2 Sugars, Cream, and the Letter Y

Which one of these does not get along with the other three: sugar, cream, coffee, and the letter Y? Let me give you a few hints. Three of the four were quite content to be safely encapsulated in a travel mug. One of the four had no idea its demise was so near, about as near as the travel mug was to the keyboard upon which it was perched.

Apple, Inc. recently celebrated the 25th year of the Mac's existence. Here's to many more. This morning, I toasted the end to my own streak of approximately 28 years of using keyboards attached to Apple computers and drinking beverages of all kinds without the two ever coming to a nasty impasse. More than 10,000 consecutive days of keeping the liquids separate from the solids right went down the drain.

And the Y paid for my clumsiness with its life. All the keys around the Y dried out unscathed after a gentle swabbing with many tissues and some canned air. An additional odd injury to the keyboard was the inactivity of the N if the shift or command key to the left of the space bar was depressed but not the shift or command key to the right of the space bar. At that point, I placed the order for a replacement.

Entered in the budget ledger for the day was $65 ... for coffee.

Access Forbidden

Another story I can't make up.

I acquired new software. Cool. It's a calculator emulator for the computer. It works just like the actual handheld but the keystrokes stay visible on the screen. I figure this could eliminate about 250 questions per quarter. Questions along the line of "How did you type that in?" or "What are your window settings?" Anyway, our adventure begins when I try to install it on the computer in the classroom. I tried to log in as an administrator. No luck. The domain is not available. I don't know a lot but I know that is a problem like when an individual Borg is cut away from the collective. No individual thought is possible since all the applications are sitting on a server somewhere ... somewhere over there, wherever there is. Considering the PC I am trying to log into is a 10 year old PC, the analogy is not far off. This beige box is one glitch away from being a doorstop.

I place a call for help. It goes something like this:

Me: D, I can't log in as an administrator. Can you fix that?
D: Sure. I'm on it.

time passes

D: I logged in as you.
Me: How did you log in as me when I couldn't log in as me? Never mind. Before you answer, when I logged in successfully as a student, I couldn't reach the internet.
D: You ... couldn't ... reach ... the ... internet ... [D isn't thick or slow; he was just thinking out loud.]
Me: The last time this happened, J said he had to 'hit the switch in the closet.' Something I couldn't do.
D: Oh, is this in G10?

From the sound of his voice, I know D has clearly figured out what the problem is from my little comment. Are you ready for this?

D: When the janitor for that building pushes his bucket too far into the closet, it disconnects the internet connection.

I was severed from the most massive human creation in history by a bucket. Let the jokes begin.

Do you think stuff like this ever happens at NASA or in the Pentagon?

What can White do for you?

My plans for today? So glad you asked! I am going to spend some quality time with Nirvana. You read that right: with the thing Nirvana, not in the place Nirvana.

[Do you have that Schoolhouse Rock tune in your head now? A noun is a person, place or thing. Inserting little ditties in your conscious mind; just another service we offer.]

Nirvana is my G5 iMac, last mentioned when it lost its mind, due in no small part to me. We get along swimmingly. The reason for the extended together time today is because Nirvana is starting to look a little paunchy. Its mid section is starting to spill over its belt. Yes, Nirvana is morphing into a muffin-top.

Oh, there was plenty of room in that hard drive when I brought it home. Since settling in, Nirvana has done nothing but gorge on digital goodies via the internet. Of the 250 GB of space available, the thermometer bar of bytes reports only 6 GB remaining.

"What the hell have you got on that drive, Lee?" I hear you cry. That is a good question. In the interest of not distracting the lawyers who work for the digital book industry from whatever it is they do day-to-day, I won't get into the details other than to say I have gotten sucked into the spoken word, oral, written, and, er, lettered around action sequences in vibrant colors. But regardless of what the files are, today I endeavor to back them up and sift and prune and thin and trash and reclaim Nirvana's RAM waistline. Considering that the external hard drive the files will be backed-up to also has only 250 GB, I sense some serious byte-cleansing coming up.

Stay tuned, I'll post any highlights along the way.....


Well, every person you can know (Mrs. Jones, a lady, or a brother)
And every place that you can go (Like a street or a corner)
And anything that you can show (Like a dog or a bone)
You know they're nouns - you know they're nouns.



tick tock tick tock tick tock

10:35 AM - Haven't backed any files up yet but I have reclaimed approximately 20 square feet of floor space and flat space by restacking piles, recycling, trashing and etcetering debris found in the office.

11:10 AM - Got the external hard drive hooked up. Why does the hard drive weigh almost as much as Nirvana? Downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner. Going to do some reading on how to/what to/when to back up then get to it.

1:15 PM - Suffering from terminology overload. Cloning vs incremental backup vs head spin.

1:30 PM - Plugged in Roomba to charge it. Might as well vacuum the floor space reclaimed this morning.

2:45 PM - Removed cat from ceiling following Roomba attack.

4:00 PM - Commence backup/cloning. Still not sure what's the best way to go here but I have to start somewhere.