Monday, April 04, 2005
Atrios' best idea EVER
I'd pay $50 for a Fox Fuckup of the Day segment. Crazy, Untrue Shit People Are Hearing on Radio would be priceless.
Moment of Brian Eno Zen
"The advantage the popular arts have is that they are not ideologically proud."
Oh, the vanities of ideological pride and the damage done.
[Stolen from Boing Boing]: A link to the 10-year-old interview from which this [quotation] was snipped. (via Warren Ellis)
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Aaaaarrrrggghh!
Okay, I think I've had quite enough of this. I'm getting frustrated. Hitting the bottle hard frustrated. Smoking again frustrated. Running around naked screaming in the Wal-Mart parking lot frustrated.
First there were the computer problems: Right before the semester started, my desktop computer decided it was time to succumb to the trials and arrows of time, static and living with me. And succame1 it did.
"No problem," I thought. "I have this supercool laptop that weighs a ton, but has a desktop processor and a gigabyte of RAM. I can survive the semester from Hell2"
If you listened close (and believed in such things), you could hear God chuckling mordantly.
So I set up the big laptop (more on the little laptop later) as the main machine, complete with USB-hub-and-device spiderweb and ergonomically correct keyboard and trackball. Hell, I even got the thing a riser so I wouldn't turn into Quasimodo trying to read a screen that seems to be at around knee level.
And I discovered something: Laptops, and certainly those that cram superhot desktop chips into their carcasses to get around the limitations of mobile chips (which, it turns out, have those limitations for very good reason), don't do well as the sole computer in a computing environment like mine: always on, always doing something. Other shortcomings directly related to my project, my reasearch and my classes soon showed. It couldn't run database applications at anything other than a glacial crawl. It didn't play nice with some of my peripherals. It took four times to install the printer software for my laser (I'm still not sure what, if anything distiguished the fourth time from any of the others). Then the main keyboard started having problems, like the escape key turning itself on for minutes at a time, or the alt key not working at all. I decided I could do without keyboard shortcuts for a while.
During this time, I was in negotiations with the VA for a replacement desktop. I set the bar pretty high: Athlon 64, lots of ram, lots of hard drive space; but I had my reasons, mostly that I was going to have to do six months worth of database and statistical work in two. Finally, I said to Hell with it and ordered the parts on my own. Hopefully the VA'll pay me back.
Everything came in. The boot drive was damaged, so I decided to do without until I could get it replaced. Then one of the two IDE PATA (for hard disk and optical drives) slots doesn't work. This can't be bourn, and I send the motherboard and drive back, and now I have a pretty case filled with parts. (The good news is, they're sending my boot drive today; the bad news is that without a motherboard it's just another part in the box; cue Pink Floyd.)
"Still," I thought, "I can get a lot done on the big laptop while I wait."
Then the AC adapter went out.
This leaves me with the little laptop, one that my dad got me in 1999 and that had been relegated to my daughter to run Winnie the Pooh Teaches Sex Education and other fine programs. Now it's in my office and it can't even handle running my Web browser and word processor at the same time. So I'm screwed, computationally speaking, until NewEgg gets me a motherboard.
So, that's the computer saga.
Then, today as I was answering nature's call and reading one of the several magazines that have been piling up in the last few months, I leaned to one side to begin the cleansing ritual. There was a loud pop and the toilet lurched to the left; if I hadn't been hemmed in by walls barely far enough apart to fit my shoulders, I'd have been spilled onto my face with the toilet following after.
Now, I have trouble with procrastination anyway; I like to say that I do my best work surrounded by the stench of absolute terror and the bracing effects of a shitload of stress. But I can resist the urge to become an amateur plumber3 enough to get some of my other work done. Often it takes an odious (pun? what pun?) task outside of my main responsibilities to get me to work on them. So off I go.
1 I know this is wrong, and in fact when my friend Asya told me about the rapper who decided this word was the best way to flaunt his vocabulary, I laughed myself silly. But I digest.
2 Perhaps nine graduate-level hours isn't hell for you, but it's certainly kicking my butt.
3 I do have a natural advantage here, having suffered from plumber's butt for many years.
First there were the computer problems: Right before the semester started, my desktop computer decided it was time to succumb to the trials and arrows of time, static and living with me. And succame1 it did.
"No problem," I thought. "I have this supercool laptop that weighs a ton, but has a desktop processor and a gigabyte of RAM. I can survive the semester from Hell2"
If you listened close (and believed in such things), you could hear God chuckling mordantly.
So I set up the big laptop (more on the little laptop later) as the main machine, complete with USB-hub-and-device spiderweb and ergonomically correct keyboard and trackball. Hell, I even got the thing a riser so I wouldn't turn into Quasimodo trying to read a screen that seems to be at around knee level.
And I discovered something: Laptops, and certainly those that cram superhot desktop chips into their carcasses to get around the limitations of mobile chips (which, it turns out, have those limitations for very good reason), don't do well as the sole computer in a computing environment like mine: always on, always doing something. Other shortcomings directly related to my project, my reasearch and my classes soon showed. It couldn't run database applications at anything other than a glacial crawl. It didn't play nice with some of my peripherals. It took four times to install the printer software for my laser (I'm still not sure what, if anything distiguished the fourth time from any of the others). Then the main keyboard started having problems, like the escape key turning itself on for minutes at a time, or the alt key not working at all. I decided I could do without keyboard shortcuts for a while.
During this time, I was in negotiations with the VA for a replacement desktop. I set the bar pretty high: Athlon 64, lots of ram, lots of hard drive space; but I had my reasons, mostly that I was going to have to do six months worth of database and statistical work in two. Finally, I said to Hell with it and ordered the parts on my own. Hopefully the VA'll pay me back.
Everything came in. The boot drive was damaged, so I decided to do without until I could get it replaced. Then one of the two IDE PATA (for hard disk and optical drives) slots doesn't work. This can't be bourn, and I send the motherboard and drive back, and now I have a pretty case filled with parts. (The good news is, they're sending my boot drive today; the bad news is that without a motherboard it's just another part in the box; cue Pink Floyd.)
"Still," I thought, "I can get a lot done on the big laptop while I wait."
Then the AC adapter went out.
This leaves me with the little laptop, one that my dad got me in 1999 and that had been relegated to my daughter to run Winnie the Pooh Teaches Sex Education and other fine programs. Now it's in my office and it can't even handle running my Web browser and word processor at the same time. So I'm screwed, computationally speaking, until NewEgg gets me a motherboard.
So, that's the computer saga.
Then, today as I was answering nature's call and reading one of the several magazines that have been piling up in the last few months, I leaned to one side to begin the cleansing ritual. There was a loud pop and the toilet lurched to the left; if I hadn't been hemmed in by walls barely far enough apart to fit my shoulders, I'd have been spilled onto my face with the toilet following after.
Now, I have trouble with procrastination anyway; I like to say that I do my best work surrounded by the stench of absolute terror and the bracing effects of a shitload of stress. But I can resist the urge to become an amateur plumber3 enough to get some of my other work done. Often it takes an odious (pun? what pun?) task outside of my main responsibilities to get me to work on them. So off I go.
1 I know this is wrong, and in fact when my friend Asya told me about the rapper who decided this word was the best way to flaunt his vocabulary, I laughed myself silly. But I digest.
2 Perhaps nine graduate-level hours isn't hell for you, but it's certainly kicking my butt.
3 I do have a natural advantage here, having suffered from plumber's butt for many years.
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