Mac Update

Emulated Mac, originally uploaded by woofiegrrl.

As you can see, I managed to get a Mac emulator working on my computer. I did it with this tutorial and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would have to be! Of course it only works in VMWare, not VirtualBox (which I prefer), but it does work. Unfortunately it’s only Tiger, and I really wanted Leopard; also, it runs abysmally slowly, so it’s not like an actual workable solution or anything. I still want a MacBook…I’m considering offering people money for signing up with GiftMonkey because I want a MacBook so bad. Whoever thought I’d be craving a Mac?! Mostly I just think it’s cool that you can emulate pretty much anything on a Mac, including XP…I could make a virtual machine out of the laptop I’m typing on now, and then just run that on the MacBook, and use Mac stuff when I wanted to, and…and…and…

World’s Most Disgusting Computer Problem

I sent the following e-mail to my wife shortly after I got home this afternoon.

Do you have any compressed air at work? Can you please bring it home?

I have the world’s most disgusting computer problem.

Remember the tiny ants I mentioned? Turns out they’re not in the bedroom.

They’re in MY COMPUTER.

I am NOT making this up. I have watched them coming out of the keyboard at least a dozen times now.

I think an ant crawled in through one of the vents, and did whatever ants do to reproduce, and now I have a computer full of ants.

This calls for a nap.

Drive Imaging

Tonight I spent about two hours trying to make Norton Ghost work. I downloaded an ISO plus keygen off a warez site at first, but it didn’t work - installed fine, but said I had some issue with security privileges and wouldn’t run. Okay, fine, I blew that one away and downloaded a proper trial version off a real website. Exact same installation process, exact same error message. So I ended up downloading Acronis True Image. I figured it would need to make a bootable CD, so I went into my father-in-law’s office to grab a blank CD from him. While looking or them, I found a retail box of DriveImage…oops. Anyway, my backup operation is in progress, so I’m going to go to bed…finally. I had planned to do so many hours ago, but I couldn’t find my ID lanyard and I really got my adrenaline pumping while I searched high and low - it turned out to be over at my own house! So once that was secure, I wasn’t ready to sleep, but I think I am now. Of course, I’ll be tired again tomorrow. Fortunately I don’t have to be at work till 11:00.

My New Computer

So the other day…I bought a new laptop. I ordered it from Dell, with whom my school has a discount program, and with whom I’ve been happy for many years. I currently use a Dell Inspiron 1150, which is quite serviceable but is starting to fall apart in little ways. It also has a crappy processor, which is why I couldn’t run SP2 worth a damn. So I bought a new one. Here’s the specs.

Goodbye Deaf Studies, Hello History!

Goodbye deaf studies, hello history! No, not my major. But I’ve dropped DST 101 in lieu of HIS 111. The reason is that supposedly the GSR 103 class is going to replace the DST 101 class, so they might be considered equivalent, and I might not need it for the major. Time is money, and classes take time, so I spoke to my advisor today and switched into American History I. This is also required for the deaf studies major, so I have to take it eventually, and my advisor said that DST 101 is offered every semester, so I might as well take history now instead. When I went to the bookstore to check out the required books for the class, I was glad I hadn’t ended up in the Honors version - it requires four books compared to just one for the class I’m in! (Besides one honors class per semester is enough for now, and I already like my Honors English class.)

I am so frustrated with my computer, though. I managed to get SP2 installed, with the expectation that doing so would enable me to use the wifi at school, but now my computer is unbelievably slow. That’s probably why I rolled back the first time, heh. The power cord is also nearly dead, so I bought a replacement on eBay today. I really just want a new computer, but I can’t afford one. One with specs I like - XP Home, 1GB RAM, 80GB drive, and a DVD burner - is $584.50 using the discount program Gallaudet has with Dell. (I thought you couldn’t get XP with a Dell anymore; turns out you can - but you have to call them up to ask for it, you can’t get it online.) So it’s a lot, and I probably will keep fighting with my machine that is a few years old now.

Reorganizing Music

I am reorganizing music like a crazy person, now that I have a 500GB external drive for it to sit on. When I first started actually collecting digital music - which I hadn’t really done before - it was in a kind of haphazard manner, with a bunch of tunes all thrown into a directory. When I started ripping my own CDs, I made categories by artist for them, but I was still kind of lax with it. But now I’m putting everything into a category by artist, except for “Various Artists” CDs which are organized by album. The point is to avoid downloading duplicates, although I haven’t found a whole lot of duplicates yet as I’ve been organizing.

I’m pretty sure iTunes is going to go insane when I fire it up and try to sync - it’s going to say it can’t find anything! I don’t have a lot of songs rated or with “number of times played” so maybe I should just start a whole new library, I dunno. I need to delete a bunch of podcasts, too…I don’t need those hanging around.

I’m New Down Here

I have finally gotten my laptop for work and gotten situated in my new cube. There’s computer equipment all over the place, and I don’t have a trash can, but it’s okay. Actually, I have virtually no amenities; when someone needed me to jot down a note she had to bring by a pad and pen! Fortunately she left them here, which is nice.

Obviously this laptop was freshly re-imaged before I got it, so I am starting from scratch. I had saved my entire Firefox profile - actually, I saved a very old copy, oh well - and I was planning to run Portable Firefox from my USB stick, but it was so slow as to be unusable, so I just installed regular Firefox to the C: drive. (Apparently I cannot install into C:\Program Files due to permissions.) I also grabbed kitten wallpaper to replace the green field thing that XP always comes with.

New Work PC

I got a new CPU at work today as part of the upgrades we’re all getting. I was supposed to get it yesterday, but nobody from the IT team showed up; when I called to ask about it they didn’t give a reason but rather rescheduled me for noon today.

The woman showed up today around 11:30 and I wasn’t ready, so I asked her to come back. It took me about 15 minutes to get situated, and then I figured I’d just log out and let her do it. It turned out she was waiting right outside my cube, so I said she could go ahead and get started. I took my lunch out to my car and ate it while reading The Great Society Subway, which is about the history of the DC Metro. When it arrived from Amazon it was much more textbook-y than I had been expecting, but it turns out to be very interesting. After I ate I took a little nap and then went back inside a little before 1:00.

I don’t have room in my cube for a guest chair, so fortunately someone in my aisle was teleworking and I was able to sit there and keep reading. The woman had said it would take two to three hours for the switch, but to my surprise she was done by about 1:30. She had installed the printer in my cube as a local printer (it’s a network printer) so I had to fix that myself, and she couldn’t find my PST file for Outlook so I looked at the ghost image myself and fixed that too.

I had backed up my Firefox profile yesterday, so that wasn’t a problem at all. Everything went back to normal (after three required reboots) and I continued as if nothing had happened. It was a lot less painful than I’d been expecting.

NonFicWriMo #6: Assistive Technology and Computers

Since its earliest days, the Internet has been a great equalizer for disabled individuals. People who would not otherwise have the opportunity to communicate, do research, and contribute their own knowledge and opinions have been able to do all these things with the Internet. But disabled people don’t necessarily access the Internet the same way non-disabled people do - there is a wide variety of assistive technology available for disabled computer users.
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Laptopless in NYC

Ack! I left my laptop bag at home before driving up to NYC for an extended weekend. Inside the bag were two very important things: my laptop, and my meds. (Those who know me know that these are equally important to my health and overall well-being.) Various options have been discussed - I could just go home after the cat show tomorrow; I could have my meds sent by overnight mail (about $20 via USPS), have the laptop sent, etc. The choice I’m going with for now is to have my meds shipped overnight via USPS. I have access to my friend C’s computer (when he’s not using it) and I have my Sidekick, so that should keep me reasonably well connected despite the feeling that I’ve left a body part behind. Everything I do is stored on that laptop, so computer-based plans I had for the weekend - graphics work, more video blogging - are shot. But I’ll manage.

That said, though, if anybody reading lives in NYC and has a laptop they can lend to a trustworthy geek who is in town through midday January 3rd, please drop me an e-mail…