ipad vs. paper

 

 

convo’s with aberrant tech support

 

Aberrant Tech Support: Here is what to do on your PC.

Me: Um, hello, on a Mac?

Aberrant Tech Support: Okay, here is what to do on your other PC.

Me: Still on a Mac.

Aberrant Tech Support: Here is an outside link I googled for a Mac.

Me: Porn isn’t really working for me.

Aberrant Tech Support: Oops. For a PC try this.

Me: Hello. Still on a Mac.

 

mouse angst

 

I am —

Annoyed. My mouse [along with a great deal of software] has been going crazy. This almost totally handicapped me trying to review students’ work and also Academy scripts. Not good. So, I ordered a new $35 mouse thinking, Well, that is it, the mouse is worn out.

The second I order the new mouse. I mean —

THE SECOND I ORDER THE NEW MOUSE.

The mouse starts working again.

 

where the art work comes from :
that is from macbuckley

computer graveyard

 

I need —

A computer.

Not for me.

For one of my workshop kids.

He is a New York City cop. On a New York City cop’s salary. Paying New York City rent. For two households. Supporting two little girls. He has been struggling to keep writing and keep up with an online workshop for months –– ever since his last legs computer went toes up.

And. He can really write.

Anyone have an old computer growing dust in a closet that would not be missed?

 

where the art work comes from :
that is computer graveyard from keenahn

pingback frenzy

 

So I am doing —

This new project with the blog putting tags into posts.

[It is for science dammit.]

Which may or may not have interesting results. Right now though the results are real interesting right off but not for the expected reason. See, the way I post — which is usually set a future time for posts to go up on their own instead of publishing them right off when they are written — lots of times links in those posts do not create pingbacks. Unless at a later date I alter the post and save it. Then whammo the pingback hits.

[For the uninitiated, a pingback happens when another WordPress blog post or comment links back to a blog post — it shows up as a comment under the linked post.]

[Usually I do not pay attention or really notice whether or not pingbacks strike but wow I am noticing now.]

It is like they are sleeper spy pingbacks just waiting to be activated and take over. And they really are taking over. Every time I put one of these tag sets into an old post, wham, a pingback wakes up and the number of sleeper pingbacks that are showing up on my dashboard right now —

Okay, I am just imagining everyone’s comment pages filling fast with pingbacks from old posts of mine and it is not pretty.

Um. Oops.

 

---

*okay put the torches down and do not rile the villagers i am taking a tag break i promise

*none of this will effect you btw if you never comment [coughcoughslackerscoughcough]

 

mouse frenzy

 

The mouse has gone —

Berserk. I knew the mouse was on its last legs because it was kicking up dust over little things like highlighting text. I orderred a new mouse. A pretty cool mouse, or it looked like a pretty cool mouse. A “Mighty Mouse.” It was pretty. It was by Mac. It was wireless. Should be a good mouse, right?

No. Mighty Mouse required Blue Tooth, so I had to get that in addition to the mouse. [Bucks were adding up.] And then. The Mighty Mouse totally sucked and was about as operative as a pretty paper weight and every time I had to do real work I would have to unplug it and plug in the old mouse just to be able to scroll fast enough to feel like I was not pushing lead and to actually get work done.

Back to Mac for you Mighty Mouse.

Now though the little workhouse mouse [it is not pretty it is a Logitech wireless which means ugly ugly ugly but hey at least it worked like a ninja mouse for two solid years and it was cheap and did NOT require additional software] is gasping its last breath and messing with me big while I try to work by throwing highlights all over the page anywhere except where I want them. [This is true hell when you are trying to write anything of substance forget just dash off an email.]

So.

I have to get a new mouse.

But what kind of mouse? It has to be wireless to work with the little PowerBook. But the freaking Mac mouse did not work.

I have to do it today too. I cannot work like this.

Technology. You cannot live with it and you cannot shoot it.

 

the mac line

 

I am sitting —

On hold on the Mac help line after waiting 10 minutes to get a human who took my info and gave me new fun numbers I should keep track of before she put me on another help line that told me it would be a fifteen minute wait for another human to actually speak to.

Fortunately for me, I have speaker phone, which means i can wander around with only a minor sense of panic i might lose this connection it will take me at least thirty minutes to make contact with again so have, in this time, used the restroom twice, smoked three cigs, moved a ladder into the closet to pull out old boxes for old disks in case they are helpful, panicked about the fact this is a computer phone and whomever I speak to may want me to disconnect my internet connection to do more web/phone associated things.

Basically this all sucks.

 

---

When Mac people actually show up on the Mac help line they are usually pretty helpful. They know their stuff on the Mac help line. The only other customer support that used to be nearly as good was the HP help line. Those people were smart as whips. Till they moved to India or something and then that help line sort of went to hell. Or at least that was my experience last time I called it.

 

---

This does not change the fact it really sucks waiting for half an hour on the phone just to get a human being, usually you only encounter that slaughtering a delay if you are calling the government or the Department of Motor Vehicles.

 

where the art work comes from :
that is from bjorn soderqvist

[sorry bjorn i lost my umlauts]

i wonder sometimes

 

Why do people —

Always assume every other sentient being in the universe wants to be like people? This shows up all the time in science fiction. The Cylons want to be like people. The Terminators want to be like people. Statues want to be people. Dolls want to be people. Even angels apparently want to be people. We sure like ourselves a lot to assume machines would rise up and then just want to be like people or angels would be willing to fall to earth just to be people. Looking at the state of the world and people and what people are getting up to in that world there are a lot of days I do not even want be a member of clan people. Why would they?

 

where the art work comes from :
that is from the cover of machine nation by richard evans

i killed the russian

 

Today I was working on the forum.

There were a few things that needed to be done in there. For one thing a page was broken that let me change out the quote o’ the week so the quote o’ the week has been the quote o’ the month [for, um, five months] and also I have been getting killed by The Russian [which is really registration spambots but I call it The Russian] so have had registration OFF for too long for it to not be embarassing to say.

I say something about that in my Gotham class because class is ending and I have said people can visit in the forum only that registration is off because of The Russian and one of my smart students says, Hey why don’t you put in an antispambot program?

Which is so smart doy.

So I go find an antispambot hack and do that and it works yay! So the forum is now open for registration. [Wow how hostessey of me.] And —

As long as I am in there [urk] and messing with php [oh jeez double urk] it occurs to me I should go fix the page that cannot change quotes so I do that too.

This is all on the tail of fixing the dvd player [yay!] and getting a good dental report [yay!] and hanging the wallboard [yay!] so I am feeling massively frisky and accomplished now.

 

where the art work comes from :
that is visual polution #7 by filthyram

damn techonology

 

Technology is making me crazy today.

I tried to post earlier but the wordpress servers kept resetting each time I tried to save something. [Bastard!] My images would not load. Netflix has conveniently logged my returns late again meaning nothing is showing up today that should be. YouTube will not play it keeps starting and stopping — probably because my cable is screwing up again. Mail is being tiffy about sending. And the dumb people who manage the building have not gotten me my new laundry card so I am on the end of two weeks sans laundry card and wearing questionable attire.

It is one of those days.

Oh, also, one of my neighbors was staring at me from outside this morning when I was in bed using the laptop. This sort of creeps me out because I am pretty sure he is the registered sex offender who lives on the third floor that building management is pretending they do not know about and keeping under wraps. [Um, building management, that is illegal and also kind of dumb and also everyone knows about him anyway so who are you kidding?]

It is okay though. I believe I am outside his age range of preference.

See you on the flip.

 

where the art work comes from :
that is column by dozier bell