2007-06-29

Once Again/Backup Frenzy

On this June 29th, the day of the iPhone release, I come bearing news of the impending death of my new-in-December iMac. The s.m.a.r.t. status of my hard disc, as reported by Apple's Disk Utility application, is "failing."

S.M.A.R.T.
is definitely a cool piece of technology, invented in the 1990s and widely implemented in consumer computers... just after 2000 I'd say. It's handy, and if everything goes over right, I won't lose any data, but I am going to have to call Apple up after my trip to Tucson, and arrange the repair of my iMac. It might, but I hope not, result in a trip to Vegas or Flagstaff.

If it does require that I visit a mac shop, I'll look for one in Kingman (Yeah, right!) or just wait until I get to Flagstaff, and if/when the drive dies, I'll just use the 200gig-external, and pray that that doesn't fail because after that, all I've got are the 80 gig, the 40 gig and the laptop.

Well... wish me luck in my backup adventures, and after my trip to Tucson, in my adventures calling AppleCare.

2007-06-24

Odd Dream

I get a great smooth jazz station from Vegas where I'm here at home. I love to listen to it, and I have my alarm clock set to turn on at 4:30 a.m. with it.

Actually, there's a mildly funny dream story related to that. My dream last night/this morning involved me, trying to get somewhere to do something and three other people, who were part of some radio show about job fairs in Las Vegas. We started at NAU I suppose, piled into a car and were conducting a phone interview. We then stopped at a toy shop, eventually met some brave-little-toaster esque appliances and went to an electronics store, where for some reason I saw my mother and somebody who looked very similar to my COM101 instructor from NAU.

I woke up at like 5:30 and it turned out that the radio alarm had turned on an hour before, and there was some kind of radio program about job fairs in Las Vegas. Although, in the dream, mostly only one guy was talking, but on the actual program, all four people (three men and one woman, if I recall) were speaking.

I am going to have to put some more research into suggesting things for my dreams, quite possibly trying with my iPod and/or my iMac and the radio on a timer, to see whether or not my dreams can be suggested using other materials. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few albums I want to try... the Wicked soundtrack, War of the Worlds audio performance, the Rent soundtrack, mostly because those things have plots that can be dreamt. Though, I'd be interested in whether or not a standard disjointed album of music, or a new-age or otherwise instrumental album such as Mannheim Steamroller, Yanni or John Tesh could influence my dreams.

2007-06-23

Relief.

This probably sounds lame, but I'm now relieved. My mobile computer, which suffered from a spate of... mental retardation, let's say, is back on its own two feet. More accurately, it's back to booting from its own hard disc, and luckily enough, its remaining battery still works. With this, there'll be no more talk of selling the PowerBook G3, probably very little if any talk of buying any new batteries, and I won't need to worry about using the Toshiba Satellite laptop (the one with Windows 3.1 on it) as my main mobile computer.

Not that anybody cares, but for some background, my PowerBook G3 is a "Pismo" model, the last G3 PowerBook before Apple introduced the PowerBook G4 computer. It has a 500MHz PowerPC processor, 512mb of memory and a 30 gigabyte hard disc. (Those are upgrades though, it originally shipped with 128mb of memory and a 12 gigabyte hard disc.) The model was introduced in February 2000, and discontinued in January 2001. My particular model is from early 2000. This means it's 7 years old!

Old and slow it may be, but it remains a very trustworthy machine, with very good expansion capabilities for its time, and some really great battery life.

One of the unique things about this computer, compared with more modern laptops/notebooks, is that the CD drive is removable, and can be replaced with another device, such as an Iomega Zip drive, a Floppy disc drive, or a second battery. Even the primarily battery is very easy to remove. When they were new, Apple suggested that a machine with dual batteries was capable of achieving 9 to 10 hours of battery run time. In my experience, with newer third party batteries actually brings me closer to 20 hours, with the battery meter reading between 17 and 19, and actual runtime being between 14 and 17 hours. It is somewhat difficult to do, but it can be done.

Even if replacing the one now-dead battery is a $150 proposition, or $300 for two, it costs less than a new laptop, and I somehow think it might last just as long anyway.

So here's to you, Schraubenschleussel, and here's to at least three more good years.

The Pismo

2007-06-21

Happy Ice Day!

Well, I've started to get back to my old shenanigans of declaring every day some kind of holiday. I've been drinking a whole lot of water with ice lately, so I declared today a Day of Ice

I learned also that there was once an emperor so crazy as to have ice brought down from mountains.
Bethany: And Emperor Nero would send servants up mountains to get ice for his form of ice cream :3
So this begins the first of probably-several incidental random celebratory days.

I've gone ahead and created a calendar that anybody with a google account can subscribe to. If you've got suggestions for a celebration, feel free to send me a message through the message-sending implement of your choice.

2007-06-15

Wicked Avenue Rent Express-- The Extreme Acid Jazz-Polka Musical.

If you could create a musical, and/or your life (or your ideal life) were a musical, what would it be called, and what kind of music would it have?

My musical (maybe not my ideal life, but my ideal musical. :P) would be called Wicked Avenue Rent Express , and would have the subtitle "The Extreme Acid Jazz-Polka Musical." It would basically be about junkie wizards and witches who live in a cheap, run-down apartment building in New York, Oz. They'd also conduct train (or trainwreck) races -- in which magic, talking, quite-snarky trains race around quite uselessly. (because it's somewhat dangerous to ride the train, given how fast they go.)

I'm actually not yet sure what the musical of my life would be though. I need to work on that a bit.

It should be a bit obvious what I've been listening to recently.

Also, I've been reading the Gregory Maguire novel "Wicked" subtitled "The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West." It's very good. I've actually got the sequel here too, a Yanni CD, and the first LoTR novel. I intend to catch up on some reading and whatnot. I found out too that I can place holds online, and (in theory, though I've yet to test it) have them make their way to a specific branch of the Mohave County Library System. In this way, I intend to make fairly regular trips to the now-walking-distance Valle Vista MCLD location. Summer of Reading! Yaay!

It's also worth noting that I recently discovered the "Indoor Walking Machine" aka the treadmill. Quite a nifty device, which I'm taking advantage of by using it. I found that after an hour or so, I can work up quite a sweat on it, which is cool because I think that means it's helping me achieve my lofty goals of losing the "Freshman Thirty" (Come on, you can't think I've been denying the fact that I'm a bit chunkier than I was at the start of the school year.) The Treadmill also (niftily enough) can be attached to an audio device (such as my iPod) to provide a form of entertainment (midis converted to MP3s by iTunes) while I'm walking (but not actually leaving the house.)

My goal is to return to the weight I was before I started at NAU. Unfortunately, even if I do, it may not do me any good, as I'll just be back at NAU again next fall, probably following the same eating patterns. Though, I do admit... my food intake patterns probably didn't hurt my GPA, so for now I'm not complaining too bitterly.

2007-06-04

No more PowerBook?

What a fitting revenge of the machine. Officially "almost one year" after I got it, my PowerBook G3 seems to be officially dead. For everybody who placed bets, let's just say that you were all wrong. The culprit happens to be the IDE controller. I'm not sure whether or not this is something that will just smooth over somehow, or if my PowerBook G3 will be crippled in that respect for the rest of its days with me.

I knew it would die, I did not know it would die this quickly. I don't know if it needs to be said, but I'll say it anyway. I am considering getting a Mac Portable to use for note taking and novel-writing. Nice, simple machine with weapon status, and really long battery life.

I am kind of sad that the PowerBook G3 can't remain useful the way it was before. Last fall, it had awesome battery life, wireless networking, good storage, and was generally usable as my main computer. It was originally acquired as a stopgap machine, purely because it had a display that worked, but I found that even after getting my iMac, I did somewhat like having a mobile computer.

How ironic that after two (or more?) years of posting on this blog (whose title is "Life:: Strapped to a Desk" for those of you reading this from any other websites,) I am now for the first time, actually without a fully mobile computer.