William Matheson's Journal

12:51 pm - Amateur ITSS: Wireless Connectivity for Ubuntu

A brochure Saint Mary’s ITSS should have: Wireless Connectivity for Ubuntu Linux!

They said it couldn’t be done! Well, not exactly, but they were hesitant to even give me the brochure, not at all confident that I'd make anything out of it. But I did! Yes, I’m on my open-source netbook, surfing the Saint Mary’s wireless interwebs.

Yes, I realize wireless internet is freely and readily available in every mom-and-pop coffee shop from here to Timbuktu. Why the university chooses to be difficult, I don’t really know. My guess is that they handle private and sensitive information here frequently and need to inhibit would-be wireless infiltrators and eavesdroppers.

But enough with the dropping eaves. Here’s what you do:


Go to your network icon, right-click, and select "Edit Connections..."


Go to the "Wireless" tab, select "Add".


Under connection name you can write whatever you want - "Saint Mary's" is pleasing and appropriate to me, but you could call it "STUPID SKOOL DAT TAKES ALL MA BORDENS" and that will be fine too as long as you remember that it's for this particular wireless network. Now under SSID - the actual identity of the network, what the network calls itself - you must write "SMU_PUBLIC". That's an underscore _ between the SMU and PUBLIC parts. Now you're finished with this tab...


Under "Security", select "WPA & WPA2 Enterprise".


Under "Authentication", select "Protected EAP (PEAP)".



Finally, put your s-number and password (exactly the same as what you log in to the workstations and SMUport with) in the lower boxes. Then click OK, wait a few tense moments, and you should be good to go!

Well, you're not quite home free. The first webpage you'll come up on is about the Acceptable Use Policy. You put in your s-number and password again, then the webpage advises you to turn off your computer for a minute and restart it. Do so. Once you're back on, you may see the webpage come up again, but if you re-register it just tells you you're already registered, so if you find you can surf the web at large you can just ignore it this time. Have fun!

Current Mood: accomplished

04:33 pm - First Post from New Netbook

So I got a netbook for Christmas! It's pretty sweet. Other than this following bugaboo, it was pretty easy to get set up the way I wanted!

I want to get OpenOffice.org version 3 on here because I hear its Writer has a grammar checker, kind of like Microsof Word's. I had to take this implementation of version 2 out before trying to install 3 – I wasn't successful, so now I've gone back to 2 - score me half a point – I couldn't do what I wanted to do, but I was at least able to roll things back and get OpenOffice 2 back in. I'm typing this in Writer right now. It's not Word, but it's free, and it runs on Ubuntu. If anyone knows of anything better, let me know.

Apparently with this older distribution of Ubuntu that comes with my Mini 10v, there's no easy way to upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3. The Ubuntu PTB aren't putting out those nice and easy GUI-selectable packages for the older versions of their OS, even this one, Heron, which is supposed to have long-term support.

So in January when I get back to be school, I'll be on the lookout for some Linux geeks. ;-)

Anyway, the computer: It's fun to type on and carry around because it's small and light, and it's made even more unobtrusive by the fact that it's virtually silent – there are no moving parts that I'm aware of. (I specifically ordered a solid-state hard drive.) So I should be set! There's a upgraded model coming out next year, but by the time it's available in Canada with the options I want it could be the hit for next Christmas. But if you haven't got one yet, and want one, I'd consider waiting.

Merry Christmas! Now I have to move all my stuff out of my cousin's room. Ugh. Well.

Current Mood: hot

04:20 pm - I say libraries...

I'm taking a break from my physics assignment. I'll tell you why in a minute.

I had to pack up all of my things and come downstairs to write this. All the "recent-thefts" warnings discouraged me from leaving my things where they were. It's annoying when you just want to grab a snack or drink or look something up.

I don't own a netbook computer yet, and since laptops are too heavy to carry around every day, I just have my DSi. And it would be perfect for checking e-mail or making quick little factchecks, except for one thing: it lacks WPA2-PEAP support. Basically I can specify a "key," but not a separate username and password. I'm effectively locked out of the SMU wi-fi network until 1) Nintendo releases a system update or 2) I get a netbook computer. I suppose I could also get an iPhone or Blackberry - they'd theoretically be able to connect, but I'd really rather have the netbook. I'm waiting until Dell releases the 2GB version of the Mini 10 or 10v (both later this summer, I'm hearing), and then I'll be all over it. (Neither 2GB unit will have XP - only Vista or Linux. This is because of Microsoft's galling requirement that XP only be sold preinstalled on computers that ship with 1GB of RAM or less.)

Now, one could get the Mini 9 with Linux and 2GB, but its keyboard was just ever-so-slightly too small, and it's a moot point now because it's been discontinued. I could purchase a Mini 10 with Linux now, take apart the system and substitute a 2GB wafer for the existing 1GB, but that requires a deft hand and throwing out a perfectly good 1GB wafer. Since I should be able to buy the system the way I want it, I'm going to wait!

Anyway, I suppose it's a "good thing" I had to come down and use a workstation, because a post like this would be extremely tedious on a DSi. On the other hand, I would have had nothing to complain about, and I'd have cut directly to the joke:

* * *

I met a buddy of mine at Dal today to give him a game I purchased on his behalf:

- I'll be by campus shortly after 12 noon. Thanks again!
- Can i trouble vou to meet me at dal?
- Sure. Time?
- Library 1215?

So I'm standing in front of the library, and I get a phone call! Where am I at? Well, the library of cour-

Ha-ha! Turns out, because he was a law student, his natural inclination was to go to the Law Library, not the more widely known Killam Library. You know, where we lowly undergrads go for our library needs. ;-)

Since I'm reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I've had the actual P&P on the brain, and just now I was thinking about how Mr. Collins would behave if he were a denizen of Saint Mary's:

"Yes, we have a fine Library, though it is nothing to the Libraries at Dalhousie - I say Libraries, for they have several - each fine in its own way, though my favorite is the Sexton Design & Technology Library..."

Current Mood: chipper

04:06 pm - Inspiron Mini 10 specs disappoint

I'd been waiting on tenterhooks for the new Dell Inspiron Mini 10 - the "perfect 10," the netbook that combines small size with a usable keyboard.

But according to the latest, it will lag behind the Mini 9 in several ways:

- RAM is limited to 1GB, and it will be fixed and non-upgradeable (the 9 is available with 2GB)
- 160GB 5400rpm hard drive (there is no word about an SSD option - the 9 offers a range of SSDs)
- Ubuntu 8.04, Bluetooth, mobile broadband not yet available (the 9 can have all three)

I guess what I really want is a 9 with the keyboard of a 10. The 10 has a keyboard that's purportedly 92% of a standard notebook keyboard. Really, that's the reason I was waiting for this machine - look at that generous right shift key!

I guess I'll wait and see if they come out with a 2GB Linux SSD model - if they don't, I'll have to wait longer or look elsewhere. There's no way I'm buying a 1GB machine with XP Home. Fughedaboudit.

Update: It looks like 2GB of RAM (still fixed, but whatever) will be an option later this year. No word about an SSD drive. I suppose the thing to do is wait - maybe they'll release a 9 with a better keyboard. Or maybe I'll get the 9 anyway if the price drops a bit.

The reason for this chicanery is chiefly Microsoft's refusal to licence Windows XP to any systems that are sold with more than 1GB of RAM. Since the demand for Ubuntu is somewhat less than the demand for Windows, they're basically forced to offer a 1GB system initially. If it weren't for Microsoft, they probably wouldn't bother with the 1GB and they'd probably just release the 2GB.

No NumLock? Isn't that kind of puzzling? It'd make this a less capable companion in math class, that's for sure.

Current Mood: disappointed

10:04 pm - Matheson san wa sensei deshta

I got a card from one of my students last night, too. I almost broke down in tears. She’s such a keener, such a go-getter, and she never hesitated to speak up – gosh, she’ll do great things. I deserve very little credit for that of course; it’s almost more heartening that she took the time to write to me. I don’t expect or really want this to last – out of sight, out of mind (as we say), or saru mono wa hibi ni utoshi (去る物は日々に疎し), as they might say. I only tried my best to teach the children as I would have wanted to be taught – some days I was closer to the ideal than others, but I think the children appreciated my efforts. I’ll never forget that great big book that they made for me with the individual thank-you messages – it was one of the nicest things that anyone’s ever done for me, and if I’m feeling down I can just think of it or flip through it.

On the other hand, it’s a bit embarrassing how Will Matheson, the struggling perpetually-between-things dilettante, differs from Mr. Matheson, the fun English, science and art teacher. I’m trying not to let that get me down though. Part of the problem in coming back has been discovering how things have not changed despite my own change – my modicum of growth in absentia might take a day or two to register on others, but I can see why they wouldn’t notice because I’m so busy gawking and second-guessing.

Part of coming back is taking advantage of all the insight I’ve picked up and applying it to my situations here. For the most part, I’m appalled at the things I have said and done and what their consequences have been, and I realize more and more every day how difficult I’ve made things for myself. It’s not all doom and gloom, but it’s enough to make me want to wish my life had a rewind / erase button, like an old cassette tape-based answering machine. In the present, I am bogged down by all the new information and new realizations that come at me at a mile-a-minute as I revisit old haunts and auld acquaintances. Eventually it will settle down and I’ll plateau again, and then I’ll have to go abroad again if I want to learn anything more than the very little I already know. =)

Still, I have a lot to look forward to. I’ve got friends – good friends, as they’re my friends in spite of my proclivities, and yet going back to school is definitely going to help kick-start my social life again. I have good friends, but more won’t hurt. Maybe I’ll meet people who are in the same boat that I am! It’s a little bit embarrassing not to be moving on to grad school (and I have a buddy who keeps saying I can and should be and wants me to apply for a specific program), but right now I need to embody Socratic honesty more than anything else. I’d like to do a little something about it, and then we’ll see where I go from there.

* * *

So now I’m in Souris, and my trip up was fine. The only thing was that it was cold and I was tired, and when I got out of the van in Charlottetown, I was dropping things on the pavement (like the adapters and batteries that go with my headphones) and I got a bit turned-around. Fortunately, Aunt Shirley and Grandma arrived quickly, and I got out of the cold and into the warm car.

We visited Dad at the Farmer’s Market where he was selling the lamb meat – I was so impressed by the cosmopolitanism of the place and the teeming crowds; it seemed like the place to be. Next we picked up some ski boots (at a rad shop from an incredibly cute clerk), and Aunt Shirley seemed to want me to get a haircut because despite my assertion that I was okay for a few days, we yet drove around looking for a place that would be open (it’s Saturday). =) We had lunch and later visited Uncle N. and Aunt D. and later (Grand) Uncle N. and (Grand) Aunt P. and then of course the farm in Albion Cross. Grandma had us worn out! =) Oh, she’s still going strong – she even made me a new pair of slippers! (I love Echo Christmases.)

So back in Souris I’m taking my things in and up to my room and I’m thinking hey when should I get started on my essay for S. at SMU and yeah I’ll write it on my laptop and where

OH

CRAP*

* - Not what I actually said.

CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAP**

** - Fortunately, Aunt Shirley was across the street at the store.

I’d left it behind somewhere. I called the shuttle company and left a message. An anxious hour later I got a call:

“I was hoping someone would call in and claim this laptop!”

Whew!!

Here’s approximately what happened: A fellow noticed the bag on the parking lot pavement and suggested to the driver that it probably was left behind – so it was put back in the van for the run back to Halifax! Back there, the owner/operator took a look at it, but couldn’t find my name (it’s in there, but buried). She was tempted to call all of the day’s passengers about it, but refrained because she might ask someone, “Hey, did you leave a laptop on the shuttle?” and that person might say, “Um… … yes!”

So I dodged several bullets here and am supremely grateful. This is the most harrowing incident I’ve had with my computer save the time when a certain animatrice at Sainte-Anne backed her car into it when she was helping me move. =) Fortunately, a certain political blogger spoke up and I escaped with only a cracked (but still-working) mouse and a slight screen… <ahem> defect that I later got repaired under the last gasps of my warranty.

Well, it’s time for bed – more visiting rounds in the AM!

Current Mood: optimistic

01:15 am - 140. Frightful Friday

I was at the DeoDeo tonight shopping for new rechargeable batteries for my camera when I happened upon a section of the laptop department dedicated to Netbooks. Several models were represented, including the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, which I had been coveting for some time. I like my current Dell laptop with its 15.5” screen and capable keyboard (can you see where this is going yet?), but it’s too bulky to be considered conveniently portable. It’s a chore to take anywhere.

What I want to have is a word-processing and net surfing machine that I can curl up into a corner with. I guess this machine fits the bill – I’m sitting on my bed with it now because the table in my room is too high to type comfortably for long periods – but detaching it from its veritable menagerie of disparate cords dampens most “Quick! I want to write something!” impulses. What I need is something small that I can always grab. Oh, and the price can’t be outrageous.

So as you can imagine, I was about ready to leap out of my socks with joy when I finally saw these machines that I’d been reading about for so long. I could even try them out, and I did!

/greetings drim dEoDeo, Gosh darm it,s harf to tyype on this thing;

Nothing dampens Netbook enthusiasm as quickly as trying to type on one. The experience is akin to conducting an all-recorder version of Beethoven’s Ninth or mowing your lawn with scissors. Their right shift keys were the worst offenders, scaling in at about the size of a crossword puzzle square on the microfiche of an archived newspaper. The thought of actually trying to compose anything on one made me shudder.

It’s too bad, really, because aside from their keyboards these are capable little computers. But the way they are now, they’re useless for, say, taking notes in class, even though they’re just the right size to carry around to and between classes, and they’ll sit comfortably on top of Saint Mary’s famous porkchop desks.

Advice: Wait. Keyboards and perhaps even prices will improve. Eventually the ($500) netbook will be offered in a broader chassis that will accommodate a proper keyboard. Or you could get a used MacBook Air by then, provided you can find a local, deceased Apple enthusiast to pry it from the cold, dead hands of.

But maybe one can get used to the keyboards, undersized though they may be. I should go back and try again for a good solid fifteen minutes and see if my fingers get used to it. Stranger things have happened. If I can train myself to type on a Mini 9 as effectively as I can on my 6400, I’ll probably buy one when I return. If not, then fughedaboudit.

I had a truly awful day at work today. It’s not even really work’s fault – I think I’ve been taking things a little too seriously, for one thing. For another, I’m seeing how my youth and inexperience has put me in this position where I am made to feel somewhat exploited. But as Joe said, “Now you know.” I just wish the knowledge wasn’t so bleak and grim.

It’s eat or be eaten in the big, bad world, and even though I think I finally have it in me to switch sides (or at least begin the journey in that direction), many times I have doubts, and I had them in spades today. It didn’t help that all I wanted to do was go far, far away. My classes went fairly well, but I didn’t want to teach them at their outsets – by the last class, I was shaking and trembling somewhat, and I wondered what would happen if I just dropped everything and walked. The innocent enthusiasm and unconditional approbation of the children was almost all that kept me from finding a quick, vertical balcony exit.

Sometimes I think children are the only people worth getting to know. Ours are artless, principled, and generally of good character. Adults are always playing little games of one sort or another – I do too, but not as effectively. I’ll miss these kids. I wish I’d made adult friends here, but that’s hard: “What do you do?” “I work in office! 720 hours every weeks! It is very stress!” “Oh, um, gee…” and you put in platitudes while looking for the conversational equivalent of a freeway off-ramp.

The day started on the wrong note when one of the big shots started barking out cleaning monitoring instructions to us. She was speaking Japanese, and the “translation” came later, but the tone she took was outrageous. There’s no need to talk (down) to co-workers like she did. M. pointed out that it’s something that he finds tends to happen to teachers, and that’s a fair explanation, but I don’t think it’s an excuse.

[On the humorous side, the associated duty chart is entitled “Clean and the Fire Managers.” Wouldn’t that be a terrific name for a band?]

The worst part is, it’s not like this is unusual – she does this to us all the time. It’s really upsetting – it puts me straight into defensive mode, and it makes me curse her (silently) and curse the school (sometimes silently). And yet, I could expect this again and again over my final two-plus months here. (“Kill me with a hammer,” I wrote.)

I began to brood. I wanted out of education entirely. The system is fundamentally flawed, and I can’t fix it. Where would I begin? Besides, I don’t even know enough sometimes to know that I know nothing. I feel tired, frustrated, helpless, and hopeless.

And the last straw came when Mk. came by and delivered an application form to one of my colleagues who will be having a guest stay over. I was shocked to see that such a form was made – essentially in response to the colleagues’ asking if it would be okay. (Tip: Never ask permission for things here if you can help it.) The reality was that the ball players and other students we share these dorms with aren’t allowed to have guests over, period. With us, the question had never come up, but now that it has, the administration in their wisdom penned this friendly form:

Request form
(visitor @ S.G. residence)

Date:
Name of applicant:
Room number:
Name of stayer: [my favourite line]
Sex: [is this a yes or no question?]
Relationship with applicant: [see above answer]
Passport No.: [I suggested my colleague just fake this. Two random letters and six random digits should do it. I gave my old passport number and suggested its use.]
Intended length of stay:
Purpose of stay: [see field five]
Signature

I wish my camera was working at that moment, because I would definitely have photographed the form. I had to transcribe it instead. Now, at this moment, with a bit of sober reflection, I might not even do that, but at that moment I’m sure smoke was coming out of my ears. I’ve never had any outside guests in for overnight or multi-night stays, but if I chose to do that, I sure as ____ wasn’t going to ask the school permission. I mean, within reason, I guess. Having somebody in for a month or more would be a little weird. But this has been done. More to the point, in the context of much shorter stays, I feel that who we have over is our _______ business, not theirs. And… passport number? Really.

Anyway, my colleague was actually prudent to ask in this situation, and I was a fool to remark upon any of it. I’ve learned from this not to get involved in things that don’t concern me – my two cents were not wanted by either party. There’s no way to escape it: I looked like, and was, an ass.

Sankanbi Recap: I didn’t teach a sankanbi lesson, but I taught a lot that day, and I also had driveway duty – I stood by the road and smiled and bowed slightly to the incoming parents. This is spiritually crushing, because they are more often than not coming in driving Lexuses, BMWs, Mercedes… It was a long, taxing day, and at the end of it all we had to change classrooms – the West Building was open again! While that means no more having to change shoes twice to go to Year One and Two classes (and thank God for that), it meant we had to reshuffle everything – and we’d just decorated for Sankanbi! (What a waste! We should have moved everything, decorated, and then held Sankanbi. Still, it’s not like you can schedule renovation work that precisely.)

[The west building being open means that a certain Pokémon poster promulgating the food groups is visible again. I’d said that I didn’t like what it represented (and it’s advertising inside a school to boot), but I guess it is appropriate because Pikachu.]

As part of the preparations, we waxed the floors the night before – you learn something new every day with this job! All of the little extras lately have run me ragged. Even cleaning the male teacher’s bathroom today as part of my Week Duty was taxing. When I get home in the evenings, all I want to do is listen to podcasts, watch political pundits, and drink beer. My abortive posts would begin with, “I’m so tired…”

If the rain presently falling lets up, I’m leaving early this morning for Temples 20 and 21. The kindergartener’s sports festival is also this morning, so there’ll be no sleeping in anyway (gee, if ya think batting practice is loud…) – I might as well be on the road, and away from any reminders of work. Update: Still here. I was up too late last night fighting off sleep and composing this, and this morning I almost had to sleep until 12:30. Eeesh. I'll go tomorrow. This is a long weekend, so I have that kind of casual, easy flexibility.

Current Mood: microsleeping

01:20 pm - Ubuntu 8.04

While you're waiting for XP SP3...

I'm posting from my first truly successful installation of Ubuntu on my computer.

Is it ready to be a mainstream desktop replacement? (And, on that note, are we looking for a problem to go with this solution?) Well, allllllmost.

It's definitely ready to be an alternate desktop for those of you who are even the least bit technical. (HAHA WHAT A PUN OMG I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK)

The prime reason to make the move to evaluating Ubuntu now is that you can install it on top of Windows. Seriously. No repartitioning your hard drive or any of that stuff. I partitioned my hard drive myself when I first got this machine, and it would have gone better if I'd known what I was doing - I tried to install Ubuntu back then, but I didn't have my machine partitioned properly.

Now a good old NTFS (or maybe even FAT / FAT32?) Windows partition is all you need (if you're running Windows, you have this) and 5GB (low end) to 30GB (phat, I settled for 15) of free space. Maybe defragment your target drive first; you don't want this big file you're going to have to end up fragmented, right?

Download the Ubuntu ISO, burn it to a CD, and then load the CD within Windows and start the installation from there. This is really sexy; it's what a lot of people who weren't willing to tear apart their Windows installations were praying for.

The Ubuntu-on-Windows installation is so easy and painless it's almost unfair. You'll be up and running in under 20 minutes. It even makes the changes to your XP bootloader for you so that you can easily chose between XP and Ubuntu every time you boot up. XP remains the default, so if you just turn on your computer and walk away, when you come back you'll see your good old XP desktop (or login screen, as the case may be).

Ubuntu's good points:

- It's beautiful and functional.
- It seems like a great environment in which to get some work done.
- It's a clear improvement on previous releases. My wireless actually worked properly this time, even with a passkey having been set up.
- The package / installation manager is great (when it works). You won't like going back to Windows and downloading and executing .exe files; that's not nearly as sexy.
- It eats and breathes interoperability; your Mac-formatted iPod will work just fine with it - in fact, I had to run a LiveCD instance of Ubuntu the other day to copy some mp3s off a co-worker's Mac-formatted iPod. (Windows lacks native capability in this area and requires an expensive add-on.)

... and the not-so-great:

- Some key Windows titles are not available for Linux. I cite ACDSee, SlingPlayer (for my SlingBox), and Adobe Premiere. When I'm editing videos I can't live without the last item, and I can never live without the first two. Since I don't have a Intel Core Duo processor stepping with the feature that enables side-by-side operating system instances, greatly diminishing what I could get from virtualization, the virtualization solution wouldn't really work. I'll still need to use Windows more often than Linux.
- The features that let Ubuntu play with proprietary file types (MP3, Windows Media, etc..) aren't installed by default for copyright / royalty reasons. You have to install a package called "Ubuntu Restricted Extras." This is easy to do using the aforementioned package manager - heck, you can even update a LiveCD RAM-based "installation" this way if you're doing something like accessing a Mac-formatted iPod - but many new users won't realize this and will be wondering why they can't get their MP3s to play.
- My wireless finally worked, yes, but not without a few user-interface-related configuration hiccups. I guess I should be glad that I didn't have to "wrap" a Windows driver or anything uber-technical like that.
- I couldn't get my TV to act as a second monitor - at least not in a way that actually worked (I just saw fuzz on the TV screen). Amazingly, changing screen resolution on the fly is a recent feature - and some prior releases I played with didn't work at my native widescreen resolution, so everything looked kind of hazy. The interface for all this is still quite clunky compared to the Windows equivalent.

Still, don't let those, my personal quibbles with Ubuntu, stop you. Linux purists who have been here all along may not agree with me, or may be disgusted even if they do agree, but the ability to install a mainstream Linux distribution on a Windows drive may prove to be a key watershed moment. PCs are going to continue to be shipped with Windows pre-installed, which I think is actually a good thing because we still need Windows anyway. More to the point, Windows pre-installed on a machine costs little to the end user - rumour has it that it that these installations pay for themselves through sponsored add-ins. ("TRY AOL FREE," et al.) And nobody wants to repartition their harddrive, unless they have the luxury of owning a computer just to play with it. This all adds up to a recipe for adoption, if you ask me.

So yeah, have fun! Ubuntu's pack-in version of Solitaire includes a hint feature, if you were wondering.

Current Mood: chipper

06:56 pm - The Apple Air

Today started out Monday, but it improved greatly after second period and became a very fine, happy day.

The Giants won Super Bowl XLII. How about that?

And Apple just came out with a computer that I keep unknowingly calling “Apple Air,” because I like the two capital As. I got the news from PvP.

The way things stand right now, not having an optical drive is going to cause some people problems. I suppressed a cynical laugh when Steve Jobs said that nowadays people can rent movies wirelessly from Apple; but why pay for that when you can get them from the library for free, in a higher definition, and with all the special features and doodads that downloaded movies lack? Also, people do still listen to music CDs – not everyone has mini-plug inputs in their cars to accommodate an MP3 player, and that’s just for starters.

All that said, I made similar pronouncements when the original iMac was released a decade ago. It lacked a floppy drive, and at that time I was using floppies every day. Scratch that, I mean hourly. I did everything on 3.5-inch “floppies,” and with online e-mail being what it was at the time and USB keys being unknown (and the ports for them being scarce), floppies were the only reliable way for me to move data. (I can even remembering spanning ZIP files to carry multi-megabyte files over multiple discs. I’m glad those days are over.)

“Oh, but it had an optical drive!” you say. Oh sure, it did – but how were you going to get stuff off of that computer? The first recordable drive for the model, a CD-RW, came out in 2001. By then you could e-mail stuff to yourself reliably, and the iMac itself was being overshadowed by the PowerMac G4 and a bunch of other stuff in the pipeline, and a G4 iMac came out in 2002, presumably with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive at the entry level.

Still, this Apple Air, sans optical drive, is the kind of computer that I’ll probably need to get someday, in conjunction with a home server for storing photos and working with video. I’ll forget about storing large files on the Air, because I’ll definitely be getting one with a 64GB solid-state drive… a few years from now when doing so doesn’t add $1,024 to the price! (And if you really need an optical drive, a slim and elegant USB-powered unit is available for just $99.)

Maybe I’ll just send myself back to university instead and continue buying electronic items on the soap scum that’s left over after the bathtub of tuition has been drained.

Current Mood: contemplative

03:51 pm - "a nice, heavy paperweight"

Before I got the notebook, my most modern computer that I could call mine was sort of handed down from my stepfather: his old P166. It's taking up space on my desk at this minute.

I've been mucking out my room, and some of these old computers that I never use have just got to go - I've got another P166 from the B's (a true-blue Aptiva, no less) with the hard drive out of it, and a 486 with Windows 3.11 that I used extensively in the early 2000's. I'll probably remove the remaining hard drives and put the chassis in the attic. I found the box for my stepfather's old TI-99, and in case we ever find the actual 'computer,' I advised retaining it - some people collect that stuff, especially in this case when it works OK.

Another computer I'll keep is my old Acer laptop - it's a tank, and it just needs a CMOS battery. It's a unique enough unit to be worth keeping, not to mention that it was a Christmas gift from my father, and it was my only computer for many, many years.

Anyway, after I got back from Ukraine, I had use of the handed-down P166 (although it wasn't as useful as before as the floppy drive, graphics accelerator, and some other bits were removed for use in his "new" machine), and so I reconfigured that and purchased a home wireless kit that came with a USB dongle. So now I had wireless internet on my 1997 machine.

Now, though, with the new notebook, I've only turned that machine on a handful of times this year. Today I was deciding whether or not I'd keep it. A few factors to consider:

- I can't for the life of me get the computer to connect to the network with the new settings - any sort of passkey (even WEP) just frustrates it. I think it boils down to either the CPU or Windows 98.

- Well, maybe I'd be able to connect with Knoppix from my LiveCD? That would also be a good excuse to try out Knoppix, right? We'll just change the boot order in the BIOS, reset, and I'll be surfing again in no time!

- Knoppix took 45 minutes to load.

Yeah. I think it's over. The new day has dawned. I'm glad I didn't buy a car instead.

Current Mood: amused

05:32 pm - tech milestone; notes from opening night

Today is the first day I’ve brought a modern laptop to a class. (I once dragged my old 386 to Intro Computer Science to run Turbo C++ in MS-DOS to try out little code snippets while the prof. ran Visual C++ on Windows 2000.) I’m really impressed with the battery life, especially for a large-ish 15” notebook – there was almost 20% still remaining, after being on from 11:45 straight to 3:45 – three straight lectures! I guess I could get about four or five hours straight just typing in MS Word in these optimal conditions: not playing music, not running SETI@home (that eats the battery), and disabling the wireless radio (generally, it’s distracting to have web access during lectures anyway). I’m really glad I sprung for the better battery.

My only problem is that, especially in my very small Chaucer class, I’m wondering if my constant typing annoys people. I will break a social rule and ask – on a day that I don’t bring the notebook. =)

In Intro Psychology it’s okay, because dozens of people have notebooks and the venue is a cavernous lecture theatre.

Actually, I have a few problems with Intro Psych. I love the material, but I kind of dislike the class, because everybody hates me. Gah, it’s like Computer Science all over again! Every time I answer a question or basically do anything, I hear snide whispers. What gives?

On Monday the professor was saying something like, “You’re happy! You’re astonished! You’re amazed; as if you got 100 on the exam! Actually, I think one person did that.”

That was me.

I didn’t do as well on the first exam; I only got a 98/100.

I wisely stayed silent.

We opened last night, and it was OK. Our closing song was a rousing, upbeat rendition of “Hey, Ho, the Wind and Rain.” In fact we were so enthusiastic that we came up with four simultaneous and different ways to sing the first line of the last verse, and equally different timing on the final notes. We sounded like this:

A loneat whime ago the world began
with thhey, ho, the wiand the ndrain
But that's all one, our pldone is lay
And we'll strive to pleayou se, evday ryday!

Still, our audience seemed happy. Some of our scenes were really smoking. Overall, it was a successful first show. Tonight should be even better. I’m going to see if I can pick times to be a convincingly, deeply frustrated Malvolio. I want to harness things like missing my bus two days in a row because the rat b*****d came early, walking all the way back home from my bus stop last night because my mother didn’t feel well, but then being asked to move the van that would have saved me the exhaustion on top of exhaustion (when you’re at school for 10-14 hours at a go, an after-midnight 25-minute walk home is not as pleasurable as it ought to be). I’m hoping against hope that Simon, the lighting guy who lives in Sackville, drove down here tonight – getting a drive from Mom lately has been like pulling teeth. I miss the car. I really miss the car. Last semester was an entirely different lifestyle. If I went back in time to January, I think I would have taken the (obscene amount of) money I spent on this notebook and put it on a car. The problem with the car, though, is that it’s a continuing money pit. The notebook requires comparatively little upkeep and maintenance, and it can generate its own creative wealth.

That paragraph got lost and forgot its destination. I’ll leave you with two unrelated (yes, actually unrelated) things:

( pay attention to your friends... )

2. Our little blonde-haired friend has recently filed a civil suit against one of our actors. In fact, she specifically timed the suit to coincide with our opening night (and, sadly, her “You guys hate me!” is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy), and our actor showed up at court in his costume! They set a date for the meat of the proceedings. We know that she set this time deliberately, as the time of day in question is normally reserved for traffic court, unless someone specifically asks for it. And there was the usual drama of her not wanting to be in the courtroom with him and all kinds of other nonsense. OK, end of story. Or so we think.

For the play, I needed to fill up some prop wine bottles with water. So I’m at the water fountain by the security desk filling these bottles. Suddenly I hear someone at the security desk speaking on the phone, “… May [trial date]th, [charge], he’s in the play…”

… and I turn and discover this same girl, with her back towards me. I made haste to fill up the bottles and escape without being noticed. I may have succeeded.

The problem with all this is that on one hand she says she’s afraid of this guy, and on the other she proactively comes to where he is to attempt to make trouble. On one hand she cries of his supposed unspeakable offences, and on the other she says it would be awful if he moved on. On one hand she’s broke, and on the other she borrows money to buy puppies – and reportedly asking, “I wonder what [the guy] would think of these?”, and to top it off she also borrowed money for something else (but it’s so sensational that I dare not say what outside of absolute proof). So what gives? Nothing she does makes any logical sense. Except to her. She must have her own internal checks and balances. Her task will be to make them fit with those of the outside world. I wish her well in this, and look forward to seeing her well adjusted in her later years.

Current Mood: cold

04:22 pm - back to basics

Alright, here I am, back in Windows again. Ferry crossed the Mersey and here I’ll stay and all that. I wasn’t ready for Linux. Too many new paradigms, too many new brick walls to run headlong into. Ah, I feel so much better now…

I deleted the Linux root and swap partitions using the Gparter that comes up during Ubuntu installation, which is about the only thing I ever managed to get working the way it was supposed to. I used it to shrink my XP partition and created two new NTFS partitions: one for data and one for video (many non-linear editing programs recommend a dedicated partition). The data partition will make backups easier as well as simplifying the transition to Windows Vista.

After bulldozing Ubuntu I couldn’t boot – I’d get stuck at a Grub error maybe three seconds after powering up. So I slipped in the XP Recovery CD, hoping that I wouldn’t have to endure a full installation (and then the updates!). I went into recovery console, formatted my new partitions, then ran fixmbr which fixed up the boot sector and normalized things. And XP recognized my new partitions without issue.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that although it’s possible to do better than Windows, it’s really just a ton of work. The hardware manufacturers and Linux distributors still have a lot of work to do in making things usable, accessible, and intuitive. I should have had my hand held though the partitioning process and the default option certainly shouldn’t have been to reformat everything! =)

Anyway, I’ve got everything here working the way I want it to – my documents are saving in the right places, my settings are just so, etc.. so I guess I don’t really need to be using another operating system anyway.

Current Mood: relieved

09:25 am - Ubuntu - we have lift-off!

Okay, I got Ubuntu functioning; I just need to install it semi-permanently. It was a bit of trouble to get my wireless going, but once I enabled the device it was easy from there. Oh, but Ubuntu thinks it's 9:30 ... of course!! GMT! Ha-ha!

Seriously. I seriously need. Sleep.

Oh, and I fixed the Num Lock thing; it was a setting in the BIOS, where I had to go anyway to adjust the boot device order so I could access Ubuntu. =) It still uses the wrong lamp, b4t at 3east 5t w6r2s.

Current Mood: tired

04:26 am - the new laptop

I got my beautiful Dell today, and I'm posting from it. It's quite good-looking. I'm generally happy with it, but there are a few outstanding issues:

- It took three-and-a-half hours to install all the Windows and Office (Word) updates. (Well, I passed on IE7, because I've heard it can mess things up, and I don't use IE anyway.) Yes, 3:30. Would it have killed Dell and Microsoft to come together and bring things a little more up to date? I mean, I was downloading patches from 2004 here! I don't mind doing lots of things myself, which is why I was comfortable with choosing a PC over a Mac, but this seems silly.

- The Num Lock doesn't work. It's nice that I can theoretically bring it on just by pressing Num Lock (instead of having to use Function key + Scroll Lock like I've seen on some models), but pushing it just lights the Caps Lock light a little brighter. Actually, I wouldn't care about the lamps, but I still get letters when I hit the appropriate keys. Heck, Scroll Lock lights the Caps Lock lamp as well. I hope this is a software issue, but with the wrong light going on, I have my doubts! At least Caps Lock works, but I rarely use it. UPDATE: Okay, it does work, just not the way I expected. If I don't have Num Lock on, holding down Fn and pushing those keys causes the cursor to move; if I have Num Lock on, I can use the Fn key to get numbers out of them. Gee, my old Acer had a better solution than that...

- The FireWire port is a 4-pin. I don't know if that means I just need a dongle, or if that actually limits what I can connect to it. Research to follow. I'm a number of days away from even thinking about editing video, but it'll come.

- A fair amount of unnecessary things start up by default. I've cleared out the worst offenders, but Dell ought to know that when the left edge of the system tray icons starts to creep past the middle of the screen, it's time to chose who goes there a little more carefully. For instance, please spare me that hateful QuickTime Quick Launcher. You would have made me just that little bit happier without these kinds of annoyances.

Things I liked:

+ The initial run of XP prompted me to set a bunch of things up while Enigma or some kind of new-age elevator-relaxo music played over the speakers. It felt and sounded good. The speakers on this rig are NOT your stereotypical tin-bin wonders, and while they're not going to deliver heart-pounding bass, they sound just fine. Also note that I did not need a 17" 10-pound "multimedia" behemoth to get this satisfactory performance.

+ Typing's not too bad on this. I especially like the dedicated cursor control keys, (Home, End, etc..) although it'd be nice if they were a little bit bigger. Of course, this is notwithstanding the major, major keyboard issue noted above.

+ The wireless 0wnz. I'm glad I sprung for the Intel chipset - at least it's not doing any harm. This baby connected to my network faster than I can read this sentence and a heckuva lot faster than I can type it. Throughput is barely distinguishable from a conventional ethernet connection - maybe that's par for the course these days, but I've seen my share of pretty crappy wireless connections and I'm glad I'm not reliant upon one of them. Of course, part of this is because my network is named "default" (ugh) and is totally unsecured. But if you saw where we lived, you'd forgive my laxity.

+ The display is nice and bright while maintaining fine detail. I didn't really have any specific expectations, but I'm pleased nonetheless. The colours come across quite well. I have yet to run any games on it or do any of the zillion things I dreamed I might do tonight (creating a FAT32 partition and installing Ubuntu and FreeDOS, for instance), but I think it'll be fine. I could be the envy of Intro Psych.

I'm trying out LiveJournal.NET for this post. Apparently it can leverage Word for spell-checking. (It does - it's just horribly implemented. After you hit the post button you get the lovely red sqiggly lines but no way to chose a correct spelling. Plus it's checking with American spelling, and I've already set my default language in word to English (Canadian).)

I'd better hurry up and get some sleep - I've got a phone interview with the former video director at Camp Towanda at 11 ET / Noon Atlantic. I don't know how I feel yet about spending more than 8 uninterrupted weeks in a bubble, but I suppose it would be just like Canada World Youth only with more games, fewer CADs, and a wage.

Current Mood: tired

04:32 pm - arrival + injuries + interviews

My laptop just arrived back home; Mom signed for it. Sweet. They said they'd attempted delivery at 8:45 this morning but this was probably bull or the driver didn't feel like going up our driveway (a common occurrence). But it's there now.

It wouldn't have done me any good for it to be any earlier, given that I haven't been home since yesterday morning. Heather's dust-up forced her to return home and I spent last night helping look after her. A certain other fellow was initially very helpful, but later on kind of dropped the ball. It's also a good idea to read the directions on prescription painkillers. Just a memo to any of my friends out there in SMUDS with Slavic last names. <cough>

Heather's mom and grandmother were really nice; they even picked me up and dropped me off at the bus stop. Speaking of which, I had a dream last night that my car had been fixed. I was driving around, rocking out to They Might Be Giants and getting things done. And then I woke up to the alarm on my new phone*. It was the same tune, but it sounded differently.

Things change.

I had an in-person interview with "Z" from Camp Towanda yesterday afternoon. (This was lucky because I brought along causal clothes to change into, which came in handy this morning!) They're looking for a head video guy to coordinate their Friday Night Flix and what-not. I think I could do it; my weaknesses are my dearth of PhotoShop skills (I'm only versed in basic tasks, but I'm a quick study), and also not knowing what's cool - the genre of "camp video" requires a lot of pop-culture music-mix panache that I simply don't possess. Fortunately, I wouldn't be working on my own, and maybe the other members of the media crew could fill in on that end of the creative spectrum. I'm an editing whiz, and I can make things visually interesting, but music makes things come alive.

* - Since people have been asking =) yes, it's the same phone number: (902)-877-WILL (9455). Call away!

08:30 pm - missed connections + moving?

Confession: I’ve been studiously avoiding Tanya and the entire B. clan for the past few months. While I think it was a good (albeit painful) decision that helped me start to move on, I’ve just found out that part of my justification for this was a fraud. That is to say, I got an apologetic e-mail from Tanya today.

She sent it in October.

I double-checked the headers to be sure, and yes – she really did send it in October, on the 18th, maybe a week or so after my original e-mail.

There wasn’t a lot to it, just an acknowledgement that she was being swamped, etc. I was convinced that she was continuing to be rude to me, especially after she’d dumped plans with me repeatedly, and the last straw for me was when she unilaterally dumped our plans (and didn’t call or write about it) in favour of plans with… well, her more-than-boyfriend Alex. Ugh. Just how more-than was the singular depression of my entire summer and early fall.

I guess I should be glad I didn’t get the e-mail. It may have given me false hope to cling to. I’m glad I’ve got it now, when I have the good fortune to be dating someone sweet, cute, and magnanimous.

Ugh, heart sinking again. It’s almost like Spring ’06 all over again. I sunk to the floor when I got the e-mail. My head started swimming.

Must… get… back… to… reality… You know, like schoolwork, or the AFC Championship. Yes, there’s lots’ going on!

On the laptop front, it looks like it’ll ship on the 29th, so having it in time for my birthday is a long shot, but I guess that’s okay since I bought it primarily with scholarship money that I received in the Fall. I didn’t even think I’d still have that money, but with good fortune and insane penny-pinching, I was able to stretch it out. Now I’m broke =) but everything’s paid for. And I’m getting lots of exercise every day with those two 25-minute walks.

Heather told me today that she found it kind of annoying that I live out here. (Gee, I find it kind of annoying sometimes, too!) =) If I were a normal person of my age, I’d just find a job and move out. I could afford the time away from my studies, even perhaps with being in the play, as my courses are much, much easier this semester. Still, I think it’s better that I stay put, because I don’t know what I’ll be doing for the summer yet, and getting all uprooted just for the sake of ten weeks’ convenience doesn’t seem worth it.

Annoyingly, I covet my own place more and more every day, even though I’ve learned to make the most of living here. Funny how that works.

I feel better already.

Current Mood: calm

06:43 pm - decision... made!

The only way I'm ever going to be able to live with myself is to take the two systems I covet most and go over them blow-by-blow.

Finishing in second place...

MODEL: White MacBook, Apple
BASE PRICE: CDN$1,350.00 with education discount

• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (wow)
• 1GB RAM
• 80GB HD 5400rpm
• 6x Dual Layer DVD Writer
• Wi-fi + Bluetooth (that's very thoughtful)
• Intel GMA 950 64MB (yuck!! However, it is reported to be able to handle Vista's Aero Glass. But getting Windows onto this system is tricky, to be charitable.)
• 13.3" display, 1280x800
• Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger (probably the most compelling reason to buy)

• 1.60GHz Intel Core Duo (this would be a noticeable notch down from the Core 2. However, this move will save me money while retaining most of the real-world performance I need. Who cares if ripping a song takes 1:17 instead of 1:10? Most of the time, I'm too distracted to notice anyway)
• 2GB RAM (by default!)
• 100GB HD 7200rpm (default is 160GB 5400rpm, this change adds $60 to the price - if I miss the extra 40 gigs down the road, I can always archive things like old photos on a FireWire external hard drive, and they're getting cheaper all the time)
• 8x Dual Layer DVD Writer
• Wi-fi a/b/g ($10 more than b/g; I was considering buying draft n at a premium, but now I'll stick with the a/b/g, because I don't even know of any n access points yet, and my house already has g, and I'm not made of money)
• ATi Mobility Radeon x1400 256MB (ATi will get the job done - I like ATi, and their modern chipsets are compatible with almost every 3-D game ever released. Regular 2-D use should be just that little bit zippier as well. This was "free," and a "$100 value." Just a few weeks ago, it wasn't, and it was dragging my price up.)
• 15.4" display (So this definitely isn't an ultraportable, but the starting weight was still a reasonable five pounds. I've probably made it heavier.)
• Windows XP Professional with Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Business (default is Media Centre with upgrade to Home Premium, this change adds $60 to the price but makes networking on college campuses and other secure places a guaranteed slam dunk)
• Also took the 9-cell battery over the 6-cell (this added $40 to the price but will make perhaps an hour's difference in battery life - bonus: unlike many other laptops, this enhanced battery doesn't stick out the back end of the chassis. Also, that 7200rpm drive will be drawing more power.)
• Microsoft Works 8 plus Word (the only Office item I really need; I'll be downloading and installing the free OpenOffice.org, which will handle the rest (Excel files, PowerPoint files, etc..) well enough for my purposes. As a frequent typer, it's worth the extra $30 to me to have the Microsoft Word I'm used to.)

Current Mood: jubilant

11:40 pm - laptop update

I'm going to go to Future Shop in person tomorrow to check out this bad boy:

Acer Aspire 5050 ($999.99)

This is the same machine as the $799.99 unit Nic alerted me to, but with 2GB of RAM. This begs the question: $200 for 1GB of RAM?! Especially when Dell.ca lets you upgrade that much starting at $150. It's a question I'll pose politely to the salesperson. Let's see if they bite.

If I go with the Acer over the Dell Dimension 6400, I lose several significant things:

1. Step down to AMD Turion 64 x2 from the faster Intel Core 2 Duo.
2. An inch of display.
3. MASSIVE step down in battery life (esp. compared with the 8-cell primary I would have opted for with Dell), from 3-4 hours to less than 2
4. People say that Acer laptops are kind of crap, and the Acer I witnessed in our group in Ukraine did turn out kind of crappy in the end - the irritant for me was that the sound went wonky and off-pitch (even with headphones!) and try as I might I couldn't restore proper sound. It was just off just enough to be really freaking annoying, you know?
5. This is really just a convenience issue, but the Dell and the Lenovo both had bootless media playback - you could play your movies and music without loading Windows first!
6. The Dell just looks nicer. The Lenovo looks WAY nicer, and if it weren't for the Lenovo's inability to run Vista in Aero Glass, I'd still be shopping for one.

Current Mood: awake

11:44 pm - new laptop Final Four; my phone's journey to the Promised Province

Not that long ago, I can remember looking at laptops with 20-40GB hard drives, 512MB RAM if you were lucky, and compromised processors. A "combo drive" meant that you got a CD-RW. I'm so glad I didn't buy back in those dark ages - I'd be stuck with a piece of junk that would make the Canada World Youth laptops look good.

Now, things are much different, and you can get some really neat dual-core machines for a reasonable price - the only thing that they lack from their desktop counterparts is the bulk.

Well, excepting those lame "multimedia laptops" with 15"-17" screens - one of my groupmates had a HP-Compaq "entertainment" laptop in Ukraine, and it had to be the least practical thing imaginable. It weighed so much that the owner just left it in our office most of the time. The screen looked nice, but we didn't give a s**t about the JBL speakers and the ports and doodads we never used - heck, that thing might have had a parallel port!

Okay, that computer WAS a lifesaver many times, but a lighter model could have done the jobs just as well. Better, because she would have kept it with her that much more often.

There are now four contenders for my new laptop. If anyone's purchased these or any other laptops recently, let me know what you think of them!

4. Black MacBook (Apple)

They're getting relatively affordable, but there are some major things that turn me off. First, I can't get discrete graphics and a 7200RPM drive without moving up to the MacBook Pro. Honestly, if I'm going to get an Apple, I WANT TO EDIT VIDEO. If I'm going to pay a premium for Apple, I'm going big or going home. Well, I have seen people successfully run Final Cut Express (iMovie = yuck!) on Apple notebooks, but my NSCAD professor strongly advised against it, and I'll drop enough frames as it is with dirty DV tape and other mishaps. I always dream of doing video but I might need to put this dream aside for now, as getting a laptop up to the task is going to cost north of $2K when the dust settles.

My second gripe is that the auxiliary video output is "mini-DVI." That means that in order to hook up to a monitor or projector, I need to purchase a dongle. Separately. Give me a break. I know Apple wants to be legacy-free, but a VGA-out is, in my (Mac)book, Standard Equipment. Every presentation I've ever been involved in has been VGA-enabled. I'm not saying it'll stay that way forever, but give me my VGA! (Although you may wish to note that this is coming from someone who went into town one day last year just to buy a floppy drive.)

Also, I've got my misgivings about the keyboard. I don't think it stands up to Lenovos / ThinkPads.

Sorry, Apple. Maybe next time.

3. Latitude 640m (Dell)
2. Latitude 6400 (Dell)

These are almost the same computer, but the 6400 is a bit bigger physically - the tradeoff is that I can get a 7200RPM hard disk and dedicated graphics, giving myself a little screamer of a notebook. But, it's bigger. I hear "big" mentioned too many times in too many reviews. And to get it configured the way I want costs over $1,700. Plus tax. So we're looking at just over $2K, which is more money than I can lay fingers on right now.

The 640m is a candidate, but it's kind of a compromise of the 6400.

I heard that the keyboards are kind of blah, which is again a turn-off.

A nice touch is that you can play many of your movies and albums on this machine without even having to boot up. But, there's another little machine out there that does this...

1. Lenovo 3000 V100 (Lenovo)

This is one sexy little computer. I need to give myself a one-week cooling-off period on it, because it's *really* tempting to just snap one up now and get some work done pronto. It's got the portability (4 pounds with optical drive; 12.5" widescreen display - yes, you can call me "squinty"), the same bootless media playing that Dell offers, plus a ThinkPad-like keyboard (a major consideration for me: if I don't get a laptop that makes me want to type on it, then there's no point). Most reviewers are raving about the keyboard, and the portability for the price - and that price is really OMG hot - the base configuration is lower than any of the other choices at normal, human configurations (don't get me started on what Dell figures we should settle for and what we should throw money away on - HOWEVER, they do have IMO the best website in the industry). The only drawback is the integrated graphics, but it's hard to expect a dedicated card at this size and price point. I think this one might be the winner, though I might need to get an aftermarket RAM upgrade if I intend to run Vista (which I probably won't; an XP / Linux dual-boot would suit me fine).

As you can see, I'm kind of leaning towards the 3000 V100, with at least a 100GB hard drive and as much RAM as I can reasonably get (it tops out at 2GB, but doing the .5 / 1 to 2 GB upgrade on my own might be cheaper, as is sometimes the case.

Wait! All these machines are Intel Core 2 Duo! What about AMD?

Well, AMD right now is kind of stretching the longevity of their mobile platform by lengthening their pipelines. You could buy an AMD-based machine and never make a mistake, but Intel seems to be having a slight edge in the benchmarks now, thanks to their relatively new platform. (Slow-simmering Pentium chips these ain't.) A few years ago (back in those aforementioned dark ages), I would have been AMD all the way, because Pentiums could have been doing double-duty as toaster elements. Things have changed, though. I'm sure AMD will come out with a new edge soon, but right now I think the smart bucks are on Intel.

* * *

Ah, but before I buy a laptop, I should wait and see how much it's going to be to fix / replace my phone. It's gone to Ontario without me. They're going to charge me $25 just to look at it, but I guess I can live with that for curiosity's sake. (Plus it gets deducted from the repair if said repair is undertaken.)

The guys at the "service centre" were kind of a*****es - they weren't happy to see me, and they weren't happy to talk to me, and they weren't happy to send the phone away for me. The "service" consisted of trying my phone without the battery, plugged into a wall outlet. (Gee, thanks, I could do that at home.) At that point, they instantly decreed there was nothing they could try. I noticed they had about a zillion clones of my phone lying in a "parts" bin.

(Oh, and as soon as it was shown that I was 7 months away from the end of my contract (and upgrade ineligibility), the lackluster treatment kicked into high gear.)

As I'm about to leave:

"Okay, we'll call you when we hear back from them..."
"Ha-ha, but you'll call my home number, right?"
"..."
"Do you guys have my home number?"
"Oh, yeah, what's your home phone number?"

... Grrr. Thanks for nothing, Telus. I'm glad these bozos aren't fixing it; obviously the fact that there's no money in my phone for them is a big turn-off. Boo-hoo.

UPDATE: You have to shop around to get a decent deal on the Lenovo - Lenovo's website has the worst prices, but the situation improves elsewhere - like here, for instance. I'm sure I'll find more. Also, I forgot to mention that Apple makes you buy yet another USB dongle if you want to have dial-up capability. Again, the Lenovo has this built-in. You laugh, but that dial-up modem was my cousin Andrew's lifeline on his HP machine when we were down in Sherbrooke!

ARGH the Lenovo has Core Duo, NOT Core 2 Duo. D**n. This might take us back to the drawing board. I see that Nic's just chimed in; he'll have something pretty good to say.

Current Mood: busy

10:40 pm - see you in September- (oh, wait...)

Ah, it feels so good to finally get some Ukraine photos organized. I have everything covered up to our journey into the Carpathians, so I’m approximately half done. There are so, so many memories. I miss travelling hither and yon with Shelley. We had some good times together.

I went for a 16km bike ride up and down the Confederation Trail this evening - I even met the Trail Patrol along the way, and on my return trip an hour later they were still in the same place. I wanted to ask what they were doing, but felt it better not to get involved. I was also hearing the odd rifle shot and wondering if it was related.

The trip: We managed to have breakfast in St. Peters as well as make a few shopping stops in Charlottetown. Aunt Shirley and I got new sneakers while Uncle Shane drove away and got a haircut in addition to his stops at the library and photo lab. Talk about multitasking.

Mill River was fine, but when we set out for “our” 2:30pm tee-time, I made the mistake of chattering to Shane about the merits of choosing a wood versus an iron for teeing off on the first hole. The starter, who may have decided to turn a blind eye before, came up with, “Excuse me, is he just walking with you?” and then insisted that we’d have to rent a cart. (I don’t play because I can’t afford to; I just walk around for the exercise and company. I know enough about golf not to get in anyone’s way or disturb people.) So it would be okay for me to sit in a cart all afternoon, but not to walk - I couldn’t even caddy for Uncle Shane.

Uncle Shane would have been willing to rent a cart, but I really wanted to walk. So I told them to go ahead, and I went for a bit of a walk. I found a cottager’s lane which parallelled the latter part of the first fairway, then stealthily caught up with them about halfway through the second hole. We had a great time, and then at the 17th tee, I hit the road (literally), and walked a mile or so around the perimeter of the resort and back in the main driveway. I could have taken a shortcut through the turf care facility, but it’s just as well that I didn’t discover that until it was too late, because I got a few nice photos the way I did go.

Afterwards we had a swim (complete with hot tub and waterslide - just fantastic!) and then drove to O’Leary for our late supper. Good times.

A digression: Everything feels different in Western PEI. They have different newspapers and listen to different radio stations (mostly from New Brunswick). They have different gas stations and different supermarkets. I’m serious! It’s as different from Eastern PEI as Mainland Nova Scotia is from Cape Breton. It feels a little like being on the other side of the world.

The next day we acquiesced and rented a cart (just as well, there was a long day ahead of us), and we had another enjoyable round. After leaving the resort, we drove through various little towns... not much point in going into detail now as I’ll be Flickring it in a few days. Right now I need a break from it, but I’ll be back in the saddle soon.

Anyway, we had great fun driving around, and then we ate at the Heritage Pub in Summerside and after that I got a chance to walk around on the waterfront and (you guessed it) take pictures. Then we went to see Anne and Gilbert, which was uncompromisingly excellent and may soon merit equal consideration with the “other” musical. Of course, you wouldn’t want to have both shows in Charlottetown. It makes absurdly perfect sense to have this complementary show in Summerside, which is itself PEI’s complementary city.

And I’ve spent the last day or two after we got back organizing photos and thinking about my next move. If that Farm Mutual scholarship comes through, I’m going to buy a laptop. For under $1,000, it looks like I can get something half decent. And then I’d have my own machine, and the freedom and means to write and organize my pictures to my heart’s content. More tempting, for $1,300 I can get something reasonably lightweight with complete capabilities. I don’t really need a widescreen laptop, I just want something small and personal.

It’s true that I could get a desktop with equivalent “power” for less money, but I have severe space constraints in my room. It’s much, much easier to sit and write on a laptop - it’s always there. It’s nice and quiet. (Especially since I’m not getting one of those desktop-replacement monstrosities with giant speakers that weighs 50 pounds.) And you can relocate a laptop, which is a nice benefit. I could even take it to school with me, but I most likely wouldn’t - it’d be a drag to have it along on my twenty-five-minute walk to the bus stop.

Anyway, I’ll get my second-semester courses figured out, calculate the wallet damage, and we’ll go from there. Someday I’ll have casual money and this will seem like a dream. Actually, I probably won’t have casual money, I’ll probably be obsessively saving every cent. But sometimes you have to spend a bit of money to make money. Like Virginia Woolf, I need a Laptop of My Own.

It would also be my first opportunity to truly tinker with post-3.1 Windows, as the machine would be mine and nobody would get upset when (inevitably) it stops working.

I’d better stop this now before I start to drool.

My friends are coming over on Monday, and the good news is that they seem to be willing to take the extra little trip to get out here. I’ll meet them in Charlottetown just in case they change their minds. On Tuesday I’ll go back to Nova Scotia. Gee, I’d better hurry up and make that shuttle reservation.

See you!

Your friend,
~ Will

Current Mood: chipper