I'm Not Back
Aug. 24th, 2009 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roadrunnertwiceI'm borrowing Schwern's computer to run my ghostly user account on. Haven't accomplished much beyond using Muninn to imperfectly re-sync Arthur with Huginn, which took way longer than it should have. (Parenthesis one: The jokey names for these hard drives were intended as some much-needed entertainment for when I inevitably had to deal with some hardware disaster, and are doing their job admirably.) (Parenthesis two: Time Machine is wonderful and fast for backing up, but it's kind of shitty and slow for restoring, and if you need to something even the least bit unusual with it, e.g. change the physical disk that its backup timeline is associated with much less the machine that all of this is plugged into, it's downright nightmarish.)
What I actually need to be doing is résumé stuff. Instead, I appear to be writing journal entries.
Now that I have Learnt My Lesson in re: drinks on desks, I could use a small bedstand or something to store liquids on. My current glass of water is living on the floor.
Something I realized during this most recent visit home is that my brother Chris (LJ's own, albeit sporadic and in an off-cycle, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
itastelikelove) is—no, really—Cyberpunk. Not in the mirrorshades and chip implants sense, but in the The Street Finds Its Own Uses sense. He's a technically sophisticated user who has adopted, as his aesthetic and ethos, the ideal that every piece of technology ought to be run as far into the ground as it will run, and then vigorously pushed the rest of the way. (Into the ground.) The wristwatch he used during college was held together with—I am speaking literally here—orthodontic wire and unidentifiable clamps and tourniquets and shit, and was legitimately offputting to behold. He's gotten about $600 worth of use out of a $125 laptop (which I obtained for him with a Craigslist ad that read something like "Your shitty laptop wants to die a glorious death in Costa Rica," so we're already talking about something that had half a leg to stand on, here).
This contrasts somewhat with my approach. What kills me about the way I blew up my beloved MacBook is that, other than spilling water in it just now, I've pretty much babied the thing. Most everyone I know treats their machines with a sort of good-natured roughness, and they're fine, but prissy ol' me is the one who actually fucks his device up in a heavy-duty sort of way. Makes me wonder about... not so much the point of having nice things, but the point of acting like said things are nice.
Especially since I only spilled shit on it in the first place because I was sleepily reaching for the Firewire plug so's to save wear and tear on the external HD by unplugging it for the night!
Odd thing I noticed: with no job and a broken computer, the days are actually really long. There is all kinds of space up in these, despite the fact that my body seems to be demanding 9+ hours of sleep lately (in penance for what, I couldn't tell you). Even having a beer or two doesn't seem to make evenings speed up the way they normally would. Apparently an internet-connected computer is a distraction engine that eats days: WHO KNEW. Anyway, it's making me think uncomfortable but very interesting thoughts about how one makes space for things in one's life.
I think my longhand is improving. Gonna get one of those Pilot pens Brenna recommended.
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Date: 2009-08-25 03:45 am (UTC)And RE: low/no computer or job? Welcome to housewifery. It is interesting how one deals with days like that depending on one's age (mental, real, etc). It drove me crazy when I was younger, but now that I can schedule myself? I miss it.
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Date: 2009-08-25 07:25 am (UTC)(Oh my lord, i AM a housewife. especially since Schwern is paying for all my bread ingredients these days. I'm even wearing my ridiculous orange sarong right now!)
(bread aside: I'm planning a totally insane loaf for tomorrow; if it actually works, i'm gonna call it "double black with pepper jack.")
(random aside: i picked up my 770 tablet thing again, got totally frustrated with the uselessness of the browser, and installed the "don't ever actually install this" edition of the OS. vive la difference! twitter works great! GMAIL works great. it's still slow and mildly crashy, but it's far more useful all a sudden. using it now, actually, hence the erratic caps.)
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Date: 2009-08-25 05:56 pm (UTC)My schedule is much the same lately (Tues & Weds=Sat & Sun), but I have vacation coming up from September 2 to the Wednesday after that (the 9th?). However, we are currently vehicle-less and looking, so things are up in the air SO HARD right now. There will be updates.
I have not baked bread in the new place. The kitchen is very small.
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Date: 2009-08-25 06:11 pm (UTC)http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/
I went ahead and installed the 2008 "hacker edition," because i figured why the hell not. 2007 might be more stable, but i doubt the browser's as functional.
i did go into the settings and tell it to use half my memory card for virtual ram, which i think is helping a bit, but i'm still cruising for a bruising if i open more than 2 browser windows at a time.
i hope that gets fbreader working again! haven't tried to reinstall it on mine yet.
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Date: 2009-08-25 06:20 pm (UTC)