcee — if you are still looking, you may want to subscribe to B&H’s Deal of the Day or Deal Zone email. It arrives every night at 12:30am and the promo runs for just under 24 hours. They offer laptops periodically, but more camera equipment than anything else. Reputable retailer that I have purchased from for decades in NYC, but now I just mail order.
Congratulations to those who have graduated ! <:-P <:-P
DS17 had graduation on Saturday. We had a nice dinner at a $$$ restaurant. DS has been off to several parties :D/ :bz so we did not see him much other than at the graduation and the dinner. :)]
Haven’t done any shopping for dorm… DS says he is fine with what he has. Boys are simple, I guess.
I saw him counting his 100 dollar bills from various gifts. He is flush with cash. He can buy whatever he needs himself, a laptop, dorm stuff, etc. :)) :))
@ProudMom17 - Welcome and congrats on Vandy!
@jmek15 - Ditto on the thanks for putting the list together!
@mageecrew - Sounds like a great trip – I personally would have opted for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (D17 and I started going when she was in 5th grade…it’s been a few years since we’ve been back, but they do some great theatre – Shakespeare plays, new plays, musicals, dramas, etc., etc. and it’s a charming town.
@MotherOfDragons - We’re looking into pedal power. D17 is not the most comfortable cyclist, and given mobility and safety concerns, we may opt for an adult-sized trike for her.
Dorm gear - not thinking about it for a while. I will get a mattress pad and sheets for D17’s summer internship in D.C.
My alma mater does an alumni trip to Oregon Shakespeare Festival every year, I need to do it.
@RightCoaster I am right there with you, my daughter sounds a lot like your son. Both of whom actually sound a lot like me, lol! Or at least at that age… I’m slightly more together now. This year has been the worst. She’s forgotten deadlines, missed a lot of assignments, etc. I think she gets overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to start so she just puts everything off. So, maybe I should be re-thinking my no access to the portal thing 
I have seen some improvement lately… for example her ball is this coming weekend. A few months ago I told her that she has to make all the arrangements happen - call the tailor, hairstylist, make-up, nails. We paid for the dress and if she wanted any of the rest, she was responsible to set it up and pay for it. I reminded her a few times, and she kept saying “Oh yeah…I’ll do that tomorrow…” A few weeks ago I decided to stop reminding her and let it go. It was stressing me out and if she didn’t care - really, why should I? It’s not that big a deal. She’d still have a great time without all the fixin’s and she’d save some money. Well, she ended up pulling it all together and making it happen - her friend who is in a cosmetology program is doing her hair, her cousin is doing her make-up, and she made two appointments with the tailor on her own and just picked up her finished dress today. I was so happy. Normally, I would play too big a role in setting all those things up (which probably makes me the root cause of her bad habits!).
She also has started keeping a list of things to do and upcoming events, and looks at it daily (well, not quite daily yet…) and crosses things out or adds to it. She leaves it right out on the kitchen counter so it’s always in plain sight. That seems to be helping.
I may eventually change my mind about the portal and have her give me access, but right now it’s more to keep me from obsessively checking on her . I am weak!
@LoveTheBard I did look up the festival and I am very tempted! Who knows?! Maybe we will make it there. It looks as though the tickets are going pretty fast though.
I’m surprised how many here are done with graduation already. I’ve never even heard of a high school that was all done before Memorial Day, not in Illinois where I grew up nor in California where I live now. Seniors take their finals the week before everyone else so they can kick back and enjoy grad week activities when everyone else is taking finals, but that’s it. D will not be free until June 9 (though I bet she will skip a lot of those grad week activities if she can get away with it).
D gave me total access to her student portal – I only asked her to grant me access to the billing part of it so I could pay her housing bill, but she just went and checked all the boxes. Now I can see her grades and everything. She is someone who tends to put off or ignore those emails that say “you really need to take care of this boring administrative thing” so that is probably a good thing.
@dustypig, it’s sometimes called the “southern semester” (starting the academic year a bit earlier and thus ending earlier), due to it being quite widespread in the South. I would guess—though this is pure speculation on my part—that this is due to planting season mostly being earlier the further south you go.
I don’t know how in the world we ended up with it in Alaska, then, but so it goes…
D is back from Prom weekend - she had a blast and I’m glad I ultimately let her go down the shore for the weekend. Unfortunately, she was quite melancholy this morning. She’s borrowing grandma’s car this week, so I’m not sure if she’s nervous about that or just bummed out because it’s back to reality after a 3 day Prom fest. She claims it’s neither. I don’t know.
@srk2017 Congrats on the Gold medal!! That’s really awesome, and even more so since they put some decent $$ towards it!
Portal Access: No specific parent portal that I’m aware of, but of course, D could add me to the financial part of the portal with my own email and password. That said, I do have access to her email/password. A lot of information coming from the school right now with required paperwork, etc. I’m checking about once per week to make sure she isn’t missing deadlines. I just don’t know how they keep up. I keep stressing to D the importance of checking the email and actually reading the information - but that’s not really happening - this is NOT an email generation - and although I’m trying, I don’t feel my message is getting across that you need to be more detail oriented! I figure I’ll continue checking occasionally until she’s actually attending classes and at that point, she’ll have to keep up with it on her own.
@RightCoaster - the whole visa process, what a nightmare! I had to check every morning for two weeks straight just to get an appt at the French Consulate
@mageecrew I’m surprised parents would go that far - emailing in their kid’s name - they need to learn to advocate for themselves. I also had D set up her own nail, hair and makeup appointments and she managed it! Next is the Dentist 
Congrats to all of you with Grads already and successful grad parties! We are still a full month away. I’m still trying to plan the party - I did get some cool invites out in the mail though! Now I have to order food and decorations.
@youcee We got D a MacBookAir for Christmas and she absolutely loves it (after we’ve only had pc’s), but she’s not a Mech E major! https://turbofuture.com/computers/laptops-for-engineers-and-students
I mailed dd’s final transcript to USC yesterday. She has registered for classes. We will be filling out the immunization paperwork this week. Then, I think she is completely done with admission paperwork.
Graduation present: luggage.
Dorm purchases? Not much. Bedbug mattress cover for sure. My sister has been dealing with a bedbug problem. The source? Her 10 yr old was taking violin lessons at a local private college. The student taught the lessons in her dorm room and my sister would sit on the edge of the bed while waiting during the lesson. Apparently, she was carrying them home with her! Yuck, yuck, yuck. And my goodness. The effort it takes to get rid of them is crazy stressful. (Sad irony…she chose this student bc the lessons were cheap. Cost to get rid of bed bugs? $2500.)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Bedbug mattress cover! I didn’t even know that existed and now I feel the need to purchase one immediately! Yuck!!!
^^ some of those are crunchy and sweaty. If you buy one, do some research. A lot of the mattresses for dorms are already just plastic covered springs, anyway, so you’re not looking at the gross issues that fabric mattresses have.
Definitely order a terry cloth one and not vinyl.
Helpful article @Fishnlines29. Looks like DS did a great job choosing a machine that meets his needs, no big surprise there. Just wondering if he considered the advantages of a touch screen/stylus. :-/
On the bed bug topic…
So I read all about this three years ago and bought everything, only to arrive at school and discover that the mattress was no more than what looked like a vinyl-covered seat cushion, in XL twin size! Nonetheless, I covered it in the bed bug protector, and then layered on the three inch memory foam mattress pad, and topped that off with a regular quilted mattress pad. Son texted me the first time he washed his sheets, asking which pieces had to be removed!
I did not know that terry cloth bed bug protectors existed. Will probably just reuse older son’s set-up since his apt has a double bed now, and I had to buy all three components in double size last year!
If you have a memory foam mattress pad would it matter what type of bed bug protector you have?
@Dolemite – It did not in my case, if you read my description of the three layers! Certainly overkill.
In case the link does not open, here is her first bullet point:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jd-rothman/college-essentials_b_1708668.html