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So-o-o, the hard drive on my relatively new-to-me computer crashed yesterday, and I spent a merry 12 hours or so running every diagnostic test, quick repair, and hint in discussion.apple.com’s vast archives of geek talk. To no avail.
It’s a disk0s2 error. Which could mean: (A) Invalid node structure. (DiskWarrior could probably fix that. If I owned DiskWarrior) or (B) the hard drive is fucked. New hard drives cost approximately $100 and once upon a time, I could do that repair – Well. Not easily. But I could do it.
Not a crisis since Ben replaced the screen on the broken computer he gave me, from which I type merrily away to y’all now.
But it does make me wonder why I bought another Mac.
This computer – 2009 vintage – has a very useful technology called Firewire, which allowed me to hook up with ease in something called Target mode to other similarly endowed Firewire computers.
The new-to-me computer – 2010 vintage – has something called Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt and Firewire don’t talk to each other.
Just like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn’t talk to each other.
Well, Steve Jobs, you’re an asshole. (Were an asshole.) Fuggetabout me going to your movie! There’s an impressive tech term for Apple’s disdain for allowing cross-compatibility in product lines. I forget what the term is because I’m old, and my mind is Swiss cheese, and any moment now, I’m gonna be hauled off to the human recycling dump. But. But… Real elegance involves facilitating communication.
So-o-o, I do do backup files every once in a while. There isn’t anything too, too irreplaceable on the sick machine. Mostly my notes for the June novel. I can do those over without too much hurt.
I can’t fix it myself at this point – although I would be able to fix it if I had access to another Thunderbolt machine. (Gr-r-r-r.)
My options are (1): Either to drive to Kingston on Monday (where the only Mac guy in the Hudson Valley has his shop), spend $100 or so to fish those few files out of the glub-glub-glubbing hard drive. (2) Drive to Ithaca Monday where Ben will fix everything for free-e-e-ee! Or (3) To eat the June files, erase the hard drive, and reinstall the OS. Of course, if there’s something physically wrong with the hard drive, that won’t work. But for whatever reason, I don’t think there’s something physically wrong with the hard drive.
I will, of course, write a civil but hostilely toned note to the bozo who sold the machine to me. One really ought to be able to get more than two and a half months use out of “refurbished” machine.
###
Yesterday was the day where I was going to do absolutely nothing.
Not that my life is particularly demanding on the day-to-day level anyway, you understand, but yesterday I wanted to watch bad television all day and sink mindfully into the abyss of absolute sloth and self-indulgence.
Which I suppose is exactly what I did. Minus the bad television.
###
This has been the most beautiful autumn you can possibly imagine. I mean, just breathtakingly gorgeous.
Like living inside a Gerard Manly Hopkins snowglobe.
Margaret, are you grieving?...
(Click on the pix and then click with the handy magnifying tool for bigger views!)
Aurora is moving on to her new life in the Big City today. It’s time. She’s interested in media, fashion, and publishing jobs, and she's done an impressive job of tracking down such listed employment opportunities, but in the end, I fear New York City media, fashion, and publishing employment opportunities are mostly a function of networking, so she’s gotta be somewhere where she can network effectively, go to the launch parties and gallery openings where such deals actually get made. That somewhere is not the sleepy Hudson Valley.
She took L and I out to dinner Friday night. We hit Crave.
Wonderful restaurant. I had a cocktail made from fig vodka, ginger beer, and lime, and this amazing Brussels sprout dish. Fresh Brussels sprouts do not taste at all like Brussels sprouts that are even two days old, and these were sautéed with tiny chips of pork belly and something else I forget now. So-o-oo good! And a slightly less amazing gnocchi with a deep, complex sauce. You can fuck up gnocchi, but you can’t really make them gourmet food. I mean – you can; trendy, expensive restaurants do it all the time, but that’s really an affectation. Gnocchi are peasant food. What gnocchi live or die by is the sauce, and this sauce was rich, filled with meat that had simmered all day and fallen off the bone, and hints of cinnamon and cardamom. To die for.
On the drive home, we started talking about serial killers.
Poughkeepsie has its own!
Kendall Francois who offed at least eight hookers during a four-year stretch in the mid-90s.
“Well, Kathy and I are such ghouls that naturally, we had to check out the house where he lived with his parents,” L said cozily. “It was all cordoned off with yellow police tape. Near where Kathy lives. We went by there every day for about a year.”
“Creepy!” I said. “Did they pull it down?”
“No, no. Of course, the family moved. And it was empty for years. But eventually, it sold. Someone’s living there now.”
“I wouldn’t want to live in a house where a serial killer once lived,” I said. “He was a very large man, wasn’t he? A morbidly obese serial killer!”
“Well, I heard – from someone who worked inside the jail where they kept him – that he had an absolutely enormous penis –“
“Linda!” Aurora shrieked. She began laughing hysterically.
“Aurora’s never heard the word ‘penis’ before, Linda,” I said. “Perhaps you ought to explain what it means.”
“A very large penis,” Linda continued, unperturbed. “So I was thinking maybe, you know, he had to go to prostitutes because normal women couldn’t handle his needs. And then he got mad at them because they couldn’t handle him!”
“Oh, I rather doubt that, Linda,” I said. “Serial killers have a rather well-developed and well-defined pathology. Circumstance does not transform one into a serial killer!”
“And that would be… ?”
“Well, there’s a triad of behaviors they display as kids. They kill animals. They wet their beds. And they set fires! If you notice your kid doing these things, you don’t have to waste time taking him to a vocational aptitude counselor. ‘Cause you know that when he grows up, he's gonna be a serial killer.”
It’s a disk0s2 error. Which could mean: (A) Invalid node structure. (DiskWarrior could probably fix that. If I owned DiskWarrior) or (B) the hard drive is fucked. New hard drives cost approximately $100 and once upon a time, I could do that repair – Well. Not easily. But I could do it.
Not a crisis since Ben replaced the screen on the broken computer he gave me, from which I type merrily away to y’all now.
But it does make me wonder why I bought another Mac.
This computer – 2009 vintage – has a very useful technology called Firewire, which allowed me to hook up with ease in something called Target mode to other similarly endowed Firewire computers.
The new-to-me computer – 2010 vintage – has something called Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt and Firewire don’t talk to each other.
Just like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn’t talk to each other.
Well, Steve Jobs, you’re an asshole. (Were an asshole.) Fuggetabout me going to your movie! There’s an impressive tech term for Apple’s disdain for allowing cross-compatibility in product lines. I forget what the term is because I’m old, and my mind is Swiss cheese, and any moment now, I’m gonna be hauled off to the human recycling dump. But. But… Real elegance involves facilitating communication.
So-o-o, I do do backup files every once in a while. There isn’t anything too, too irreplaceable on the sick machine. Mostly my notes for the June novel. I can do those over without too much hurt.
I can’t fix it myself at this point – although I would be able to fix it if I had access to another Thunderbolt machine. (Gr-r-r-r.)
My options are (1): Either to drive to Kingston on Monday (where the only Mac guy in the Hudson Valley has his shop), spend $100 or so to fish those few files out of the glub-glub-glubbing hard drive. (2) Drive to Ithaca Monday where Ben will fix everything for free-e-e-ee! Or (3) To eat the June files, erase the hard drive, and reinstall the OS. Of course, if there’s something physically wrong with the hard drive, that won’t work. But for whatever reason, I don’t think there’s something physically wrong with the hard drive.
I will, of course, write a civil but hostilely toned note to the bozo who sold the machine to me. One really ought to be able to get more than two and a half months use out of “refurbished” machine.
###
Yesterday was the day where I was going to do absolutely nothing.
Not that my life is particularly demanding on the day-to-day level anyway, you understand, but yesterday I wanted to watch bad television all day and sink mindfully into the abyss of absolute sloth and self-indulgence.
Which I suppose is exactly what I did. Minus the bad television.
###
This has been the most beautiful autumn you can possibly imagine. I mean, just breathtakingly gorgeous.
Like living inside a Gerard Manly Hopkins snowglobe.
Margaret, are you grieving?...
(Click on the pix and then click with the handy magnifying tool for bigger views!)
Aurora is moving on to her new life in the Big City today. It’s time. She’s interested in media, fashion, and publishing jobs, and she's done an impressive job of tracking down such listed employment opportunities, but in the end, I fear New York City media, fashion, and publishing employment opportunities are mostly a function of networking, so she’s gotta be somewhere where she can network effectively, go to the launch parties and gallery openings where such deals actually get made. That somewhere is not the sleepy Hudson Valley.
She took L and I out to dinner Friday night. We hit Crave.
Wonderful restaurant. I had a cocktail made from fig vodka, ginger beer, and lime, and this amazing Brussels sprout dish. Fresh Brussels sprouts do not taste at all like Brussels sprouts that are even two days old, and these were sautéed with tiny chips of pork belly and something else I forget now. So-o-oo good! And a slightly less amazing gnocchi with a deep, complex sauce. You can fuck up gnocchi, but you can’t really make them gourmet food. I mean – you can; trendy, expensive restaurants do it all the time, but that’s really an affectation. Gnocchi are peasant food. What gnocchi live or die by is the sauce, and this sauce was rich, filled with meat that had simmered all day and fallen off the bone, and hints of cinnamon and cardamom. To die for.
On the drive home, we started talking about serial killers.
Poughkeepsie has its own!
Kendall Francois who offed at least eight hookers during a four-year stretch in the mid-90s.
“Well, Kathy and I are such ghouls that naturally, we had to check out the house where he lived with his parents,” L said cozily. “It was all cordoned off with yellow police tape. Near where Kathy lives. We went by there every day for about a year.”
“Creepy!” I said. “Did they pull it down?”
“No, no. Of course, the family moved. And it was empty for years. But eventually, it sold. Someone’s living there now.”
“I wouldn’t want to live in a house where a serial killer once lived,” I said. “He was a very large man, wasn’t he? A morbidly obese serial killer!”
“Well, I heard – from someone who worked inside the jail where they kept him – that he had an absolutely enormous penis –“
“Linda!” Aurora shrieked. She began laughing hysterically.
“Aurora’s never heard the word ‘penis’ before, Linda,” I said. “Perhaps you ought to explain what it means.”
“A very large penis,” Linda continued, unperturbed. “So I was thinking maybe, you know, he had to go to prostitutes because normal women couldn’t handle his needs. And then he got mad at them because they couldn’t handle him!”
“Oh, I rather doubt that, Linda,” I said. “Serial killers have a rather well-developed and well-defined pathology. Circumstance does not transform one into a serial killer!”
“And that would be… ?”
“Well, there’s a triad of behaviors they display as kids. They kill animals. They wet their beds. And they set fires! If you notice your kid doing these things, you don’t have to waste time taking him to a vocational aptitude counselor. ‘Cause you know that when he grows up, he's gonna be a serial killer.”
