As September comes to an end, bidding a farewell to Summer (easily my least favorite season of the year), we find that not a great deal is currently going on.
The big thing is that on Saturday, I bought one of Apple's new G4 PowerBooks with the 1.0 Ghz processor. I'm learning its ins and outs, and so far, I'm very pleased with it -- although the CD burner does act a bit quirky for writes, but that doesn't surprise me very much, and it's not a big deal since I prefer to use USB keys in any event. The old iBook is acting up quite a bit and was never a very hot performer in the first place, so I'm glad I'll be putting it into mothballs soon (once I've confirmed that all my documents and so on copied over properly). The processor on my iBook is a 500 Mhz G3, and that's not really cut out for OS X. For example, sometimes when I was chatting, I'd receive a message, get the "message received" sound, then get the colored spinning ball indicating that the Mac was working, and it could take four or five seconds for the message to appear. Unacceptable. With the PowerBook, it's instantaneous. Yummy. :-)
I've got the stock 256 megs of RAM right now, and according to the diagnostics and tests I've been running 256 is probably adequate, but even so, I think I'm probably going to boost it to 512 just for comfort. I also want to buy a nicer carrying case than the ratty one I have right now.
I've been having that same problem with my USB key on the PowerBook as I did on the iBook, which leads me to believe there's something odd about the key that just doesn't get along with OS X (it works fine under Windows). Maybe I'll try booting into OS 9.2 on the iBook this evening and try it under that OS, see what happens. Regardless, my next key is going to be a 2.0, rather than the current 1.1 that I'm using. We'll see whether that makes any difference.
I'm learning quite a bit about Mac architecture as a result of fooling around with the PowerBook, such as booting into Open Firmware and logging in as "root". Big fun.
In keeping with my tradition, I have named it after a ship. The PowerBook is called the "Hieronymous Bosch", after an airship from the David Gerrold novel, "A Rage for Revenge". (He, in turn, named the airship after a 19th century fantasy/SF artist.)
Not sure what I'm going to do with the iBook -- it's having a lot of hardware problems, and I don't know whether I'm going to try to sell it or perhaps take it apart and try to fix it myself. No need to decide just yet, since I want to take several more days to make sure that the migration "took".
Jeez! Back when I was living in Bratt and hanging out at the bookstore 36 hours a day, Rob Purinton (the owner, proprietor, and sole employee) told me about a humorous feminist poem dedicated, in large part, to Lucy Lawless, portrayer of "Xena" (one of my favorite shows). I've been looking for it on and off for the past several years, and I finally found the damn thing. Turns out it's from a dedication in a book of fantasy short stories called, "Did You Say Chicks?!", written mostly by women. Here 'tis:
Hail to thee, O Lucy Lawless,
Xena actress great and flawless!
Beacon by whom we all steer
In this book. Wish you were here.
Thou who art a constant charmer,
Thou who wearest way cool armor,
Thou who provest, day by day,
Women have a lot to say
Weather sword or child in hand,
Spread our message through the land!
Say to every mother’s son:
“We are strong, but we’re still fun.
“Do not fear us, do not hate us,
“Never, never underrate us.
“We are Women, aye, you betcha.
“Want to rile us? We won’t letcha.
“Weather what we choose to don
“From Frederick’s comes or Pentagon,
What we wear don’t signify
“Diddlysquat, for by and by
“You will learn (as most men do)
“We’re your equals. Whoop-de-doo.”
So once more, thee do we hail,
Lucy Lawless, and the Grail
Of full-fledged equality
Which we hope we’ll live to see.
Thou who art, in syndication,
Hope of all the female nation,
Thou whom sponsors court and coddle,
Thou, our daughters’ chief role model,
Thou who play’st no girlie games
But kickest butt and takest names,
Please accept this book, with thanks
From thy sisters in the ranks.
I occasionally send fan mail to various artists, writers, actors, musicians, and the like whose work I particularly enjoy. The fun thing about this is, I usually do get a reply -- there have been relatively few exceptions to that rule, mostly people who are exceptionally famous and/or busy. Lesser known folks, however, seem to appreciate the courtesy. There's one particularly beautiful piece of music that I really enjoy, a piano solo called "Rain" by Suzanne Ciani. It's so moving, it sometimes brings me to tears (there's also another version of "Rain", done with a number of instruments, that's nowhere near as good as the solo piano version). I played this piece last New Year's Eve for Denise as we were having our quiet evening together, and she was very touched by it, so I recently sent Ciani an email telling her about the night that Denise and I had listened to "Rain" together. Much to my delight, Ciani wrote back.
Dear Parrish,
What a beautiful letter...you make ME cry, too! Who ever can explain the chemistry of our emotions and how we access them, but oh yes how good it feels to find them---like the smell of autumn on a summer's day.
Thank-you for sharing this with me.
Best wishes to you and Denise,
Suzanne Ciani
I really enjoy letting performing artists know how much they've done for me... and I enjoy it even more when they write back and say "thank you". *smile*
Well, life was all fairly routine until last Thursday or so. We had a conference on Wednesday, at which we experimented with offering wireless Internet access to our attendees. It didn't work right at first -- for some reason, I was able to connect to the router, but it was shutting everyone else out. The problem cleared up, weirdly enough, when I deactivated WEP. No, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.
Anyway, the conference went fairly smoothly and had some interesting presentations (including speculation from one futurist that in about twenty years, everyone will be wearing computerized contact lenses that automatically adjust their focus for near or distance vision and even show you things on a hands-free, heads-up virtual display -- to the point where ou'll even be able to say things like, "Computer, please identify blond male sitting at the bar," and a little arrow will pop up, point at him, and his head will be "captioned" with his name and contact information. Neat stuff.
But enough of that. Thursday, of course, was the big deal... I knew the storm was coming but wasn't expecting it until later, so I tumbled out of bed and did my typical morning routine, then when I was on the nearly-deserted Metro I read that all transit was going to be shutting down at 11 AM, so I got off at Union Station, grabbed some coffee, then turned around and went home. My power went off at 2 PM, which was rather annoying because it still sill barely drizzling at that point.
The next few days, needless to say, were not particularly eventful. The storm came and went thru, clearing up by Friday morning. I was among the more fortunate -- I lost power, but I still had a functioning gas stove and potable water, and I suffered no property damage. I spent most of my days reading and most of my nights on the phone with Denise, apart from a brief jaunt to the office on Friday to grab my email.
I stayed at a hotel on Sunday night just for the amenities and to get my laundry done, and, again, to grab all my email (I average about two hundred emails per day, for those who don't know). The hotel stay was pleasant, except that there was a huge backlog on laundry, so on Monday evening, I had to go back to pick it up and wait until 8 PM. I got back to the apartment little after 9 and the power was back on. I had just enough time to get changed and settled a bit (from having to walk thru the rain) when Denise called, and we had another enjoyable talk, coupled with puzzlement over her notebook's extremely bizarre behavior. After we hung up and I started getting ready for bed, I discovered that the laundry service had lost all my socks and undewear. *shrug* No big deal -- I'll write them a letter bitching about it after I've replaced it, and they'd *better* send me a refund check or reduce the charge on my credit card. If not, I'll challenge the charge.
I'm home today -- I had a doctor's appointment, but overnight, the power went out again, so my clock radio didn't go off when it should have. I probably could have still made the appointment, but I've been feeling sick for the last few days, so I decided to stay home and rest instead.
And that's the weekly update... only other big thing is that I've decided to buy one of the new 12.1" PowerBooks as soon as they're out, which is supposed to be sometime this week. I like this iBook well enough, but it's been having problems lately, and after giving it a fair amount of thought, I've decided to replace it rather than have it sent in for repairs.
Here I am at the office, listening to and preparing to respond to voicemails, and I receive one from someone who sounds exactly like Dukhat, who was the leader of the Minbari Grey Council up until his death in 2246 (in the initial conflict that started the Earth-Minbari war).
Times like this, I can't help but wonder whether anyone ever brings this kind of thing to the person's attention... I once had a FedEx delivery guy who looked exactly like Forest Whittaker, except he didn't have that weird eyelid thing that Whittaker does. As I was signing for the envelope, I said, "Has anyone ever told you you look like Forest Whittaker." He just looked at me and started laughing. Probably thinking something like, "Gee, no, that's never happened to me at all, I only make deliveries to three dozen different offices every day..."
Ugh, so I've let the blog slide again. Well, in this case, I at least have a minor excuse in that life has been pretty boring lately. *chuckle* No, it's not a good excuse, but it is an excuse.
Thanks to Moggy for adding the "most recent comments" code, as I had been asking about a little while back... I need to clean it up a bit to make the font match the rest of the page, but that's not a big deal.
I saw "The Medallion" on Saturday, since I've always liked Jackie Chan. This one isn't very good, though, so I'd recommend waiting until a rainy Saturday night or something like that to rent it. I'm sure his age is a big part of it... he's over fifty years old now, IIRC, and it's really starting to show. He still hasn't matched anything that he did in Rumble in the Bronx, especially the warehouse fight scene, but then again, that would be pretty hard to top.
In the news, the Supreme Court has decided to have a look at the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm extremely opinionated... however, there are very rare exceptions, and this case is one of them. Typically, such exceptions occur with me when both sides in a debate make so much sense that I can't bring myself to disagree with them. (Here's an opportunity for those with an opinion to sway me!)
Conservatives: This law is an infringment on free speech. If I want to spend a million dollars on a newspaper ad for a blockbuster film, or an automotive dealership, or anything else I want to, I can, and any law that said I couldn't would be immediately thrown out on its ear as a violation of my First Amendment rights. There's no reason that advertisements for political candidates or the like should be any different.
Liberals: Yes, there is. No right is absolute, and this is one of those occasions where it's clearly in the interest of freedom to restrict political spending. As it stands, our government is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The reason you need limits here is that no one's freedoms are threatened by your million dollar ad for the movies or the hot sports cars.
OK, peanut gallery... have at it. :-)
The Summer is finally coming to a close. Today is Labor Day, of course, and I came to the office thinking to just hang out in some peace and quiet and do some work at a more leisurely pace than what I can typically accomplish on a regular work day -- unfortunately, the air conditioning in the building is turned off, and it's pretty nasty in here. Also, my computer is acting up for some reason -- it probably needs a clean install. To try to relax, I went to the web site of a favorite musician to send her a fan e-mail, but she uses AOL, and AOL's servers are rejecting the message for some reason (I don't recognize the error message, but if the activity on Denise's email account is any indication, I wouldn't be surprised if their mail servers are being overwhelmed right now with spam/virii). So I'm getting ready to throw in the towel and head back to the house.
Before doing so, however, I wish a happy thirtieth birthday to my old college bud Shaw. Thirty's a big one, buddy -- don't overdo it, and don't fret about it too much, because before you know it, forty will be right around the corner, and that will make thirty look like a picnic. Isn't that a warm, uplifting sentiment?
A happy federal holiday to all sentient life forms in the known universe -- and to all the others, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. ;-)