days and acquisitions.

so summer started last week. i was going to post in celebration of the solstice, but life started sucking. let's just say, i hate cars and need more sleep.

today is his birthday. so, logically, i got a new cellphone.

work with me here.

along with both cars breaking down last week, my cellphone also started to break. someone thought it would be neat to design a phone where one button handles both the select and cancel features. this is great, right up until it starts to detach itself, and your phone ends up in an infinite select-cancel-select-cancel loop.

as i think i've posted before, i'm very picky about my cellphone interfaces, and when faced with the necessity of replacing my phone, i couldn't help but go back to nokia. now i have too much phone. it has wifi. it browses the web. it text messages. it syncs (wirelessly!) with my mac (after downloading the appropriate plugin). but it's super-thin and not that big and actually fits comfortably in my pocket. i have joined the twenty-first century. or something. but damn, i love having a full qwerty keyboard back. don't let best buy sync your contacts for you, btw. i had to delete them all, download them from my old phone onto my mac, and sync them with the new phone. i don't know what software or device best buy uses, but it rendered my phonebook an incomprehensible garble with every single phone number categorized as "mobile." (note to nokia/symbian: have you ever considered letting someone re-categorize numbers along with just editing them?)

but it is synced and happy and useable now. and charging.

lest you think he was bereft on his birthday, he has received much birthday cash and bought new clothes. but clothes are not nearly as interesting as electronics ;)

return.

macbook is back. it is also now running leopard with time machine so hopefully, if it ever dies again, restoring it willbe significantly simpler. i believe in backups, but backups are infinitely easier if they are done automatically by the computer itself.

applecare, btw, is worth every penny. not only did it take 2 days (not counting the weekend), but they also gave me a whole new topcase because the old one had cracked and the mouse button was coming unseated.

now to set up backups on my windows box.

insewerance.

my mac is dead :(

well. not deaddead. but this morning while i was checking email, the harddrive started clicking, and when i rebooted it, i got the helpful folder-with-question-mark icon.

however, i have applecare on it, so all it took was a brief phonecall and a walk through the tech support script (they insisted i boot from a cd and see if the disk utilities included would find the drive), i have a support number and a shipping box on its way. he estimates i should have the mac back by friday or monday at the latest.

also luckily, everything was backed up, although in various places (photos, for example, are all still on the sd card in the camera). i need to get more assiduous about running my backup script. my excuse for not running it yesterday and almost losing a 7 page document (i emailed it to someone) is that i was also trying to not throw up at the time.

in the meantime, i have my windows box, and am now more than ever glad i bought that kvm.

they're even going to fix my mouse button.

home again.

got home technically early this morning (1am). photos are up on flickr. enjoy.

vacation.

leaving for LA wednesday morning for my brother's college graduation. since i've gone back to a five-days-a-week work schedule, and tuesday is now one of my days off, that means vacation started... 1 hour ago.

w00t.

government math.

so, seeing as taxes were due today, we went through our forms a couple days ago and filled out our FAFSAs.

being me, of course, i had to go look into the whole process. i found another website that purports to show you the inner workings of the FAFSA calculation.

if they are correct, and i have no reason currently to believe they are not, the government's math is... fascinating. specifically that it is assumed, somehow, that rent/mortgage, insurance, transportation, food, and all utilities will somehow be less than $800 a month.

what. the. fuck? where in this country can you cover all that for less than $800/mo? seriously. because i might think about moving there. that is an insane number. it's not even a pretense at being realistic.

i guess i'm ending up with an unsubsidized loan.

spring holidays.

every year i rejoice that coffee and chocolate are kosher for passover.

although now i have a headless chocolate bunny in the fridge, which is mildly creepy.

continuing with the creepiness thread, i see a new tab in blogger. it is titled "monetize." this is also creepy.

perhaps not as creepy as a headless chocolate bunny.

comfort of habits.

the windows box has been brought back into use.

it's not that i don't like my mac. i do. in general, i am perfectly happy to use os x over windows.

except for one thing.

it took me a while to figure it out. but i've been thinking about it more and more as graduate school looms in the fall. also, two years in a row of failed nanowrimo helped.

i'm a wordperfect user. have been for years. totally addicted to the "reveal codes" functionality. it's just the word processing/text tool that i am most comfortable with. i can use word, but i don't like it. i've been trying out scrivener for my novels, but it is a little too much for me, and the features i really wanted don't work the way i want them to.

so today, we went to microcenter, and purchased an iogear dvi/usb + audio kvm switch.

after a few mishaps, we got it installed, and it works perfectly. keyboard, mouse, monitor. i haven't tried audio yet, but that's because in general, i do not allow my computers to make noise. i'm really surprised, to be honest. it's a pleasant surprise, granted, but it's definitely surprise. kvms tend to be finicky, and this one is switching between a mac and a home-built windows desktop (i can't bring myself to actually call it a pc. technically, macs are also personal computers. plus, now they're even intel-based). but now i'll be able to use wordperfect again, plus play games using my nice wireless mouse and digital input to my monitor.

all this just because i'm only comfortable with an ancient piece of software.

if i'm not careful, i'll turn into my dad.

update.

congestion levels are going down and energy levels are coming up.

cough is still lingering, however.

in other news, my tulips are sprouting. this is my second time attempting to overwinter bulbs in a pot, and i was afraid they had died again.

happy spring.

sickness.

being sick is too much work. what with the cough and sneezing and chills and drugs and cough drops and fever and sleeping and the constant imbibing of hot liquids and vitamin c, bah. fuck it all.

i'm ready to get better. c'mon immune system, do your thing.