Traditional Xmas Pine Smoke

Bushfire Season in Melborg. The sun hangs red in the sky, the air is smoky and muggy, there's an orange light cast over everything, and my hair reeks of wood smoke.

The heat seems to be affecting my ability to sleep through the day too. Hoping that isn't really the case.
I might need to up the 'B' vitamins because I've spent serious sleep time lately worrying about things that proved to be of no consequence. I spent some time at the doc's last week, but fortunately only my credit card was unhealthy. Having bumped the one thing off the list that could potentially have been worth worrying about, I moved on to 'did I get people presents they wanted'? 'Did I send the boxes to the right addresses'? (Possible as I didn't *triple check* the shipping labels. I'll take photos next time.)
Now that I've confirmed *that* stuff is okay (the parcels arrived via rocket camel) I've moved on to really inconsequential stuff, the day to day paranoias. I forget that I live and work with fairly reasonable people, and I start taking all kinds of things the wrong way, and start extrapolating wild alternate realities where Everything Goes Wrong and I Can Do Nothing Right. For example, the english language and I usually have a pretty good relationship, but there will be this horrible lurking fear that what I though was concise and well-written, is crappy and incomprehensible, and that I'm just lucky nobody's realized it yet. (With the corrollary that in fact, nobody at work really reads what I write. Hmph).

It's the weekend tomorrow, though. All I have to do is finish this week and it's off to Virtual Xmas (working on the 25th), Wii sports and WarCrack.

So, I'm not tone deaf

Go figure. I always assumed I had tin ears. I can't hear the mosquito ring tone, I assumed my pitch perception was just as crappy.
FWIW, it doesn't seem to be an Internet Inflated Test (See : any IQ test on the internet). Plenty of people scored lower than I did.
It's not a *useful* skill, but it was a surprise.

DeadPod

My MacBook Pro is back, with a fresh new logic board. If Temperature monitor isn't lying to me, the main CPU temperature diode sits at about 57 degrees C in normal use. The whine is pretty much gone, I hear it extremely faintly on AC sometimes.

So that meant it was time for my iPod to sign off. I can't blame the battery upgrade for this. There was some hard drive clicking and abrupt disconnecting from my computer that I'd actually put down to the battery. So when I replaced the battery, I'd expected my iPod to just behave and not unmount itself.
It started unmounting itself after a few seconds today, and I heard the iPod hdd frantically clicking. I pulled the iPod open again and checked the IDE connector and battery connectors, but to no avail. I guess using the iPod for only a couple of hours a day (all the battery would hold) had held back its demise, but since I'd started USING it again it couldn't keep up. The hard drive controller is toast. It's an ex-Pod.

As an interim measure I've bought an iPod shuffle. If I'd realised I was getting *one* playlist I might have sprung for a Nano. It's charging though, and I look forward to using it.
One reason I didn't get a Nano was that the Nano gets the best accessories, and my stop-gap solution plus add-ons would really quickly start heading for the full price of a 5.5 Video iPod anyway. I'm not fussed on the Video iPods, the video functionality feels a bit hacky. I was waiting for the 6G, that hasn't changed.

Crazzy Go Nuts on Graveyard Shift

I've been without my laptop since Wednesday. Doesn't feel like the two full days it has been - these shifts are a blessing in disguise I guess.
*Twitch* *twitch*

Mac-less

I send my MacBook Pro in for service for its Rev A issues . Hopefully it comes back de-whined, with a new MLB and accompanying thermal grease. *Crossing Fingers*.
So Dave's old Pentium II has been pressed into service, running Ubuntu. I *highly* recommend Fluxbox for older hardware, and Automatix2. And Gkrellm so you know why you're waiting. Yay, computing 90's style.
At least I can watch DVDs and web surf.

iPod surgery

I just replaced the battery in my 3G iPod. The patient has a scar, as I started cracking open the case with a metal screwdriver as the supplied iPod prysticks were just bending under pressure. When you start opening the case you have no idea how much force it will take to get the back off, so I misjudged and the screwdriver skidded off and gouged the metal case. But it's a battle-scarred iPod anyway. Only the first scratch matters :). Ask my MacBook Pro.

So a burkha is a whiskas bag?

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,20647626-948,00.html

Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly makes the argument that men, in his own community, and probably outside it, are no smarter than tomcats. Like stray cats, it's probably much too difficult to train them otherwise after years of reinforcement by their communities and men like the Sheik himself.
If you are a meat product (veal, chicken, steak, woman - though pork is probably safe) and traditional Muslim dress is not available, foil or cling wrap would work pretty well in a pinch to prevent sexual assault (and would hold in freshness).
Also, we quite often euthanaize stray cats, and few would be terribly sorry to see it happen to rapists as well, Muslim or otherwise.

C0rruPti0n

I really have no explanation for this. My MacBook Pro froze up on me, posted below is what I found in system.log after a reboot. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I've pretended those kernel panics didn't happen. And as for that occasional video corruption - who isn't a bit confused when they first wake up? The whining I could ignore.

And the TmOP errors I got with the hardware test after that time Deus Ex crashed on me... well, it might have been overworked.

Ok, I really didn't want to bring it in to get fixed. What if it comes back scratched, whinier, or boomerang shaped? But I can't put it off any longer.

Oct 18 11:54:14 Caffeine /Applications/smcfancontrol_1_1/smcFanControl.app/Contents/MacOS/FanControl: removeDisplayMapping: _CGSUnmapFramebuffer returns -536870206 Oct 18 11:54:14 Caffeine /Applications/Adium.app/Contents/MacOS/Adium: removeDisplayMapping: _CGSUnmapFramebuffer returns -536870206 Oct 18 11:54:14 Caffeine /System/Library/CoreServices/rcd.app/Contents/MacOS/rcd: removeDisplayMapping: _CGSUnmapFramebuffer returns -536870206 Oct 18 11:54:14 Caffeine FrontRow[1471]: removeDisplayMapping: _CGSUnmapFramebuffer returns -536870206 Oct 18 11:54:20 Caffeine loginwindow[93]: removeDisplayMapping: _CGSUnmapFramebuffer returns -536870206 Oct 18 11:54:20 Caffeine loginwindow[93]: removeDisplayMapping: _CGSUnmapFramebuffer returns -536870206 Oct 18 12:20:17 Caffeine /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine: CGContextSetFillColorWithColor: invalid context Oct 18 12:20:17 Caffeine /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine: CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor: invalid context Oct 18 12:20:18 Caffeine /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine: CGContextSetFillColorWithColor: invalid context Oct 18 12:20:18 Caffeine /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine: CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor: invalid context ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@

(It does this for a while. I had to cut it out because it breaks the formatting on my blog. Below is the log as the machine then reboots......)

Oct 18 14:01:38 localhost kernel[0]: hi mem tramps at 0xffe00000 Oct 18 14:01:38 localhost kernel[0]: PAE enabled Oct 18 14:01:38 localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us Oct 18 14:01:38 localhost kernel[0]: vm_page_bootstrap: 254336 free pages Oct 18 14:01:38 localhost kernel[0]: mig_table_max_displ = 71 Oct 18 14:01:38 localhost kernel[0]: Enabling XMM register save/restore and SSE/SSE2 opcodes Oct 18 14:01:38 localhost kernel[0]: 106 prelinked modules 54%

Writing With a Scalpel #2

I'm trying to cut out sluggish exposition. This means I write the version where everybody explains things first, then I hack the action and dialogue down to the what audience should be able to understand by inference.
Also, House gets away with a one-scene introduction because people have no problem believing in hospitals, doctors, or jerks.
I went back and watched pilots for genre shows, and the first episode is always thick with awkward exposition. In fact mid-arc episodes can also be thick with exposition.
(It seems the most important rule of diplomacy on Babylon 5 is not to start mentally re-organizing your wardrobe when anybody starts a sentence like - 'On *my* homeworld.....'
This goes double for Sheridan. )

Writing With A Scalpel

I'm doing some serious writing at the moment... and the gears are very, very rusty. I've also discovered that some ideas don't come out without a lot of writing to dislodge them.
Basically, I need my stuff there on paper so I can understand exactly how crap it is, and how it would be better if character y didn't do z.
And then the ideas come.
I can remember being able to dump whole stories out of my brain and onto paper but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
So these days its braindump to notebook (paper, the visceral thing seems to help. Also, unlike my laptop, if it got stolen I'd feel sorry for the recipient). Then scalpel it until the redundancy is excised.

I'm re-watching the House pilot because there are things I can learn from it. If you watch the first scene featuring House himself (along with Wilson), you learn pretty much everything you need to know about the character. You can make a list, and then check it off as you go through that first scene.
Then, just in case you missed that he was *smart*, the Scoobies re-iterate that he is smart in *their* first scene.
That sort of economy looks like genius when you've re-written your opening scenes several times over and the dialogue is *still* stilted.

Housecleaning

We looked at a unit in the city. We expressed interest in the unit. We toasted the buying of the unit. I started mentally decorating the unit. Then we did the math with a mortgage broker, and realised that we could not buy the unit without our wallet getting reamed *severely* (sans KY). We mourned the loss of the unit. That was just this last weekend.

So I'm stuck with my ridiculous commute. I'm heartily sick of it and I hope we move soon. We can afford to pay more for rent, and it's about damn time we moved to a better flat. As it is, today the hotplate on the (40s?) stove died. As if certain people who get at least 3 hours a day more rest at home than I do need a hint that Its Time To Move, there's another one.
The thermometer rising is another clue that we need to leave. Very soon, our drafty little box is going to become a stuffy little box, and I need to sleep through the day sometimes.

Moving is not negotiable.

I've been continuing the process of de-cluttering my life. The first of a few bags of too-large clothing have gone to charity. Not cheap, and they haven't all been replaced yet, but they were just taking up space.

Ouch

D and I are back from our holiday. I had an extra stop in Darwin to see my family. 
I've just recovered from what I can only describe as Tropical Bowel. While medication set me right for the duration of the 4 hour flight back, the joints and muscles that were cramped up in my little space on a Virgin Blue flight are all complaining VERY loudly today. Ow. Ow. Ow.
Guess I'm getting old.... or perhaps just too old to fly economy. 
This rubbish plastic student swivel-chair thing that I'm sitting on is going to be replaced very soon, by something well-padded with arm rests. 
Back to work tomorrow.  

Armageddon

Thankyou Daily Show, for your entertaining education on how the US is Different. Oh my goodness.



And in the same vein, here's Colbert. Laugh or you'll cry.

A series of tubes

I have the Festy Throat Virus this week, yesterday was spent mostly asleep, too listless to even push my Night Elf around Ashenvale. I need to kill more things. But not until the weekend. Pushing around a mouse is hard work today.

 

Apple sent over a replacement battery for my one that has been recalled. The old one seemed fine, but having said that I full expect to get home and find its gone Pufferfishy. Now I just need to get the logic board swapped for one less hot and whiny.

 

 

 

Updates

Today's Earworm- In A Dark Place, Gary Numan

Dave has clocked in a year sans egregious carbs, losing 60kgs.
Despite occasional spills off the wagon, the 20-ish that I ditched haven't found me again yet.... now I'm picturing the action scenes from Terminator 2, starring me running away from a giant cherry danish.
In my case, being a big weirdo was invaluable in pursuing a diet divergent from the sammich-and-timtam stuff everybody else gets away with eating. I'm a mac-using, Linux-using, female IT monkey. I'm my whole peer group. It makes my life very easy. While the women I work with (correction, in the same building as) are all compelled to buy the same pair of shoes from different vendors, seeking an ideal distillation of bootyness and pointyness, I'm in sneakers. Not hard to apply the same principles to food, especially when you're working the same hours as Angel Investigations.

In other news, Apple released a bluetooth Mighty Mouse. I think I'll go a Logitech v270 though, at $70-ish vs Apple's $109.

I wonder if I can dispose of my old Apple BT Mouse on EBay? There have got to be people out there who are frightened of this brave new world of multiple mouse click options.

Bags

After work on Saturday I stomped up and down Glenferrie Rd looking for a new laptop bag. I had a small Crumpler laptop backpack (Sheep Scarer) that I'd been really happy with. It can't hold a MacBook Pro though, so new bag shopping I went.
My first choice was a bigger Crumpler but as those are...not cheap... I wanted to give other bags a shot. The STM backpacks had a nice velour-lined lappy slot. I saw some other bags in the adventure gear shops.
The best camoflaged bag I saw was a Caribee Campus 30. 60 bucks and *nobody* is knocking that off looking for a laptop.  
In the end though, after seeing many many bags, I still picked the arguably overpriced Crumpler bag, a King Single backpack in Loud Red. It'll look better with some road grime (Crumplers tend to). 
It has a laptop slot, no dividers other than the fully covered lappy compartment, which actually makes for more capacity in the bag. The pockets on the front can easily hold the nalgene flask I also bought (water's important for low-carbers). 
I liked the older style backpack I had more (the Team Player was the next size up, I think?). The color of the lining on the new bag is buff, I'm not sure about that with red. The older bag has robin's egg blue lining, and matches the phone holder I just transplanted to the new bag. These sorts of things aren't dealbreakers though and having slept on it, I felt I'd made the right decision. 
These bags are cute though - www.bumbakpaks.com. If these were available, they would have made my short list! The shoulderstrap to backpack strap thing is clever! 

Lois *does* know. Ok?

Today's Earworm- Infa-Red, Placebo

After reading a whole lotta debate on the interwebs about Superman Returns, can I state for some people who missed it, Lois Lane *does* know who Jason's father is, she does remember sleeping with Supes, and *she does remember who Clark Kent is*. Mmkay?

It might seem a stretch, but bear with me here. It works in a universe where Supe's super-rohypnol wears off after a period of time, especially when Lois starts putting things together about the time period Superman II takes place in. She's not supposed to be an idiot. She might not remember everything, but she'd haved pieced together enough.

She ignores Clark at the office, much as how you'd ignore an ex. Things are predictably awkward. She can't ignore Superman (as in the plane).
She gets very little screen time with Clark so the audience isn't given much information to work with, but it's there if you look. She unloads on Clark in the taxi scene about him taking off on her. She doesn't want to work with Clark.

Just before she flies with Superman, she mentions that Clark told her that Supes didn't say goodbye because it hurt too much, she feels it's a load of crap. It might look like she doesn't know Clark = Supes, but look closer. I think she knows, but she realises that Supes probably still thinks she's mindwiped. She's giving him a shot at explaining himself. He blows it by pretending he doesn't know Clark (I'll have to see if in the original 2 films its established that he does know who Clark is, as one of his 'pals'. I think that it is). She plays along ("so, same old Clark!").

She's playing along with the whole 'secret identity' mess because she has a vested interest in keeping his identity secret, and also she might be waiting to see if he explains himself. She's testing him, to see if she can trust him.
Also, this is a big can of worms to open with her fiance nearby. She has no time during the course of the movie to bail him up and get the truth out of him.

There's a couple more hints that I can think off the top of my head. There's the glasses thing where she drops her bag, and brusqely hands Clark back his glasses without even looking at him. She knew what she was going to see. Also when her fiance connects the dots between Clark and Superman's return, who is it that deflects this line of inquiry? Lois.

There's a final subtle hint from Lex. "Superman can tell when people lie. Especially women." Lex is always wrong about Superman. Supes sure as hell didn't know she was lying about Jason's parentage, or that she didn't remember. It's a throwaway line, but considering the cuts to this movie, that line was there for a reason.

I know that all of that seems a stretch, but its a small one. I don't have any problem with the timing of the pregnancy. She's a busy woman, she might not have realised she'd missed her period for a couple of months. Things had ended abruptly with Superman, and then she took up with her fiance, possibly partially as a rebound. He might even have been lurking around the Daily Planet before Clark was, Lois only 'noticed' him when she was emotionally needy. Doesn't matter if she remembered or not at this point, she probably felt lonely regardless.

At the end of the movie, how could Lois not be incredibly, *blazing fire of a million suns* angry with Supes for knocking her up, if she had no pre-knowledge of their tryst? And if she remembers that, she'd have pieced together the stuff about Clark too.

I like the idea of Supes trying to relieve her of the pain of the breakup in SII, but in reality not handling it too well himself, and then leaving to try to find the truth of himself in the ashes of Krypton. Sure beats that stuff he was doing in the sequels where he kisses Lois to restore her memory when *he* needs some love, then promptly roofies her again to erase her memory. *That's* some high Superdickery.

Turning off SMP on a single app or game

Legacy games running BootCamp on a MacBook Pro (or any dual core processor) can sometimes crash, because they don't support multiprocessing. Two that I know of -
- System Shock 2
- Deus Ex 2

Neither of those games are getting multiprocessor updates anytime soon.

Deus Ex 2, for example, will sputter and sound-loop on the title screen. I've seen some crappy workarounds, but here's one that works.
1) Get a copy of imagecfg.exe . This tool lives in one of the Windows resource kits. There are places you can get it on its own, Google away.

2) Make a backup of your main game executable. I.e. I made a copy of DX2Main.exe that was called DX2Main.exe.backup

3) run imagecfg -u c:\Your game path\your game.exe
This sets the executable to have an 'affinity' with CPU 0, that is, it will run on one core.

And that's it, your game will run without you having to alt-tab, view processes, and set the CPU affinity every time the game runs (it was getting very old on DX2), or any other mullarkey.

Hope this helps any fellow retrogamers out there.
Now as for getting Shock 2 running on XP at all.. lets say there's a FAQ. A long one over at http://www.ttlg.com/forums/.

MacBook Pro Observations

Ok. Here's a bunch of MacBook Pro observations, in no particular order.

-- The MBP has a DVD drive that is very picky about Region codes. My iBook would play any DVD with VLC, my MBP will not. The DVD will just fail to play in VLC without a warning. Region 4 DVDs will play without a hitch (I'm in Australia).
Region 1 DVDs (I tested it with 'Primer') will play fine in an external drive.

-- Speedit v0.5 (http://www.increw.com/products/speedit/screen_shots.html) makes my Mac seize up periodically. The previous version works fine though for getting CPU temps.

-- Shutting off the keyboard backlight conserves battery.

-- On batteries, the calibration process is very different to previous Macs, read your manual.

-- If you install BootCamp, check your System Preferences for what your 'Startup Drive' is set to. If it hasn't got a default setting, your machine boots *Windows* by default. Yes, really.

-- If the above applies, or your machine is set to boot Windows, Safe Sleep *will not work for you*. You'll just find yourself back in Windows when you boot up after replacing your battery.

-- I discovered the above when I tested Safe Sleep after installing Boot Camp. Don't kid yourselves, Boot Camp is still Beta.

-- When idling, my machine will do about 30C to 40C above ambient. It will ratchet to 90C under full load, then fall back to the low to mid 80s as the fans kick in. This is warm, but it looks like the thermal system actually does work. I think it needs to be more aggressive though. a PrefPane setting ('Louder + cooler' vs 'quieter and hotter') would be nice.

-- I'm tempted to try to address the above issue with a 6 pack of beer, a tube of Arctic Silver 5, and an Apple Certified Tech.

-- I'll probably just wait for a firmware update though.

-- And I hope its out before Summer.

-- The MBP doesn't get too hot for lap use, but then again it is sitting on a foofbag normally. WoW is quite good even on powersaving settings.

Fruit Fly

7pm - Checked Startrack. No change

9pm - 7pm - Checked Startrack. No change

10pm - Refreshed Stratrack page. No change

11pm - My foofpod will be here tomorrow, but no change on Startrack.

Yeah I know. My MBP will *get* here when it *gets* here. Like tomorrow.

12am - Going home to clean house for inspection this week. Startrack still says 'Scanned in transit'

Downhill slide

I got the funds together for a long-awaited, discounted, Shinybook Pro.
The bank, however, had other ideas, and for my own protection decided not to clear the funds today.
The Shinybooks have of course, sold out.

I think this is going to be one of those weeks where I just get kicked in the head, repeatedly.

If I had the option I don't think I'd leave the house.

Update : the machines I was referring to are new old-stock MacBook Pros, at a fairly ridiculous price. Those sold out very quickly, of course. There were still refurbs of the same spec on the website today when my funds cleared, so I went for one of those.
I'm optimistic this will be fine.

It cost the same as my iBook G4 when new.

XMen 3

Verdict... *sigh*.

I know you have to make changes to make a genre work hang together on the big screen, but excising its soul is a Bad Thing.

I was happy enough with the explanation for Phoenix, but you've got this powerful being who is composed of rage and passion sitting about, and standing there looking morose, and occasionally, absently killing things with her mind. She should have been the emotional core of the film, but she wasn't, because she was played like a zombie (everyone else bored with depictions of 'possesion' in genre films? Yup) and because they lost a great opportunity when they *spoilered* *spoiler*.
And they also have her kill *spoiler*. Who really is the soul of the films, I guess, but if there'd been more emotional payoff or something I could have dealt with that, because various writers have *spoilered* *spoiler* over the years and it hasn't stuck yet.


Sigh.


At least Hugh Jackman was relatively impervious. His Wolverine is still pretty good. I liked the new additions like Beast, Angel and Shadowcat. (I think I saw Psylocke but she sort of blended into the BrotherHood Of Angry Goff Mutants).

Its not a complete waste of time, but it's not up to the previous two.

ValleySchwag On The Way

Waiting on your ValleySchwag? Not to worry! The guys and girls at Ruby Red labs are on it.


The vid is in response to "Alterion"'s post here.

Hehehe very funny response. I love teh Internets!

(Yes, I subscribed. I got tired of hearing about Conference X and the Conference X shwag via podcasts and blogs, and feeling left out because my great-great-great(etc) grandparents emigrated to the wrong colony).

It has a great personality

After (well after) the initial buzz, here's my thoughts on the MBP's baby brother, the MacBook.

I'm in the market for a replacement for my rock-solid but ageing iBook G4 800. It's held out this long because the RAM is maxed out. Its not a good games machine though, no Quartz special effects, and the hard drive is small and hard to extricate. So after the Intel switch, its time for an upgrade.

After seeing the MacBook in real life (http://www.mymac.com.au), it definitely more resembles the 14" iBook than the 12". I was tempted to take a picture of it next to my iBook but fortunately Ars Technica did it for me.
The MacBook is no lightweight.


(From http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook.ars )

It's bigger than I expected. One of my criteria for choosing a new laptop, between the MacBook and MacBook Pro, was whether I would need a new bag for it or not, as I really like the Crumpler Sheep Scarer backpack I currently use. But even with the extra inch or so clearance in that backpack, the MacBook likely wouldn't fit.
So if I end up buying a new bag either way, I may as well get the MacBook Pro. At 15.4", the MBP is in real life, not that much bigger, and not much heavier.

Another concern is gaming performance. I'm no ubergamer but I like WarCrack and Sims 2. Now according to my research (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-mac-tech-support&T=24746&P=1 among others) the MacBook gets about 15 fps. My iBook gets 15 fps. This is not a win for me. So that's a point for the MacBook Pro, underclocked GPU and all (and I suspect that issue will be addressed next rev).

In every other respect though the MacBook blows the doors off my current laptop. It gives the MacBook Pro a run for its money too. I so wish it had a real GPU. But it doesn't, so to MacBook Pro I'll go.

I'm going to buy whatever MacBook Pro is available after the WWDC keynote in early August. My budget says I can afford one in July, but I'd hate to buy one and then for there to be a Merom-based MBP a couple of weeks later, so I'm holding out. And I'm not feeling so bad about hanging onto my iBook until then, because Apple don't make compact notebooks like that anymore.


The other thing I did recently was dip my (healed) toe in Media Center computers. I started with http://geexbox.org/en/index.html , which is nice but with a few rough edges. I'd like an installable version of this so I can at least save some settings, like DVD playback mode (menus please).

I then installed KnoppMyth but I don't need most of the features, and I haven't been able to get the DVD drive working with it yet. I just want a DVD and media-file playing setup. This was prompted by our Xbox crapping out on DVD playback (I think it's trying to say it's time for a 360, but we're not interested).

Brack Toe!

Brack Toe!
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Yes, this is the most interesting thing that happened to me this week. I don't think its actually broken, but its a bit disconcerting that all the bruising is around the joint and not the point of impact (end of toe vs metal escalator step, with rapid deceleration).
Can't bend it. Well, good excuse for wearing sneakers during business hours next week...

Fruity Boots

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

Dear Apple, this is why you are Shiny. Great 'birthday' present. Windows without the EFI twiddling. Probably wouldn't be much of a hack to boot Linux in the same way.

P.S. Please release a 12" or 13" MBP or MacBook without a castrated graphics card. Please.

You know you're adjusting to shiftwork when...

-You set your Casio watch to run in dual-time mode so you know roughly what time in your work 'day' it is, and what you should be doing then... It's about Virtual Lunchtime for me now. I'm not hungry though so I don't know what I should be doing.

-You create a character on the US-based WoW servers so you have someone to play with.

-You start looking for live webcams in 'your' timezone, to remind yourself that it is, in fact, actually afternoon somewhere, just not exactly here.

-You lose touch with your day-shift workmates... the ones in the *same* building.

-You don't know what meal you should eat when... breakfast at the end of the 'day' feels wrong. And what do you eat in the middle? Does that meal have a name?

-You feel you've comfortably determined which girls in the phone sex ads are in fact transvestites or similar.

-You start refering to your SO as a 'Daywalker'

-You actually secretly or not so secretly appreciate the quiet and the time to yourself.

-You suddenly have a lot of time to write or study .... except you find yourself blogging instead because your brain won't make it out of first gear.

Yeah I've started shiftwork as part of my Shiny New Job. Its not completely horrible for a Night Owl like myself (and lets just say absence has made things... sparkier... between D and myself).

April Fools!

april1
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

My thoughts turn again to Cupertino... it's quiet. Too quiet.

Transaction Complete

Transaction Complete
Originally uploaded by analog_chainsaw.

*Look* how happy this man is. I want to be that happy, dammit.

Not wild about Larry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Cyclone_Larry

Sparing a thought today for the friends and family around Cairns who
will be
losing roofs and the like. I've heard of two lost roller doors and a
skylight so far and this is in town, not even getting the brunt of the
storm.
A lot of people have lost power, there's been evacuations, and it's not
over
yet...

Goodbyeeeeee

Have you seen those irritating flash ads with the talking smileys?  Well, more likely you've heard them bellow out 'Hellooooo' ,after being loaded as the banner ad on a normally pleasantly *silent* web page.
Having reassured myself that my computer was not, in fact, emulating the one from Electric Dreams (I'm old, so there), I loaded Adblock into Firefox... specifically for this ad.  RIP, f**king smilies.  +1 nomination for Most Annoying Flash Ad ever. 
Yes, I've seen the crazy frog ones. 

Changing gears on the weekend

I've caught up with some much needed sleep, come up with strategies for dealing with the new challenges of my job, and importantly, I've pencilled (iCal'ed?) some time in today to work on the webcomic.
Most things are either archived in VoodooPad or my sketchbooks, I'm going through those at present and getting a grip on where things are. You tend to know your characters pretty well but I need to pick up all the threads of plot I've written down but not woven in yet.

If I get some time after that (I'm on dinner duty tonight) I've got a Cisco PIX manual to read over. Which is easier when you've had enough sleep and your eyes focus. I think I need new glasses though, my eye fatigue plus these current glasses are giving me this weird sort of tunnel vision where I don't see and note things in the immediate periphery of the small area I'm focused on, in emails and stuff.

Maybe I need bigger frames as well. I definitely need some distance vision assistance for reading projectors and stuff.  

New Mac Mini, integrated graphics

Hmmm, I dunno. Intel Integrated GMA950 ? I just hope thats not what ends up in the MacBook, though the Mini and the iBook ran very similar hardware previously. 
And the Hifi box, I've seen better. And cheaper. This event rates a big 'meh' from me.

MacBook P0rn

Oh hell YES.

I really, really want one of these babies. But unless I can somehow make it pay for itself, I can't afford one. *deep sigh*

I've adjusted my expectations, and my next laptop will be a iMacBook 13", or whatever the next iBook equivalent will be (I wouldn't mess with 'iBook' as a name, but it'll probably get Steved). Even the 13" MacBook Pro, should the make such a creature. In fact please do, it will probably fit in my existing (and much-loved) laptop backpack.

Spreading stupid

So in my final weeks of tech support, front-line sh*t-filtering tech support, I’ve had phone calls from some characters of amazing density. I mean ‘IT Managers’ who need step by step guides *with pictures* to do routine tasks. It’s a stupidity so refined and intense that I’d have no problem using Balefire on them, I mean if I went far enough back and wiped out their ancestors too, I’d probably prevent the low-fat diet craze, the RIAA, and ‘Dancing with the Stars’. (Yes, they probably are getting paid more than me. Why do you ask?)

And that’s a couple of generations ago, with the reading writing and ‘rithmetic. I probably won’t retire in time to avoid dealing with the next generation’s ‘business leaders’.

Retrocomputing

Feeling the need for a PDA, I dragged my Palm iiic out of mothballs. I bought it a USB adapter and dug some OSX drivers up from an obscure but *thorough* Taiwanese manufacturer’s site (Linux drivers too. Warm fuzzies) . I hooked it up to my iBook.

 

The Palm desktop is set up and works like a charm. iSync talks to the Palm and my muuuuch newer phone. Avantgo is up and running via a third party conduit. Mail.app won’t sync and crashes but I think that may have more to do with my colossal email archives than the plugin.

 

 They really don’t make stuff like the Palm iiic anymore. The battery is still fine after lying in a drawer for a couple of years. The UI is fast and straightforward. Theoretically I could have used my phone as a PDA but the interface is awkward and the software is slightly sluggy.

 

I really think Palm peaked with the Palm V and the iiic, I see a lot of them around still. The Treos that periodically emit their peeping alarms around our office, really don’t compel me to upgrade.  The news that Palm are moving to a Linux OS sounds really interesting though, I’ll keep an eye on that development. Palm might get interesting again.

 

 

Not all together..

Having trouble getting going this morning. Its another birthday (yay, I’m not dead!) . So far scored a few things, like the Serenity DVD (better the second time around).  Instead of having a nice relaxing unemployed day today I’m off to $other things, but it’s still 2 weeks until I get to transfer out of here. (I checked out, but I didn’t leave).

 

 

 

Clan HoldTheFries

Today’s Earworm – ‘Queen Of The World’, Tina Cousins

 

Thinking of starting a WoW clan called ‘HoldTheFries’. We would not be exclusively low-carb, though we would be low carb friendly.  We probably would be banninated under current management though.

 

I’ve an internal interview today for another department so wish me luck. Damn I wish I could let on the real reasons I think I’ll perform better in a different department…. But you know, if you have nothing nice to say… etc.

 

I’m hopeful but I’m also wary of things falling through, so come Monday I could have those glorious few days-to-weeks off I’ve been fantasizing about since I transitioned here from $old_werk with no time in between. Except of course, for the problem of actually being unemployed, and the longer you’re out of the game, the harder it is to get back in.   

 

I need to line something else up before D starts sending filled application forms to fast-food joints on my behalf.

 

At least I’m at that point where lack of experience is no longer a problem, just lack of paperwork.

Wiped out

I was doing so well, I'd gotten the morning off ex-werk and had an interview with a recruiter scheduled for today. Then I got freaking *dysentry*. It's 50/50 as to whether I get to work tomorrow.
All I really feel like eating is bananas, an apple, or peanut butter, weirdly enough, and not available in our carb-avoidant household. If it means I can get through work tomorrow though I'll eat a bit off-plan.

The TroppoBook

iBook_dark
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Here's my iBook after I applied a flower decal over the Apple logo. My iBook's getting on a bit so I've been on the lookout for stickers for it, and I couldn't find anything that wouldn't get peeled off in a couple of days. But this is nice. Sort of a tropical theme to reflect the hot, hot summer days Melbourne has been having lately.

I've switched from coffee to tea or iced tea (mostly). It seems too hot for coffee, and tea doesn't rattle my nerves as much. And even at McDonalds, tea is served in a teapot with a jug of milk. It's a more deliberate, civilized sort of experience. The only problem is I can't drink tea without some sort of sweetener. I'll have to buy some more Stevia to carry around with me.

On that topic, weight loss continues, doing very well thank you very much.

On the job front, I'm encouraged by interest from recruiters and I'm applying for more jobs, in the likely event that the current roles I'm pursuing with them fall through.

The other thing I'm working on is swotting for my MCSE exams, I've been putting those off for an embarrassingly long time. At this stage, I have experience but not the certs, and those certs could mean the difference of about 10k in the job market. It means more flexibility too. I'd like to be able to *avoid* the sorts of jobs I've had up until now.

One could argue that doing the certifications once you *have* experience means you'll get more out of them, and God knows I need more confidence.

Without the certs, I'm doing the work of people who *did* get the certs and are getting paid more than me, and who needs that?

Gaming it

Listening to ‘Landed, Ben Folds’

 

Playing phone tag with recruiters today. Actually I’m fairly chuffed considering how many applications it took to get *one* phone call the last few times I’ve been down this road. Feeling hopeful. Which is good because once the buzz from my impulsive Recovery had worn off and I was starting to feel a bit silly.

 

 

Treating the process like an RPG as much as possible, in terms of strategy and trying vs failing. Seems to be working out so far.

Recovered

Well, one thing led to another and I made a decision to move on from
$current_werkplace. So now I'm looking around for some new
employment. I might put up a quasi-CV listing my 1337 sk1llz later
today. I was up to 2:30am hunting down leads in my bookmarked job sites.
Hey, if you shake enough trees something is going to fall out.
There's a Unix gig I have my eye on.

It is what it is

So I’m back after a couple of days on holiday.

 

I got asked to write some notes on the stuff I’d done. I wrote a beautiful phone book, and arriving here found none of my cases had been touched, and nothing I’d done had been acknowledged.

So tell me why I was here doing an hour’s overtime, again?

 

 

And so it begins

http://www.apple.com.au

 

 

 

On Interruptions

“Conversely, forcing someone to perform errands synchronously is bound to limit their productivity. The cost of an interruption is not just the time it takes, but that it breaks the time on either side in half. You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they're unable to work on hard problems at all.”

 

http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

 

And if what you do is nothing *but* interruptions?

 

The other source of procrastination for me is just how long I spend avoiding other people (with some of the people I work with, understandable) if I’m depressed, which is most of the time lately.

In which KrisTheGrumpy survives a Random Spider Encounter, and discovers that she *really* signed on for paperwork, not computers

The day began with a Giant Spider Encounter in the shower. (I think the rude little bastard stole my towel, too). The fly plague is perpetuating a spider plague, and I predict in a month or so you won’t be able to leave anything on the floor without it sliding away a few minutes later on a lot of hairy little legs. I suppose I can hope that they don’t like 40 degree temperatures, and that would explain the tarantula lurking near the plughole.

I’ve gotten into World Of Warcraft, and if I wasn’t spending 8hrs a day shuffling papers this entry would look a whole lot more like ‘NElf Druid, lvl 10,  lvl grinding atm, gg’.

On the paper shuffling, I think I’ve gotten myself pigeon holed here, set up a situation where I’m not going to be able to extricate myself.

See, I didn’t get hired as an engineer. I got hired as tech support, at the time an estrogen-only zone. There’s arcane rituals, filing,  answers to questions that sound suspiciously like ‘because I *said* so,’ and ‘do as you’re told’ , bonding over shoes, and a pecking order. It’s a feminized environment, and not in a good way.  It’s the checkouts at Woolworths, or the typing pool.

In a different department, or a different company, where there’s a more male style of communication and expectations I do well. Blame my chart for having Mercury in Gemini.  I know the geek community gets a lot of crap for ‘RTFM!’ but IRL I’ve never found it to be excessive unless your query really did go ‘HELP ME PLZ’.  Knowledge is power, so they express it by sharing information. Sometimes too much information, but the point I’m getting to is that it’s a different psychology.