Category: Technology

I finally caved

My friends are always saying they’re amazed I don’t buy up every new piece of tech at the first opportunity. I try to explain: there’s no point buying it if I’m not going to use it enough to justify the cost. It’s enough for me to know what it is and how it works. I’ve been refusing a smartphone for years on those grounds, and yet I ended up with one anyway.

In December me and Dean (mostly Dean) were researching BlackBerry phones and plans since his sister wanted to pay less for the phones her family had and maybe get new ones. It turned out there were some really nice deals around for Christmas, so we started debating the possibility of getting one for ourselves. Really, it came down to how much we’d use BBM, since that was the only thing that our friends used that our old phones couldn’t do.

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I Had An Adventure

My computer has been making this weird buzzing sound pretty much since I got it but I’d been putting off doing anything about it, after the mess that resulted whenever I tried to get Dell to fix anything.

Turns out that was silly and I could have fixed this in November with no problems. I called Apple last Thursday and was only on the phone with them for 5 minutes (as opposed to the hour+ that happened with Dell every time) and they believed what I said and thought that it was my screen inverter being the problem.

I found out all I had to do was bring my computer in to any of the places around that sell them and they could fix it there. Sweet! At first I was going to bring it to UW since that’s closest but their tech guy isn’t around as much as the one at Carbon Computing is. So I dropped it off there.

After taking a look at it Dale (the really nice repair guy) called me and said that he can’t get it to make the stupid noise, but that half of the backlights on my screen were dead. I didn’t realize there was something that major wrong with the screen, but it explained a lot. My screen had always looked kinda dark since I got it, but I thought that was normal since people had said these screens had a tendency to be unevenly lit. Whoops.

So not only did they replace my screen, but the cables and inverter and anything else that might have been messing with my screen. Since I picked up the computer yesterday there’s been no more weird noises and the screen just looks so much BETTER. It’s scary how bad it was in comparison. Dell had taught me to accept crap as the usual way of things. *sigh*

This week I also bought one of those orange iPod Shuffle’s from the Apple Store. It’s so cute and works wonderfully. I had to go pick it up today since it was originally sent to the depot in Guelph and the Purolator guy has tried to deliver it since Wednesday with no luck.

I don’t know what’s up with that. For some reason he couldn’t figure out how to buzz up here or something, since he said he was here on Wednesday and didn’t know the number. It’s the same as the apartment number and they are clearly labelled! They apparently called here at 7am yesterday and woke Katie up, and she told them that the buzzer is the same.

That didn’t help, since the guy tried again and said he couldn’t figure it out. So I called Purolator myself and explained (while trying not to sound angry at the apparently simple people that work there). Instead of trying again today they gave up and dropped it off last night at the Purolator place by Conestoga Mall.

The whole thing just seemed so stupid. I honestly don’t think the guy actually found this place, since he claims to have buzzed but I have the tracking to know around what time and people were here. Hell, three of the four of us were here both times he claims he buzzed. I don’t know what to think. I’m just glad my iPod didn’t end up lost as a result of this.


omg new computer!

I love this computer so much! It’s the awesomest thing in the world. 🙂

I’m just so impressed at the attention to detail in putting these together. Everything works so well, it’s everything I was told it would be.

I’ll take some pictures when I find the camera, and edit this post to put them in.

Again, SO impressed. It was definitely worth waiting for after all the aggravation the other one put me through.


Waiting sucks

It is possible to go nuts from waiting for something for too long? I haven’t gotten anything useful done all day. I’ve been checking the tracking on my computer non-stop, and its been in some sorting facility in Mississauga since Saturday. *grumble*

The estimated shipping time is tomorrow by 6pm, but most people said that FedEx usually ships a day earlier than they estimate. Not in this case. I’m really hoping it comes early tomorrow because otherwise I’ll have yet another hugely unproductive day.

I feel like doing my logic assignment, but I’m also having trouble concentrating. Boo. I guess I’ll just plod ahead with it and then check it over a couple times when I get the computer and get it installed.


What a Week!

It’s been one hell of a week. I’ve been sick, first with an ear infection and then a touch of the flu. I’ve been all queasy and gross feeling all week, and still am a bit. I had toast for dinner today which helps.

My computer died again. I spent a good 6 hours between Monday and yesteday on the phone with Dell. On Monday they decided my hard drive was busted, and sent me a new one yesterday. It was still busted (which I could have told them) so I called them back and spent some time explaining and trying to get them to listen to me. Eventually they caught on that I have a piece of crap with lots of stuff wrong with it so they told me to send it in with most of the peripherals and they are going to check it all. It’s about damn time. I stole Dean’s iBook for the next week while they fix it so I can still do school stuff.

Tudor visited on Tuesday and delivered a copy of his book, which is amazingly wonderful. Go buy it. I was feeling icky and out of it and forgot about the offer of tea. Bribes work best when you deliver on them.

I crammed like mad in order to finish the WTC quilt squares before Wednesday, but they are done and mailed now. I’m so glad that I’m done. I never should have volunteered for the second one. It was really making my carpal tunnel act up. Oh well. Hindsight.

I got some Koigu KPPPM in the mail that I ordered a few weeks ago. It’s beautiful and amazingly soft. I’m going to love the socks I’m making out of it. It bugs me that it’s made in Ontario but you pretty much have to buy it from the US. *grumble* It’s worth it though.

My amusement for the day: Rocky talked about truthiness and the Colbert Report. Philosophy classes kick serious ass.


MacBook Nerd…Me

While playing with Google to see what people thought about the new MacBook Pros I stumbled across JErm’s blog and the funniest quote I’ve read in a while:

Now my iBook seems like an old fussy girlfriend who doesn’t do anything cuz she’s fat and lazy. I don’t need this temptation.

A really nerdy thing for me to be amused about, I know. Want something even more nerdy?

There’s a t-shirt that Bert wears a lot that I think it hilarious. It says:

“God is Dead” – Nietzsche, 1882
“Nietzsche is Dead” – God, 1900

It certainly makes the point. Not to mention it brings up lots of fun metaphysical questions.

Comment with other nerdy pearls of wisdom. It might be fun.


The Tower Is Haunted

At least that’s what Felix tells me. After today I’m starting to believe it.

This morning I woke up with a kink in my neck, a sore and slightly dislocated jaw, and a swollen lip. I slept in and was almost late for volunteering. For the most part the majority of the day went fine. I went to the Pubs office (a rare occurrence in recent years) to try and get some work done and instead ended up playing with the pretty iMac.

Aside: The MacBook Pros got a free upgrade yesterday. I’m so excited! I’m totally going down to Carbon Computing after Reading Week to touch the pretties.

Once I got back home, I started going through my study notes again, but that didn’t last long. Eventually I gave up and decided to clean up the kitchen. While doing the dishes, one of the glass cups literally fell apart while I was washing it. Somehow I got cut on both the front and the back of my hand on a single piece of glass. I wasn’t being hard on it while washing it. I still remember the time last year when Ben lost a huge chunk of his pinky finger and the skin around it from putting too much pressure on Melynda’s cup. It was very weird.

Then I went to the Blueprint meeting, which was great except for the fact that the service at Wilf’s still sucks. It took them about twenty minutes to take our order after we were seated, and an hour after that for us to get our pizza. All in all, maybe fifteen minutes was spent actually eating. Needless to say, a shitty tip was left for them.

After that I went and got some hot chocolate, and now I’m just wasting time. Again.

I’m going to be a good girl now and try to study some more before I feel completely useless.


Fun With CSS

For a change I got off my lazy mental ass and decided to learn how margins and padding work in CSS. Of course, this was partly procrasination from studying for a midterm I have on Thursday, but mostly it was because I realised that I had only designed one theme for this blog from scratch. All the rest are modifications of existing themes designed by someone else. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have many like that. There are lots of amazing themes out there that I wouldn’t be able to design if my life depended on it. Mostly that’s because of javascript, which I haven’t bothered to learn yet. But still.

My favourite has got to be the Regulus theme designed by Ben from Binary Moon. Not only does it look good and have pretty much everything built in, but it also integrates into the WordPress admin panel so you can change the style without editing the code all the time. Not that I haven’t messed with the code lots anyway. I changed it to allow me to use more colour schemes than the ones it comes with, and attempted to add more header images. It turns out the code didn’t like two-digit values for that, so I had to replace the old ones with mine. The good news is that after doing that I can change the entire look of the site just by choosing a colour and image from the admin panel. ‘Tis very handy.

Anyway, back to the CSS fun. Since the library book I need is still out, I decided to just play around with the margin and padding values in my theme and see what happened. Personally I think I learned more doing that than I ever would have from reading a book. I learn a lot of things from books, but tend not to fully understand them until they’re put into practice. In this case I just skipped the book-reading step.

I wanted this theme to be easily viewable for people with resolutions of 800×600, since both Emile and Stephanie tend to use that one. They have old computers and it’s not like they really have a choice to be able to upgrade. I know it’s better to design with older hardware in mind, but I don’t usually care because up until a few months ago everyone that knew about this site had relatively new computers and used resolutions of 1024×768 or more. It looks good this way anyway, so whatever.

I’m rambling now, but the point is that I neglected review to learn something new and it was awesome. There’s still a couple kinks I need to work out with this theme (like the size of the comment form, it’s huge!) but all in all it looks good and is functional so I’m happy. If anyone can find out how the hell I styled the comment form before, I didn’t do it in the CSS (my bad) and I hate inline styles so it’s not in the comment.php file either, I’d really appreciate it. I know that it’s going to bug me until I find out.

EDIT: Okay, I figured it out. I realise now that I almost fixed it by accident last night, but the change made the page act weird so I left it at the time. All I needed to do was delete part of the comment code and then style the width. Simple.