Category: Computer

Suffering

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It is evening, two hours before your normal bedtime. What do you suppose is the worst thing you could do? How about a little nap?

You go to bed at a reasonable hour, after your unplanned hour-long nap. You lie down to bed with what you believe to be a great recipe for sleep, a book you’ve already read once and a drowsy head start. Only, it isn’t such a tasty recipe after all. Now it’s almost two hours after your bedtime and you’re still wide awake. You’ve decided to get up and fill that pit that diet has dug in your stomach with some delicious looking frosted animal cookies. It’s only after you’ve eaten the last one that you wonder if a healthy dose of sugar mixes well with insomnia.

So be it.

Your next stop is your trusty computer. You decide to show your desktop Mac some love with a little long overdue attention. Having been in bed so long, and the night being so well advanced, the click of the keyboard is deafening. This is when you realize why you so often prefer your PowerBook, the elegant feel of the keys under your swift touch. You wonder if it’s like a musician trying to play a high school band instrument after playing for years on a Stradivarius. There is simply no comparison. You wonder if it would be worth the investment to upgrade the keyboards around the house.

The eMac that you woke from sleep, and then eschewed for your trusty PowerBook, has returned to sleep. The fan cooling its innards has turned off, returning the room to near silence. Your only companion is your insomnia and the strangely addictive chatter of your keyboard. It almost becomes a kind of conversation, you interacting with the keys.

You have returned to that place where you last slept; your feet up, reclined on the living room couch with your PowerBook in your lap. You hadn’t intended to recreate the moment, but you note the occurrence when you begin to grasp that elusive sense of coming sleep.

Before returning to bed, you wonder if your attachment to a computer is a sign of a shallow nature, a nerd at heart, a discerning consumer, or all of the above.

Now for a little math. You function best with eight hours of sleep. Seven is almost as good, but the seams begin to fray. Getting six is a precursor caffeine abuse. It is pushing midnight and I’m getting up at 5:30. Say, how long has it been since I’ve called in sick?

It had to be me

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It’s happened to you before. You get your hopes up and they are unceremoniously dumped in the crapper. The pisser about this evening is that my hopes were so fresh. I hardly got to know them before they were gone. Hope can be fleeting, but to come and go in less than five minutes? This keeps up and I’m going to need a better prescription drug benefit with my health insurance.

The evening started with such promise. What could be more exciting than a trip to the Apple store? All right, I’m not that pathetic. There are at least two things better than a trip to the Apple Store, but whose counting? I got to the store and someone said the four words that would change the emotional tone of the evening, “That’s the garage sale.”

In Apple Store terms, “the garage sale,” is the disorganized heap ‘o products they’d like to get rid of on the quick. Well what did I see on top of the heap? Signaling me through the fog of my caffeine addicted mind was a shiny pair of Apple Desktop speakers, marked down to $20. These are the same speakers that my father has plugged into his iMac. These are the same speakers that I’ve been jealous of since my father purchased his iMac. These are the speakers that I was more than ready to part with $20 for the privilege of owning. Yes, I said “privilege,” they are that cool looking. Momentarily suspecting a “too good to be true” moment sneaking up and biting me in the keester, I sought out the closest Apple Staffer. “Yes,” he replied, “those should work Jim Dandy with your iBook.”

I was a middle-aged geek in an Apple Store. I quite literally skipped towards the register, stopping briefly at my friend admiring the PowerBook display to gloat over my discovery. Here’s where the skies opened and the parade went home. “John, I don’t think those things are going to work.” SAY IT AINT SO! I wanted to believe. I wanted to trust the first opinion, but doubt lingered. That was when I opened the box and saw the plug. It was immediately clear it would not fit my poor iBook.

Next time you see Jim Dandy, tell him I’m looking for him.

I went in search of a second opinion, but my fears were not allayed.

&*%$!

For about five minutes I lived in a world where I had a cool set of speakers. Some dreams die hard. Some dreams die slow. Others check out before they even really get started.

Anyone know a really good therapist?

Listen carefully, my friend

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The other day one of my coworkers approached me with welcome praise. He told me that he appreciated all of the helpful computer advice I had given him over the course of our six year acquaintance. He went so far as to say that he trusted my computer advice more than anyone else.

Who doesn’t like to be appreciated, as if he were the best thing to come along since Barry first crooned “,Copa Cabana,?” I was sitting there with my Big Gulp serving of caffeine, having a grand ‘ole time, when the moment was spoiled by inspiration.

Seeing a barn sized opening for the taking, I could not resist temptation.

“Then why haven’t you taken my MOST IMPORTANT piece of computer advice to date?” I asked.

“What would that be?” He replied.

“Get a Mac.”

The loud groan of skepticism momentarily ruined a perfectly good moment of self-righteousness.

Where once there was something,

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My mind is a blank slate. I had opened up my trusty PowerBook and launched my word processor of choice. I was just about to start typing a magnificent entry, when Software Update worked it’s weekly magic. For the 95% of the world that is not familiar with the Mac OS (we members of the Kauffman Clan hold no grudge against you – only pity), Software Update is a piece of Apple magic that you can set up to pop-up periodically to check for updates to our favorite OS.

In any case, the idea is gone. One moment I’m basking in delusions of literary genius, next I’m reading about the improvements to the Apache web server. Alas, a strong focus was never my thing.

Yes kids, my moment of divine inspiration proved to be as fleeting as the Bucs Super Bowl triumph. They’re both long gone.

Pulling a problem out of a hat

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I know, you probably hear this all the time, but please bear with me in my time of need. I’ve got less than 800MBs left on the hard drive in my server. My poor revision B iMac has survived several whims to replace it with my old iBook, but it’s time may have finally come. The only thing saving it now is the knowledge that Cheryl is sure to put on a full court press for a purge if another computer goes on the inactive list. Doesn’t the little guy deserve a little more respect? Doesn’t more than six years of faithful service mean anything?

Although the prep work is going slow, the iBook server project could be online as soon as Thursday night. And here’s something that’s sure to get those parotid, sublingual, and submandibular glands pumping: I’m working on updating the blog software. (Never underestimate the power of a high school anatomy class.) Yes kids, you heard me right. I’m switching out the server AND upgrading the software all in one shot. I’ll give you a minute to go find your socks.

Did you know that it has been more than 482 days, 2 hours, and 24 minutes since I first served up this site from my home? I didn’t either.

A day of firsts

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Today was the first time that I pushed Cheryl around the mall in a wheel chair. Today was the first time Beth broke the family room couch. Today was the first time that I went to the store and bought a shoot ’em up computer game.

Oh yeah, today was also the first time I posted an entry from the new computer.

Holy cow, you bought another new computer?

Yes, yes. Pilgrimages to the computer store are becoming quite frequent around these parts. There will doubtless be a day when these last few years will be looked back upon as the golden years of the Kauffman Family Household (version 2.2). As I look back upon the last few years I am filled with wonder. 2001: the year of the iBook. 2003: the year of eMac. 2004: the year of the PowerBook.

How sweet it is.

But why buy a PowerBook? There were three factors in the choice, 1) a windfall; 2) a wife that made me do it; and, 3) a little matter of spending it on your stuff before someone can think of something else to spend it on.

Take that new tube of envy, squeeze out a generous portion, and rub it all in baby!!!

Taking one for the boss

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When my mood is getting in the way of productivity, I owe it to my employer to engage in a little root cause analysis; and by golly I think I’ve got it! Set your way back machine to yesterday night, around eleven p.m. I had just given myself a serious case of the giggles, recalling my exploits in church earlier that day. I was committing it all to the internet ether, so that others may take advantage of my good humor, when I discovered that my web site was missing.

There is never a good time to discover a computer hardware problem, but the worst time is an hour after your normal bed time. I jumped out of bed and stormed into the family room to give my router a swift kick. It turns out that my suspicions were correct, the problem would not be solved with physical violence. I settled in for the long haul, spent two years of life expectancy fixing the problem, and went to bed late.

There’s your stinking root cause! Speaking of fatigue, has anyone got some stimulants? Actually, I don’t like to go to the Walgreen’s well too often, so I’ve decided to go au naturelle. I’ve decided to get my sugar and caffeine the way God intended: with a Twix bar and a Mountain Dew. My regular readers will not be surprised by this revelation, nor would they be surprised by my recent weight gain. All of this makes good training for having a newborn again, so I guess all was not for naught.

The can makes a hollow sound when I put it down on my desk. There’s one more foil wrapper in my trash can. Yes, I’m jammin’ now.

Ouch

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It had to happen. The law of averages states that if you have too many outliers in one direction, something is bound to come along to balance the books. I just didn’t expect the hammer to fall on my poor, unexpecting iBook. It turns out my computer didn’t have The Qualifying Logic Board Problem after all. What does this mean? It means that it would cost around $400 dollars to fix. That’s a whole lot of hurting for a three year old computer with a replacement cost of around $800.

There is a light at the end of this tunnel, so don’t stop reading yet.

It was two nights ago. I was sitting in my family room, playing with my six year old, Revision B iMac (circa 1998), when my wife asked me if I wanted a new computer for the family room. The only thing more surprising than her question was my answer. “No”, I replied.

I think it may be time to see if that offer has expired.

It’s not easy being responsible

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“This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.” If you’ve been following my recent adventures, you know that I was talking to my poor iBook, just before I left it at the shop for repairs.

I feel guilty. I feel lonely. Most importantly, I feel bored. My five year old, Bondi Blue, original iMac hasn’t seen this much action since, well, I bought a new iBook almost three years ago. I haven’t sat at a desk this much since, well, I went to work on Thursday.

Boo desk!

Yeah bed!

Boy am I tired.

What does a hiatus look like?

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Imagine this entry being the last entry – for the next week…

We’ll be away, as it out of town, as in away from our server. While I’ll have my computer – the trusty iBook – I don’t have remote access to my web server. I could temporarily house these entries on the Apple servers (via .Mac), but that would require some effort on my part. And after those administrative hearings on Thursday, I’m plumb out of effort. If you are one of the few people out there
reading this stuff, check back in a week or so. There will be a whole slew of entries waiting for you.

Strictly speaking, I guess that doesn’t quite qualify as a hiatus, does it?