Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:00 PM

A few more tidbits stored up from the Internetless week:

• On July 11, Westminster Abbey added a memorial window to Christopher Marlowe in their Poets' Corner. Given the rumors about Marlowe's sexuality, I find it rather amusing that Oscar Wilde is on top...
  Also, I don't know who paid for the tribute, but I suspect they were conspiracy theorists. If you look very closely, there's a question mark next to Marlowe's date of death.
• And whether you enjoy slash fiction or are disgusted by it, the Library of Moria (a Lord of the Rings slash archive) has a hysterically funny story, that you simply must read...
• Among my myriad interests, I'm an avid fan of Colleen Doran's comic series, A Distant Soil. This morning, we were listening to the Rocky Horror Broadway soundtrack, and I decided to look up one of the actors who really impressed me when I saw the show last summer.
  To my eyes, the picture of Jonathan Sharp in the lower right corner of his website (the profile with apple and snake) bears a striking resemblance to some of Colleen's artwork. I'd swear I've seen that exact pose in some issue of ADS, probably the character of Rieken/Seren. Or is it just me?
• Happy news story about a high-flying cat. He got lost on an airplane and clocked 63,000 miles before they found him again. I'm just wondering whether he can get frequent flyer miles for that...
• Speaking of cats, we haven't managed to stop Boopsie from drinking out of the bathroom sink, so we've come up with a compromise. Rather than leaving the faucet running (and racking up a higher water bill), we're now keeping a small glass ramekin in the sink. We remove it when we need to use the sink, refill it as needed, and she seems happy to drink out of that. I guess she just wants really fresh water. And if you think of it as just getting someone a small glass of water when they ask, it's not that unreasonable -- is it?
• And finally, my registration for fall classes arrived in today's mail -- I got into every class I requested. Yay!

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:45 AM

I couldn't sleep this morning, so finished off some work on my website. No major content changes, but when I was talking with the Information Architecture professor, she commented that my HTML code wasn't compliant to standard. Plus, I've been having problems that the website didn't look right under Netscape or IE (though it was always fine under Opera!)

So, I've just overhauled the site to make it entirely HTML 4.01 Transitional compliant (with a few exceptions that I chose to leave as such) and I've managed to fix the style sheets to ensure a uniform appearance across browsers. [Did you know that some browsers require "CLASS=" references to be case sensitive?]

Anyway, right now Ian's still asleep (it is quite early for a Saturday) and Boopsie keeps wandering over to the window to see who's perched on the birdfeeder we placed there for her entertainment (a friend refers to this as "the Audobon channel"). And I'm going to try to get some more schoolwork done.

Toodle-pip!

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:30 PM

Hooray! I've got a functional computer again!

Let me start by updating everybody regarding what happened. Tech Fusion called Monday morning with the good news that my hard drive was entirely recoverable, and the bad news that it would cost several hundred dollars to do so. I chose to defer the decision.

My father had suggested that instead of spending money to restore the data, I should be able to simply remove the hard drive temporarily and plug it into another machine. Then, after classes concluded, I could put the hard drive back in and ship it to Sony.

While we were investigating this option, Tech Fusion called us back to tell us they could repair our computer for less than half the cost they quoted to restore the data. Sold! Allow me to hereby praise Tech Fusion and recommend them for computer service needs in the Boston area.

So, as I said at the start, I've got my computer back again. Thanks to everybody who sent along their condolences. They really helped.

Of course my saga isn't finished, because without my computer I've fallen heavily behind in my classwork. I've gotten some extensions, but papers are going to consume most of my free time until the end of the month.

Meanwhile, here are a few other things that have been on my mind over the last few weeks:

• I finally finished reading David McCullough's prize-winning biography John Adams. [I was using it to distract myself after my computer died.]
    Does anybody else think that portions of the Alien and Sedition Acts (found here, here and here), for which John Adams has been vilified by contemporaries and historians, bear a striking similarity to the USA PATRIOT Act?
    If I had the time (or when I have the time) I'd like to do a comparison. The ability to deport suspected non-citizens certainly looks similar, but I'm no lawyer. Oh, to have the time to study this in depth...
• My hair is now a dark purplish-blue or bluish-purple, with about one inch of black roots showing. [I no longer look like a natural blue.] I will probably have to dye it back in the beginning of August. As I finally start going on job interviews, I need to have a more professional appearance, and don't want anything to detract from that. It's somewhat sad, though, because despite some inconveniences I really love having blue hair.
    I mean, how often does somebody compliment you on your appearance? I'm not just talking about friends and family, but total strangers, too. Be honest. Since I've dyed my hair, it's been happening to me two or three times a day when I'm out and about. I like that! [My inner ugly duckling has emerged!]
    But, all good things must come to an end. And, who knows. Maybe I'll dye my hair again after getting a job or for other special occasions...
• I've registered for my fall classes. After talking to the instructor, we determined that I'm overqualified for the Information Architecture class, so instead I'm taking another Competitive Intelligence class (Business Information Sources II). The next step is finding out which classes I actually get into, and followed by figuring out how to pay for them.
• For readers in the Boston area, I just want to remind you that the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company will be performing Henry V free in the Boston Common, from today (July 19) through August 4. Details are on their website.
  Also, the Publick Theatre in Cambridge is showing As you like it through July 28th.

I guess that's about it for now (as if that weren't enough).

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:29 PM

A lot of advice books suggest that if you want something, you should ask for it.

Well, I could really use some sympathy and support regarding the loss of my computer.

Just letting you know, there's a nice place to post responses at the end of this post. I'm having a really rough day and any good vibes would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:10 PM

Pardon me, ma'am. Are you in distress?
  Dis dress, dat dress, who cares? I'm distraught!
Do we help damsels in distraught?

My laptop died yesterday.

My laptop -- which contains all my in-class notes, all my classwork in progress, my organizer calendar and phone lists, all my job-hunting... stuff..., the editable files for my website, all my financial information, everything down to my character sheet for my role-playing game -- died yesterday. Over the years, I've worked up many systems in my life, and most of them were on that computer.

Let me tell you a story.

Yesterday was the birthday of two of my husband's aunts (along with my mother's birthday, and the birthay of my brother's mother-in-law, although those are irrelevant to this tale). There was a birthday party and big family party up in Marblehead. I initially decided not to attend, so I could do schoolwork, but at the last minute, brought my laptop and papers with me, figuring I could either do work there and be social, or if that didn't work, I could at least make an appearance and go home early.

I plugged my laptop in and turned it on. I got the power up screen and then it went blank. Trying to turn it on again failed. All Ian's cousins who have worked IT looked it over -- giving it the sniff test, trying to power it up with and without the plug, with and without the battery... nothing. Needless to say, we said our goodbyes and left the party early. That was about 2pm.

When we got home, I put the laptop into the docking station. Normally when the computer is docked, even if the power is off, a little light indicates that it's docked. That light didn't go on, and further attempts to power it up also failed.

We called Sony tech support. They gave a few more things to try, and then said a mailing box will arrive on Tuesday, and we need to send the laptop to their repair facilities in San Diego, which has a turnaround time of ten business days. I asked whether there was any authorized repair facilities closer -- nope. Any way of speeding up the process -- nope. So we gave them our information and finished the call.

Then we checked the hours of the local PC repair places we knew to see if they could turn things around any faster. After a quick call to my coach for advice and reassurance, we drove down into Cambridge and went to PCs for Everyone in Cambridge. We got there just before 4 o'clock. They don't work on laptops, but recommended an outfit called Tech Fusion on the other side of Cambridge. We phone them to find out their hours, and they close at 4 on Saturdays. However, the person was willing to stay open a fifteen extra minutes so we could get over there.

The guy from Tech Fusion said that if the work could be covered by warranty, we should go that route. However, he was willing to try to extract the data off my hard drive using methods that wouldn't violate the warranty. Fortunately for me, I do have a weekly backup routine, so my last backup was last Sunday. But I did a heck of a lot of work on school and jobhunting in the week since (I take all my class notes on the PC, and have begun fleshing out the outline for a major paper that's due this Thursday). For a little extra, he agreed to do that as a rush job, which will be finished on Tuesday (when the box from Sony will arrive).

Exhausted and emotionally drained, Ian and I grabbed dinner, and then I used his computer to e-mail my professors to explain the situation. I'm most worried about my government class. 100% of the grade in this class comes from one paper, due August 1, and the syllabus says that late papers are automatic F's. However, the paper is about a comprehensive web search, and all the sites I found are on the hard drive. What's more, the class notes (also on the machine) were all about sites to search and search methodology (ie THOMAS only provides laws by bill number, but you can look up the bill number at... was it gao or gpo??)

I'm probably boring whoever is reading this, but the point is, the loss of my computer may mean I flunk at least one class, and will certainly mean a lot more work to recreate in the other. And that's just school. This also impacts my job hunt, finances, calendar (what time was that doctor's appointment?) and pretty much every avenue of my life. The Pew Research report I quoted on July 9 is so true...

For a while, I had been thinking about writing up my morning routine for this journal. In some respects, it shows just how dependent I am on the customizations of my computer. I tend to wake up around 7:30, and there's about 30 daily comic strips that I pull up with about two clicks. Then, I check my friends LiveJournals and scan Salon, Slate, Poynter's Media News, the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, Slashdot, and other news sites depending on my mood. I may go the entertainment route and read Ain't It Cool News, or check the latest on tech at Ziff Davis and Wired... But generally I spend about an hour or so reading news and bringing myself up-to-date on the day's events. And, because I use Opera, I've got two- or three-letter shortcuts for most of my frequently used URLs.

I've got the entire machine heavily customized and configured just to my liking, and (in the words of Jef Raskin) I've become habituated to those shortcuts in return. So, it's very frustrating using any other machine.

Tomorrow, on my father's suggestion, I'm going to call Sony back and see if I can get their authorization to remove the hard drive before sending the machine back; then I can (hopefully) plug it into another machine while waiting the two weeks for the unit to be repaired/replaced (my dad thinks it was probably the internal power). In the meantime, I'm going to work like the devil on my Management paper, and try to contact my other professor to see what accomodations we can come to.

I'll try to post some more amusing things later on; thanks for putting up with this, and if you have any further suggestions, I'd love to hear them.