Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

That’s right… my video card died. Annoying and money I didn’t really want to spend, but it could have been so much worse. This is actually the first real maintenance I’ve had to do to my desktop Mac in 3.5 years. (Okay, I did upgrade to Tiger last year sometime and I repaired a problem with the hard drive on Thursday night, but the latter was an attempt to fix what turned out to be the video card. I haven’t actually pulled over my iPhoto library from my backup drive yet since the versions don’t match. I’m hoping to get through the next bunch of episodes with what I can shoot in the next few days. Of course, I’m going away the end of this week and will need to line up some extra episodes in advance… Good thing I enjoy a challenge.

And don’t think Monster Cat won’t mock *YOU* if you don’t do your back-ups regularly and get bitten in the but for it.

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, silly, tennyson

Happy Summer! This brings us one step closer to Winter again!

The plan for today was to draft a pattern on junk fabric for the viking apron dress I want to make for Pennsic.

Unfortunately, the video card in my desktop went kaput sometime over night. For the record, a Mac desktop tower is very heavy. Carrying it through the Mall was rather foolish and I have the bruises on my forearms to prove it. It turns out the Apple Store has a loading dock - I’ll use that next time, really. Anyway, so the Mac Genius confirmed my suspicions about the video card. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of cards still available for my Mac since it’s 3.5 years old. They’ve ordered one for me and expect to have my Mac all happy and fixed within the week, but probably later rather than earlier. *sigh* Luckily my laptop is almost as cool and I have back ups of most of my data so I can do almost everything on the laptop until I get the desktop back.

I admit, I almost didn’t repair it. I’m saving for a new desktop but, as with every major purchase in my life, I’d been having 2nd thoughts because my desktop really is chugging along nicely for what I do on it. I just can no longer do as much at once. I think if I slap another 2 gb of RAM in it though… and maybe another external hard drive… Much cheaper than any new Mac.

To console myself for the loss of my Mac and most of my afternoon, I came home and made a plate tomatoes and mozzarella with basil.

Alas, I do NOT have a backup of my photos for the past month. I need to take a lot of photos of Mr. Paw this weekend to ensure I have enough material for the next 5 or 6 episodes of Monster Cat. Luckily, I didn’t have any plans for adorable kitten flashbacks again until late summer.

I did plant a rosemary plant I’d picked up earlier this week. I also got to play with the hose and water the raised beds. And I cleaned my desk a bit and vacuumed my office. These things were technically in my plans for the weekend, so I guess the day isn’t a total loss.

tags: apple, computers, monster cat, powermac g5, repair, saturday derailed, video card, weekend

So, the day before we left on vacation I dumped about a half cup of water into my Kensington Trackball. After drying it out a bit, it still pointed but wouldn’t click. I unplugged it (which I really should have done immediately, but didn’t… yes, I know…), inverted it and left it that way for a week. Yesterday I was too tired to deal with the prospect of buying a new trackball so I didn’t check it to see if it worked. This morning, my annoyance with my mouse reached the point where it was time to determine if I needed to go shopping for a new one. I plugged it in and HURRAY! It’s working!!! Sometimes it’s the little things that make me happiest on gray Sundays.

Yes, isn’t it amazing when I take my own advice about fixing tech problems and it actually works? Of course, my keyboard is still sticking, but that’s from the coffee I spilled in it not the water.

And then there’s my cat. The mountain of gray cat has been in and out of my lap all morning, purring up a storm. I am wearing a gray shirt today specifically because I might as well embrace the fact that I’m going to be shed on. A lot. Don’t tell him I’m only home for a week because I’m traveling the first week of May for work. There are some things that are best left to the Monster Cat to discover for himself. Less guilt that way…

tags: cats, technology, tennyson, trackballs, travel, water

This weekend was good for my brain. I don’t feel fried at the moment, just drowsy… and the coffee is starting to kick in. I am no longer NOT getting sick, which means I win!

Connectivity issues Saturday morning resulted in some organizing and cleaning of my desk. My desk has always been a challenge to keep neat and organized. I am perhaps as neat as I have ever been these days with a mere 4 piles of organization going on. I am often tempted to give into the entropy, but I like to put my work computer “away” for the weekends and have some hope of finding a clear spot for it on Monday morning without requiring a bulldozer. The internet eventually came back and I decided I needed retail therapy.

The Mall is always an entertaining place. Yesterday was no exception. People really do wear the most remarkable things. Of course, some of those remarks must be made well out of earshot of the subject else feelings might be offended. Retail therapy yielded some new clothes and a cute, little USB hub. Now I can connect everything at once! I’m currently using my tablet as my primary pointing device (variety is the spice of life which staves off RSI!) though I keep misplacing the pen in plain sight. I may have to attach a ribbon to it.

I am finding myself completely uninspired for anything creative though. This is irksome since I need to pre-load Monster Cat this week as I’m going out of town Wednesday through Saturday. I did get Wednesday’s episode started last night. Of course, now I want to go back and tweak it. I guess that’s a good sign. I have a lot of creative projects on my perpetual to-do list that I’d like to start crossing off!

Some of my seeds are starting to sprout too. Little tiny basil leaves and strands of chives are the first to put in appearances. One of the pots of oat grass (the one on the heater) is showing growth a couple inches high already while the other two pots are just under an inch of green. Coincidence? I think not. I really do adore my sun porch. The plants do too - especially the ones that get to sit on the heaters.

tags: creativity, indoor gardening, organization, retail therapy, shopping

Thinking things through is always important in business. Thinking through your acronyms is VERY important! I am often amused and amazed by some of the acronyms we end up with at work. “Acronym rich” and “alphabet soup” do not suffice to describe the nightmare sea of letters we navigate. You can see the lost acronyms float across the eyes of new team members as the gloss over after trying to decipher a sentence comprised entirely of shot-gunned letters. What’s worse is that sometimes it’s very hard to undo the acronyms when asked. Conceptually, I can explain to you what an “IPT” is, but I always forget what each letter actually stands for. To add insult to injury, in many places I’ve worked, the acronyms shift from functional area to functional area, some of them overlap. At a previous job, what I thought of as “QM” (quiz module) was not what our development team thought of as “QM” (quiz management) and was certainly not what corporate thought of as “QM” (quality management).

And then there are the people so desperate to shorten everything that we end up with acronyms that spell hilarious or inappropriate words. “F/u” is a favorite I see flying by quite a bit. My job title is abbreviated to PMM but could have easily been PMS. BM is not the best acronym for an online test system, WTPS echoes “TPS reports” of Office Space fame, and the list goes on… The worst I saw was a Customer Notification Tracker…

I think every company should have a Keeper of the Acronyms. Perhaps with a crown and scepter just for effect. This person would maintain the Acronym Translation System, a wiki-based rosetta stone for the secret lingo of the company, as well as settle any problems with disputed territory. Wouldn’t that solve so many problems?

Okay, perhaps some overlapping acronyms are necessary - but the Keeper of the Acronyms could raise awareness for these overlaps and enable better communication. Ideally when one team talks about SOWs to another team, everyone’s on the same page (SOW = statement of work, a fairly standard one for us) and no one’s thinking about bacon.

tags: acronyms, comics, silly, user friendly

UserFriendly provides today’s comic-to-share of the day. So very true. There’s such an addictive quality to Blackberries that sometimes it’s hard to let go.

Which is why I don’t have a Blackberry.

I did get a new phone last week though! I have a new Samsung a737 with orange racing stripes! (The racing stripes make it faster! Okay, the 3G network support makes it faster, not that I use it.) I blew through the last of my roll-over minutes in January and February making a new plan with more minutes necessary. Since this landed me with a new 2 year contract anyway, I took advantage of the opportunity to get a new, mostly-free phone. My old phone was starting to behave badly after almost 2 years of vaguely faithful service, so it was probably time anyway.

I like my new phone. It’s orange. It’s also a slider phone and locks itself (well its keys) appropriately. I think it’s slightly bigger than my old LG flip phone, but not so much that I’ll actually notice. It still fits in my little cell case so I’m happy.

Yes, my criteria for cell phones are very basic. I don’t care if it does six million cool things. I want it to work as a phone and fit in my pocket. The orange racing stripes are a great bonus though.

Eventually, I will get an iPhone. Probably when it has 3G support. (Because I don’t need my phone to surf the web but when I do surf the web from my overpowered phone, I’ll want it to be fast!) There’s no discount on the iPhone when you renew a contract, so I can keep waiting.

In other news, it was almost 70 degrees out today. With the sun hitting my windows and the door closed, it hit 78 degrees in my office this afternoon. Fun stuff for early March. I’m not going to get winter this winter, am I?

tags: cell phones, heat, iphone, smartphones, user friendly, weather

For those of you hiding under a rock, tomorrow Apple releases the much-touted, marketed, anticipated, drooled over and discussed iPhone. The rate plans, from AT&T/Cingular, aren’t too bad, especially if you already are with that carrier (which I am). I’ll end up paying $17 more than I am now. This will get me twice the text messages I have now as well as the unlimited data access. If all goes well and there are no hidden catches, I’ll end up paying about $15 less a month than the new plan price for the same features. I can deal with that, I think.

The raves and rants about the iPhone are already flowing - AAPL has been bouncing around in about a $6 range for the the past couple weeks. The iPhone has been so hyped that apparently there’s some nervousness that it might not live up to Apple’s promises. I expect it will be the new status symbol of the summer.

I don’t actually have plans to go stand on line or get an iPhone tomorrow. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I’m not actually planning to do it. If we happen to end up at the Apple Store and I happen to touch one and want it really badly, I might end up with one if there are any left. It would be really handy to have at Pennsic, for one. While I’m not currently expecting to have to keep track of work stuff at War this year, nor to do conference calls from my yurt, it would nice to have compact computer capability. Of course, the last thing I want to worry about is losing or damaging it. So… yeah. I’m being a bit zen about it and leaving my iPhone purchase up to fate. And by “zen” I mean “indecisive”. I still want one but I’m already hearing about improvements to network performance for the second generation (but no prediction on when we’ll see G2).

It’s a cell phone but it’s also an Apple product so I expect it to be a solid piece of hardware that I’ll be happy with for about twice as long as the average comparable hardware by another manufacturer. (I’m still quite happy with my 3rd generation iPod too… and the batter still works!)

I honestly won’t be stunned if I want an iPhone as soon as I play with one… but I think I’ll need to touch it first to be completely convinced. Really, I’m resisting… can you tell? ;) Will I be successful? Oh, probably not.

tags: , apple, at&t, cingular, iphone, technology

Friday Flowers

Sometimes the light is just right and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get the shot. Sometimes the light is just right for just one shot. This is one of those photos - the follow-up shot I took a fraction of a second later lacked the glorious filtering of the sun through the tree. (I encourage you to click on the thumbnail for a bigger version of this photo - it’s one of those photos that you miss the details and effect at this size.) This tree is one of the older trees just inside the wall. The trunk is twisted and gnarled, the major branches have been taken off, but it has fresh young branches growing from its trunk and it is blooming with all its might. It’s also a far paler pink than the other trees, more a blushing white than pink.

The other photo is a close-up of some of the blossoms from the same tree. I love how the soft sunlight filtered through the tree onto these flowers. The close-up was actually taken before the full tree photo - the sun was playing hide-and-seek with me that whole walk.

Work, laptop and technology fluff

I am waiting for the new work laptop to arrive. While the only problem was a bad hard drive, my Thinkpad was old enough that the IT group didn’t want to support it anymore. (Oh darn?) So they successfully retrieved my data and loaded it onto a brand new Thinkpad. Shucks, and I didn’t get them anything! I’m optimistic that this laptop might be lighter. Please let it be lighter!

So I’ve been without a computer most of the week but I was able to get work done anyway. Logging into Outlook web access every 30 seconds is a small price to pay for a new lighter, faster, cooler laptop. I’m really glad I did a full sweep of my mailbox recently. It would be really annoying to be going over my pitiful mailbox quota on top of everything else this week!

Speaking of work, WebEx is a very cool thing and appears to be working quite smoothly on my fabulous Mac. We’ve started using it for our bigger meetings instead of NetMeeting because NetMeeting just can’t handle gracefully the volume of users we need to stream simple presentations to. I think I’ll use the Mac for all future WebEx meetings too - it’s nice to be able to multitask and still see the presentation (much bigger screen here). It helps since, in the case of today’s presentation, I spent 2 or 3 weeks working with the project team on the presentation (and we did a full practice run-through Wednesday morning) and tend to zone out if I’m just staring at the presentation. Amazingly, it’s easier to pay attention if I can divert some of my focus to babbling here.

Apple & iPhone fluff

The date is getting closer… the iPhone approaches. A little over a month from now we’ll be able to order it if all goes well. Though I’m not usually an early adpopter, I’m hoping to have one in my hot little hands by the beginning of July at the latest. I can’t wait to play with it! Apple’s stock has been doing very well lately. I hope the iPhone release happens on time and drives it up even further. I’d love to see another stock split by the end of this year.

If you are amused by the Apple “I’m a Mac.” ads, the UK ads are also available on the UK section of Apple’s web site.

Also, Steve Jobs came published another missive - this time about what Apple is doing to become a greener company.

tags: apple, cherry blossoms, flowers, iphone, laptops, spring, technology, webex, work

There are an obnoxious number of cherry trees lining the street along the graveyard. The street is lined with trees that have been attacked with pink at the moment. The grass is littered with pink petals. Walking under the trees today resulted in petals stuck in my hair. I’m torn between being excited by their springtime grandeur and sickened by the concentration of pink. (It’s a lot of pink… at least a half mile. Though there are 2 trees blooming in white to break it up a little.) The trees are very exuberant this time of year.

Computer drama of the week…

Unsurprisingly, I dislike calling IT Help Desks. I would prefer to solve issues myself. Oh, and I have a little too much insight into the mind of an IT support person. The Help Desk at the company I’m currently working for is actually quite good, responsive and clueful, honestly… but that doesn’t make calling them with a randomly freezing laptop any happier. Yesterday morning, my laptop started to freeze up. I gave it a timeout over lunch (off, unplugged, battery out). Sadly, it didn’t magically fix the problem. I did successfully get the presentation I’m currently working on for Friday off the drive before it crashed for the 12th time. I called the Help Desk. The nice support guy thought it might be my hard drive and escalated me (with a very high priority) to an appropriate tech.

The tech timed his call perfectly - calling right after my afternoon meeting. (Doing a meeting blind when you’re supposed to be introducing the ins and outs of a new presentation? Not fun.) He agreed with the hard drive diagnosis (I was still desperately hoping for a video driver issue) and asked how soon I could get it to him. I overnighted it to him and he received it today. Apparently my laptop is toast. Poor little laptop. He thinks he can save my data though, so all is not lost (literally and figuratively). I think I’ll have a new-to-me laptop in my hands by the end of the week. In the meantime I get to limp along with temporary access to my e-mail via a web client that times out every 30 seconds. Irritating, but at least I can still work!

April Stats:

• Flickr: 40 new photos, 300 hits.
• Miscellaney of a Cheshire Cat: 12 new posts, 5458 hits.

tags: cherry blossoms, laptop, pink, spring, statistics, tech support, work

Sunday’s walk involved taking lots of photos. The sun decided he would play hide-and-seek with me most of the walk so I found myself standing and over-composing shots while I waited for a cloud to pass. This is different than over-composting shots, but often the result can be the same. And it meant my walk was probably not as exercise-rich as it could have been, but I got some lovely photos.

This shot is not one of the over-composed ones. I like how the exposure worked with the overly bright pink against the dark center of the tulip and dark background. Also if you look at the larger version (aka the full-sized original file which is 3.5MB), you can see the textures of the petals. I now have this set to be my desktop pattern. Feel free to use it too if you want - just open this link and right-click to save it or set it as your desktop image.

In playing with this I discovered a nifty thing about Firefox too. When I click on full-sized image link, Firefox cleverly resizes the image to fit in the window and scales it appropriately as I resize the viewing window. When I mouse-over the image, my cursor turns into a magnifier so that I can zoom into the full sized image just by clicking. When I click again, the image is resized to fit the window again. Fun stuff. Of course, I’m probably the last person to realize this… but I don’t view big images in Firefox very often. ;) Zoom in to the center of the flower - it’s so cool!

Do you actually see your desktop image? With all the windows and applications I usually have open, I don’t see much of mine. Right now I see the lower right corner of the image - a blurry green leave and a sharply focused edge of a pink petal. Of course, I am particularly bad about open windows in Firefox (thank the gods for tabbed windows!). But still, it seems like I only ever see my desktop image when I reboot (which is rare on my personal computers) or when I hide all my applications to find something I saved to the desktop.

tags: desktop images, firefox,, flowers, macro, photography, pink, technology, tulips