zen.org Communal Weblog

My dear Fujitsu Lifebook P-2046 has passed on. It lasted me for a good four years, and had only a single failing: the power jack on the back, where its power cable plugs in. Looking at a few different forums about the Lifebook, it’s a known problem. Well, except for the Fujitsu service center in Northern Ireland, where I sent it for repair to solve exactly that problem. (Not able to charge the battery consistently, and had to wiggle or wrestle with the plug or hold it at an angle to register any power on the system. They blamed the AC adapter and couldn’t reproduce the problem. It’s happened to hundreds of others, yet somehow Fujitsu didn’t know about it??)

I’d had my desires distracted by another laptop, and I think the Lifebook could figure it out. This was a wonderful laptop—small, light, able to do everything I needed, and withstood countless airline flights and tossing around in the awesome satchel given to me by E’s dad and step-mom.

Alas, this laptop is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!

THIS IS AN EX-LAPTOP!

Ahem.

Farewell, lisa-the-laptop. The last computer I’ll have named after Lisa Simpson; the first was 14 years ago when I was given the first Solaris box at Cygnus as my desktop machine. Based on her unchanging age, this means Lisa Simpson is technically now old enough to live on her own and buy Duff Beer.

Two weeks ago I sent in my order, via the US Postal Service, to Voicenet to get my ISDN line going. I picked them a few years ago because they are local, there building is, er was, even on a farm one of my relatives used to own. This week they moved from Ivyland to Philadelphia, not much further away. The pain is that I sent my order form to Ivyland at about the same time they moved to Philadelphia, so now I have to wait for the US Postal Service to resend my letter. I hope this paper with my credit card number on it gets some place I know some time.

I’ve been thinking about saying screw it and getting Verizon FiOS. I don’t think Verizon lets you run a web server, though they do offer a static IP number. Plus they run one wire in your house to where you computer is, and as we are going to switch the computer room and the kitchen soon I’d probably have to pay them to move it later.

In the mean time I’ve read H. G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, and several Edgar Allan Poe short stories. Any other suggestions for public domain stories to read before cable and Internet sucks my free time again?

I’m spending two nights at Cold Spring Harbor Labs for a gmod meeting. While I left my Pentium II in my room, most people took there laptop to the meeting and it’s very interesting. Of the twenty or so laptops there about half of them where Apple, and of the half that was x86, several of those where running GNU/Linux. While presentations where all using power point, Windows is on the down and out for this crowd.

The CBC labor dispute is over! Mr. Lawrence is once again hosting the CBC Radio 3 podcast! He ever ceremoniously chain sawed his robot replacement, Rosie was “her” name. Some how, the music sounds better now.

The New York/Philadelphia area has gotten a lot of rain in the past week, no sun since Friiday, and no sun until Monday. Today, driving to work, many little creeks where flooding roads and it took almost two hours to get to work!

The seat in the Prius started giving me back pain. Now that I’m at work, in my Herman Miller chair, my back feels much better. I think Herman Miller should start putting chairs is cars. Get rid of this horrible three inch fome covering that still holds the stench of a fart from years ago. The added thin layer will give the rear sitter more leg room, and leave the baby too far away to kick. While I don’t think the Herman Miller chair has recyclable parts, I bet the mass of unrecyclable parts would be less then a normal car seat.

So I’m plugging along in my html course (web design here I come), and one of the assignments is to create an image map & link to a bunch of…whatever. Just download this little free trial sofware and get your homework done. So, boutell.com here I come, download mapedit….and the little geek in me goes “ooooo. this is soo cool! I wanna do this again! ” Wonder how they made this work….

and for only $10 I can own it!

bwahahahahaha

For $10 I can get a self-contained package of VAX/VMS flashbacks.

I’m helping with a project that needs three 100-foot lengths of CAT5 ethernet cable. And quickly. Fine, says I, this will be easy. I go online to TigerDirect.com, order them, and can’t get it to change the shipping from UPS Ground, but since it’s Friday hopefully it’ll make it in time. Well, up comes the order confirmation page showing me my order number and thanking me—and letting me know most orders will take 5-7 days because of a renovation or move or something at their warehouse.

Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!! There’s no way in hell it’ll make it. Why didn’t they warn me?

I call them on the phone (screw email), but the guy said it’s not yet in his system; it could be 30 minutes to 2 hours before it shows up. Maybe try calling in the morning. Fine. I go to Cables-To-Go, spend about 3x as much for the same cables, but get it to promise UPS 2-day shipping. I reach the final page, but it doesn’t say if it’ll be shipping soon. Uh oh. I call them: their offices are closed and won’t open again until Monday morning. Jesus. So my shipment probably won’t happen til Monday, meaning it might show up on Wednesday.

Saturday morning, I call Tiger Direct back to cancel the order. The order’s been COMPLETED AND SHIPPED. What??? It was going to take between 5 and 7 days, I thought. So I’ve got two orders of 300′ of cable coming, with TigerDirect coming at least a day or two after Cables-To-Go. The guy on the phone from TigerDirect, Roberto, says my only real option is to refuse delivery when it shows up.

Ok. Monday, I try calling Cables-To-Go to see if I can cancel *THEIR* order. No answer, the phone just rings. Crazy busy day so I don’t keep trying.

Today, Tuesday, I get an email from Cables-To-Go confirming my order shipped today. TODAY? It was supposed to go out Monday cuz I ordered it on Friday. Well, the email says it shipped only 5 minutes ago so maybe it’s actually sitting in their shipping department and I can call and cancel the damn thing. I call Cables-To-Go, the guys says it’s too late, it actually did leave, so sorry.

Oh wait—they’re doing manual entry of all shipments because of a problem, and it did in fact ship on Monday. The email I got was incorrect. So it (the $200 shipment) should arrive on Wednesday. This is getting nuts. Well, we’ve got two orders en route now, in theory arriving within a day of each other. Whatever. We’ll have them reject the $200 order (C-T-G) and wait a day to accept the $70 order (TigerDirect).

Just to double-check that TigerDirect will really arrive when I expect it to, I check their site: a UPS tracking number. Ok, over to UPS.

The shipment is on its way—as of 8:35am Tuesday September 20th. Oh god. That’s today. But the person on the phone Saturday morning said it had shipped! UPS says it wasn’t even SCANNED until 8:36pm Monday night for its origin, and sat there for 12 hours til it actually scanned for departure Tuesday morning. Grr. TigerDirect, shipping today from Illinois, won’t make it til Friday or MONDAY. And it too can’t be cancelled. So now we’re forced to make sure they accept the $200 order tomorrow, and wait until the TigerDirect ($70) order shows up some days later to be rejected.

This was just insane. So much for the notion online shopping is superior to getting off your ass and going to RadioShack—their products might be a tad overpriced sometimes, but at least you can get what you need immediately.

I was standing next to the dumpster, swinging Lucy in my hand. One, two, three, up into the air and wam, bam. The parts intermingled with my old roof. Lucy was gone. Lucy was the old Zen, gone into retirement over a year ago, she now rests in pieces. I don’t quite understand the joy of destroying at one time fancy electroncis but joyful it was. It was really just the motherboard and case, most of the parts had been pilfered. It was a classic AMD processor, with the memory maxed out to 64M.

Rerun, the Pentium II laptop that had been Zen since Lucy until the tree hit my house is now actually my primary computer. With 8-bit sound, a blue line through the 1024×768 screen, one USB port (so I have to unplug the mouse to rip images from my camera) it’s works great. Well, graphics with patterns in it freezes the I/O to almost not, ripping a three minute CD track take like seven minutes. It’s going to San Francisco with me.

Unless I visit a cypercafé I expect to be off line next week. Unless one of 余艾蕾 parent’s neighbors got wireless without a password. Hmm.

One of my favorate podcasts is the CBC Radio 3 podcast, where thay play independent Canadian bands. Last week the host, Grant Lawrence, was replaced by a voice synthesizer, the robot, and implied that he would be back. This week the robot said that there is a labor dispute, after a little surfing it seems that Mr. Lawrence and piers are locked out.

So, if I wish support the locked out workers, should I unsubscribe from the podcast? Would that be bad for the independent artists? I’m not actually sure who I consider bad guys for this one, I have not read enough yet. Plus I’m not a Canadian tax payer, so perhaps nobody the my opnion means nothing in this anyway.