I WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO DISK UTILITY! Twenty minutes on my Mac at work was all that was needed to fix my iPod. YAY!!!!!! I’m in ecstasy. *orgasm!*
Also: a new record, 97 spam comments today. And I haven’t even opened my email client today, there’s probably a hundred more.
UPDATE: The record is now 161.
Well, now that I’ve purged all the bad things that happened today, time to talk about the few rays of sunshine in this utterly crappy day.
1. On my lunch, I ran into Charley at Ray’s Food Place. I was quite tired and needed food badly, so I really wasn’t a very good conversationalist. But it was cool that he talked to me instead of just pretending I wasn’t there. I didn’t notice him, but he yelled at me. Which was cool.
2. I caught two Star Trek episodes tonight, one of them the really good one where Dr. crusher gets stuck in this subspace bubble and everybody starts disappearing. Her interactions with the computer are priceless. “Computer: what is the universe?” ” The universe is a sphere 700 meters in diameter.”
3. I found out that the Dell flat-panel widescreen monitor uses the same panel as the Apple Cinema Display, and is $150 cheaper. It’s definitely not as sexy, but I definitely won’t pay $150 for sexiness alone. And let’s face it, I don’t have that kind of cash. Its $700 for the Apple display, $550 for the Dell one. And in the review I read, they were almost exactly the same. In fact, the Dell display was a bit brighter.
Well, for the moment this is all academic. I don’t think my video card supports the advanced DVI interface that either of the displays use. I think I’m going to have to get a new computer, or at least a new video card in order to use a resolution that large (1680×1050). But still, step one is getting the monitor, step two is using it.
I probably should have told my boss that I have jury duty on Monday, but it really didn’t dawn on me that the 24th was Monday until tonight. I should probably call the number to see if it was canceled. Nah, I’m too lazy. Tomorrow.
Darn, I was checking out some of those really great displays and it doesn’t seem like my video card is capable of powering any of them. Lame. I can’t believe I need a new computer. I want to build another one from scratch, but I’m really weirded out about that new socket 775. It’s supposed to have twice as many pins as the old socket and is supposed to be near impossible to self install. And that processor is going to be at least $300. I simply can’t break it. I succeeded with my first computer building experience, but I don’t know about another one. Well, I just had an amazing thought. Oh, never mind. I was thinking about replacing my motherboard with a new one, forgetting that the processor is inextricably attached to the motherboard. I definitely need some sleep. Maybe I should see how much that North Coast electronics place will cost to build me a new system. Well, basically all a need them to do is to install the motherboard into the chassis and attach the processor and heatsink.
But it impugns my status as an ubergeek to have to have someone else put my computer together. Oh well. I should read about how difficult the installation actually is. Well, I need to go to sleep. I hope tomorrow is better.
Categories: Tech lust
I feel vaguely hungry, but I don’t know for what. I finished the amount of sections in my math book that it would take to not be behind (1.5 chapters), but I’m still behind a week’s worth of work. It’s not that the work is difficult at all (I just finished the lengthy and completely pointless chapter on absolute value). Let’s do some problems:
Find the opposite.
-4.
Hmm. I think I’m going to get out my calculator for this one.
Painstakingly writing out all of the pointlessly ridiculously stupid easy questions. On this one section, the question was the answer. You didn’t even have to do any work. Find the opposite of the opposite. Which is the number they give you. So for five minutes all I’m writing is:
15: 3 -> 3
16: -10 -> -10
Well, I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about how easy it is, I should have gotten a better grade on the stupid placement test.
Wednesday I will get more done, but I think I ate too much PEZ today. I kept bribing myself with it and I just couldn’t say no to the cute PEZ dispenser that my mom got me. Thomas left me a comment on my MySpace today. He didn’t say very much, but seemed interested in being friends. I sorta want to send him a message saying that I’m in Brookings every Thursday, but I’m not really sure if I want to hang out with him. He seems sort of immature. But then again, that’s just judging by his MySpace profile. And I have no idea how I come off in my profile. If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that MySpace profiles are not a clear reflection of people’s personalities. I was all into that Philip K. Dick novel yesterday, and now I barely even care how it ends. I’m about 30 pages from finishing it, and I’m also about 20 pages from finishing Frankenstein. Maybe I should do that instead of surfing the Web.
I’ve only been surfing for like 15 minutes anyway. Matt sent me another e-mail wanting to know what’s going on with the web site, and I really don’t have time. Nor do I care. What he wants are like big upgrades, things I don’t have time to do. Well, it’s not so much time as my wrists hurt and I don’t care. And my Internet leisure time has definitely been curtailed, so to fit in all that Web surfing and blog reading, I have to stop working on my web site and his web site, at least until this damn math class is over. I should go in the living room and find something to eat that will assuage my hunger. I just don’t know what I want. My dad made some sort of pork roast thing, but I know that sandwiches made out of that never taste good and are always filled with blood vessels and the like.
Apple is supposed to make some world shattering announcement tomorrow, and as soon as I wake up this morning, it’s going to be all over the Internet. At least I hope. I usually leave the house around 10:30 a.m., and the special developers conference starts at 10. I hope those people bring their damn mobile phones and laptops so they can leak out the information immediately. Or I guess I could watch the webcast, but I don’t think it’s going to be live…and for some reason the broadcasts rarely work on my connection, even though I have three megabit downstream.
Should I send Thomas a message? Eh, maybe later tonight when I’m really bored. I’m going to go into the living room to ignore Matt’s e-mail and work on my math some more until a show I want to watch comes on (probably never).
I am not going to sleep tonight. There is simply too much to do. I took a bunch of photos and a video of me and my iPod in action. Now I’m making a little video that will hopefully be posted later. I have been incredibly busy, for no reason. I guess I should catch you guys up on the last few days when I was lazy and didn’t blog. It’s funny, I blog so much when I have nothing to say but when interesting cool things do happen, I’m busy doing them and not writing them down.
The three reasons I haven’t been blogging, in picture form:
The iPod speaks for itself (it looks like it’s covered in cellophane becuase I made a homemade case for it out of an old CD-ROM sleeve until the case I want ships at the end of the month. It turns out that the Nano is INCREDIBLY prone to scratches, and as soon as I got a noticeable one on the LCD I McGuyvered a case for it. The chain mail took forever to make. That is HUNDREDS of links in those pieces. And I spent hours turning my old burned CDs into playlists for syncing to my iPod.
Thing to catch up on #1: we had a second going away party for Kat at Katie’s house on Friday, and it was really really fun. I felt very stiff and weird in the beginning, like I had somehow interrupted them and wasn’t welcome (not true). I kept thinking to myself how I always overanalyze social situations, but once I had a glass of wine I was fine. And by the end of the night, I had gotten to know the new coworker that is starting sometime soon. We both love reading, which is enough to give anybody in A+ in my book. We just got along really well to. I’m glad Kat isn’t getting replaced by some asshole. Not like anyone can replace her, but still. I was outbid on the computer I was wanting on eBay. And it happened when I was asleep too, which really pissed me off. I’m actually sort of glad. Now I have some money and a bit of a safety cushion. And it’s definitely a big enough monetary safety cushion to consider moving in with misty at the end of October.
Thing to catch up on number #2: Drunken Party:
I went over to Misty’s last night, and we had a bit of fun. First we watched The Wedding Date, which was actually not bad considering how much I was expecting it to totally suck. It was exactly as you would imagine it to be, if you haven’t seen it. It was totally cliché, but with just enough spice to entertain. I mean, it’s not like there’s going to be any sort of plot twist in any movie where Deborah Messing is playing a lead role. So we drank a bit and started playing Never Have I Ever, then Misty started talking about what she wanted in life, and I really didn’t know what to say to her. I don’t know what I want to do with my life either. And I guess it’s cool that we can both admit that. We have both unfortunately teamed up to hate Selena. It really makes me sad because I think that the Selena that I used to know was an amazing person, but when a really cool person starts totally ignoring you and rushing upstairs to fuck their boyfriend for the millionth time instead even saying hello to you then they quickly move to my shit list. Also, it didn’t help her shitlist rank at all when I was over there she was busily getting penetrated and I wanted to ask her if I could plug my iPod and one of the USB ports on the computer in her room to charge my iPod since it had died. It’s the little things that will turn me against people. I’m sure I would totally love her if she started talking to me again, but I don’t think that is going to happen. If you’re reading this Selena, I really don’t hate you. Call me or something sometime! Eh, the damage is probably done. Oh well.
That’s strange, I thought I had so much more to say. I’ve forgotten it all by now. Went too long between posts. Eh, it happens. At least I got the major bases covered.
Must show you guys pics I took of my iPod tonight. I tried to include some items to give you an idea of just how impossibly small it is.
Enjoying the sexiness of the pod.
Now I feel like my cell phone is gigantic.
Look how freaking small that is!
I’m working on this little iPod movie thingy and it just came out! Props to Intel for my 3.0GHz number-crunching sex machine, and Adobe Premiere and Flash for making bit of self-indulgence possible:
Turn up your speakers and check my self-indulgent, amusing ipod commercial out, cuz it’s going to be gone tomorrow. (fyi–the video won’t work on dial-up connections)
The rockout track is “Little L” by Jamiroquai.
I am in love with this cute little toy. I could barely tear myself away from it to take a shower. How will I sleep for 8 hours without it? My eBay bidding has gotten a bit out of control. But I haven’t bid more money than I have though. And I guess I could sell the stuff on eBay after I got it if I ended up totally broke. Hmm. But in other news,
I LOVE MY IPOD NANO SO MUCH!!!!
What is that quote? Beauty is in the details, or something like that? I can’t stress enough how apropos that is to this product. Everything has been painfully thought out. It’s the little things, like when you accidentally unplug your headphones and the iPod senses it and automatically pauses your music. Or this cool game where it plays the first five seconds of a song and you have to guess the title of it as quick as you can. It has the ability to to SO many things! I already uploaded my contact list to it, so every time I need a phone number or e-mail address it will be right with me. And speaking of email, I added the portable version of my e-mail client and web browser to the iPod, so when I’m not at my home computer (at the college or something) I can plug my I played in and check my e-mail, with no logging in, and I have all my old emails back to like 2004 and all my bookmarks for my web browser in it too. This thing had better not get stolen, just for my data’s sake. You can store your to-do list, your calendar, upload notes, and you can view the album art and lyrics for any song you’re playing. And it is SO tiny! The pictures totally don’t do it justice.
In short, it’s amazing. Everyone needs to buy one immediately.
Categories: Tech lust
I got my iPod today. There are no words. It’s simply amazing. And impossibly small. The pictures don’t do it justice. At first, I had a bunch of problems getting windows to recognize it, but I realized the problem was that my USB 2.0 (which was always finicky) needed to be set up with the right drivers. After that, it was amazing. The thing displays photos, has games, and all sorts of incredible extras. The one downside is that it doesn’t work on Macs and PCs. Well, it does but if you want to use it on a Mac you have to erase all the files on it. However, if you connect it to a Mac and it is PC formatted, it will charge the iPod. Which is probably all I would be doing if I connected it to a Mac. No one has outbid me on my computer yet, so it looks as if I will be in a world of brokeness. But at least I will have a PowerBook.
And that makes me cooler than you. :)
That Thomas guy from Brookings was online today. Either he unblocked me or he didn’t block me to begin with. I’m going with the former. I didn’t talk to him. I think the reason he blocked me was because I was far too eager to hang out. He posted new pictures on MySpace, and I really couldn’t picture us doing it. Maybe I will talk to him the next time he signs on.0
My dad is starting to doubt that I’m actually going to college. I need to stay in town longer.
I start my math class tomorrow, but I think I’m registered for the wrong one. The lady bamboozled me me into registering for something that she thought was the right thing, but I don’t know. If I show up tomorrow and they tell me to leave then I will know.
I put all sorts of pictures on my iPod, photos of Ben and Kelly and Dan and all my past friends. So no matter where I am, I will have cool people with me. Or at least their JPEG equivalents.
Well, not much else to report. I went on a three-mile bike ride as soon as I got music loaded on my iPod, and it was so great to just get out there and ride again. Luckily my car stereo has a line-in port, so I can just connect my iPod directly to the stereo with no FM transmitter. I do want to get a FM ransmitter, but I want one that complements the form of my nano, and those probably won’t come out until Christmas or so.
I’m absolutely excited about my iPod. I can’t wait to show it off at work tomorrow.
> Felix Da Housecat and Miss Kittin – Madame Hollywood
> Placebo – Narcoleptic
I guess I should let the cat out of the bag. I’ve been bidding on PowerBooks on eBay. I have my heart set on this sweet 867MHz 12 in. PowerBook titanium for $250. There’s five days left in the auction though, so someone will totally outbid me. But maybe not, the screen is totally shot to shit and it only works on an external display. But LCDs aren’t that hard to find, I can totally get a broken PowerBook on eBay for like $100, and there I will have a $350 PowerBook. That would be incredible. I sort of hope I get outbid so I won’t have to spend the money, but on the other hand it would thrill me to have a laptop.
The strategy of rearranging my keyboard keys to get me to stop typing hasn’t really helped. I just type anyway even though the letters say different things. I’ve been touch typing too long to even attempt to confuse myself.
I came home today and was overjoyed seeing a package in front of my doorstep, but I knew it wasn’t my iPod. It was the book for my math class that starts Thursday. I had checked the FedEx tracking site right before I left work, and my iPod left Alaska at 5 p.m. I don’t know where it’s going though. It’s really annoying to painstakingly wait for this thing. I should’ve just spent $10 for the expedited shipping. But it’s too late for that.
Blah blah blah, I’m bored. I should stop blogging. My life consists of waiting for my iPod. It’s sad what I’ve been reduced to. Ah, Ben is online. I should sign on and see what his lame excuse for never calling me is going to be. Nah, I don’t give a shit anymore. I had a bit of a revelation today.I realized that the time he stopped talking to me was the time he got his car. I wonder if that’s an unfair deduction. But then the thought strikes me thatI don’t care. So that’s that.
Amanda is going on vacation, and I feel quite jealous. Sort of. I won’t feel jealous once my iPod arrives. I will be glad I wasted away year #19 of my already dwindling life being the slave of Apple Computer, NaturalPoint, and Creative. Oh well. Everybody sells out, and at least I’m not wasting egregious amounts of money on drugs, like everyone else in this town. Well, technology is my drug. And my current high is on a damn FedEx truck in Alaska.
This Cassius album I downloaded, Au Rêve, is sorta good. It has a lot of Daft Punk-esque electronic interludes like “Telephone Love” and “Hi Water,” but there are some like, uberconformist hip-hop songs randomly flung into the middle. I’m confused by what kind of music the band was trying to create, but I like a few of the songs enough not to delete it.
God I’m bored. I’m basically waiting until my dad goes to sleep so I can watch Adult Swim. This is the week of waiting. I was flipping through my math book I got for my class, and it looked to really really easy. Like, high school stuff. I think that my mind is ready for math. I never was ready before. I had a social life. And drama. I can now devote myself to the infinity of mathematics like never before. Maybe I’ll finally get CSS. But I doubt it.
> Gorillaz – Kids With Guns
> Gorillaz – Last Living Souls
I finally did it. I went up to Brookings and signed up to take the placement test to start my math. And I took everything that I had packed out of the boxes. I’m in this for the long haul. I might as well get used to it.
I realize that living like I’m dead just to make the number in my bank account that bigger is no way to go about life. I take the placement test tomorrow morning. I’m probably going to be late for work, but I really don’t see the test taking a very long. I’m as mathematically illiterate as… well, I can’t really think of an example, but it’s pretty bad. I’m just around computers so much that I don’t really need a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic or multiplication. I absolutely must remember to take my calculator.
Well, I can’t decide what my present for finishing math is going to be: a new computer or an iPod. I customized a new system on this one web site, and it was about $900 without the sweet video card or uberfast RAM I want, which would add another $260-ish. So yet again, I’m back to the premise that it all just depends on what I sell my current system for. But I forbid myself to do anything until I pay for my class.
But I’m totally getting a 10,000 RPM drive to run my OS from. That would be SO hot. And with two 7200RPM 200GB SATA storage drives in RAID 1. So freaking hot. I dunno though. I might see those delicous iPods and be seduced with their deliciousness. Well, I can have my cake and eat it too. By the time the my class is over, I will definitely have enough money for an iPod nano even if I do buy a sweet new computer. I dunno. There’s nothing stopping me from selling my system. I need to take some new photos of it and get a box ready in case it actually sells. I’ll set a $600 opening bid and a $800 reserve. I wonder if that’s too much. Hm. Eh, I’ll start the process tomorrow. Too tired to go out to my car and get my digital camera, let alone find a box suitable for my PC.
As I was driving back today, I realize how much I really hate College of the Redwoods. I know everybody there. I know how everybody is screwed up and keeps backstabbing each other. I would have to smile at Samantha and Steve and pretend that that I consider them human beings. Even a greater stretch, I would have to ignore Amanda further. I wonder if she’s even still going there. Anyway, I feel like I can make a fresh start in Brookings. I’m not shy around strangers, but people that I have vaguely known for years weird me out.
And the cooler thing is that everybody that I don’t care about will think I’ve moved away.
Fischerspooner – LA Song
Nina Hagen – New York, New York
I must admit that today I am as bored as I’ve been in a very long time. My MP3 player broke a few days ago (on Friday, I believe) and I think I’m going to get an iPod. But I feel totally lazy this semester…probably from the fact that I’m not taking any classes, so I’m going to look into taking my math in Brookings, which was what really helped my mom. That’s my one obstacle to graduating. Everything else I can do in my sleep or at least with moderate concentration. Math is going to be an epic struggle. And I really need to get started now. So tomorrow I’m going to go to Brookings and investigate what it’s going to cost and when the semester starts. They’re on a quarter system instead of a semester system, so there’s some hope that I will be able to start relatively soon. Also, I’m going to go over to Fred Meyer and by myself a new iPod Nano (if they have them). I promised myself that if I signed up for math and started the path to academic success again, that I would allow myself to buy an iPod.
The real selling point was this article I read about people that subjected the iPod nano to a bunch of durability testing and they literally had to throw it off of the two-story building to get it to stop playing music. They even ran it over with a car two times and still worked. The nano’s strength is that it only weighs as much as a stack of two dollars in quarters. A real iPod would shatter because it is so heavy, but this one was near-indestructable, which will come in very handy on my marathon bike rides.
I read this article on Slashdot or somewhere that people were turning public domain books into podcasts, so I went on to the podcasts directory in iTunes and I found the current book that I was reading. Yesterday the spine came undone and deposited a stack of pages in my lap. It’s only nine dollars for a two-hour podcast of the book. That’s only a few more dollars than I paid for the falling apart used bookstore paper copy I have now.
In other book news, I finally read the last chapter of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media. It was very optimistic about the whole future of information and technology. I heard that he got much darker in his views after the seventies, but I shouldn’t read that. It would just depress me.
Well, I should be getting to sleep. I hope to do the Brookings jaunt before work, but as the hours tick by that no longer seems like a reality.
Categories: Epiphanies,Tech lust
> Nine Inch Nails – March of the Pigs
I’ve labored all weekend to get both of my old web sites up on my new server. It’s complete.
http://archive.retroviral.net/archive.htm
I’m talking to my friend Jeff who moved from Sacramento to San Francisco a few months ago. He’s all going to college there and stuff. He’s going to go out next weekend and get dressed up insanely and go to the clubs. It’s enervating to talk to people with real lives. The only thing I can cope with is working. That’s my sole drive. To make my bank account bigger. I can’t just have $800 in my savings, it has to be $1000, then $1300. Perhaps I feel like a bigger number will allow me to move. I don’t know. I built myself the system of my dreams online today with Intel’s 3.6GHz Pentium 4 660 with hyperthreading technology. The processor alone was around $600. I really don’t know why I would need such a system. It would be really cool to have. That’s about it. The sad thing is it would only be 600MHz faster than my current system. $600 for a 20% improvement in performance? Perhaps a 30% increase, with the DDR2 RAM? No thanks.
I’m living in a vacuum. There’s no escape.
Shit.
I think the real solution could be to still move to Sac. But I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to Kelly. Oh yeah, she can’t legally sign onto the lease ’cause she’s 17. So much for that idea. I’m going to die in this hellhole. My one ticket out of this hell fucking expired. Fuck. Dreams don’t come true. I hate this place so much.
Money is the only thing that makes me happy. Money will never tell me I’m fat or lame or friendless or unfashionable. Just like my computer. Things are all that are to be trusted in this world.
I think it might be happening. I might be finally dying inside. I wonder.
I finally dug through my closet and found that package of stuff that reminded me of Andrew (the non-love of my life). I sort of felt something. I don’t know what it was. Hm. Let’s end this post on a nostalgic Andrew note:
Categories: Melancholy,Tech lust,Website updates