The PDA Blues

After two years, nine months, my beloved Palm m130 has bit the dust. Dead battery, as near as I can tell. Why does this constitute the death of the unit? Because I purchased it for $200, new, and to have the battery replaced (which can only be done by the Palm support shop or the warranty is voided) would be $169. Evidently, you don't buy Palms, you only rent them.

A third-party replacement battery is $25 and the toolkit needed to do the replacement is $9.99 (backordered). It looks like some double-sided tape is involved, as well. However, having looked at third-party instructions on how to do this, I start to see why Palm demands you treat this as a repair. You have to completely disassemble the unit, including removal of the systemboard, in order to reach the battery. The battery must then slide out, be disconnected, be pried away from its mounting bits (there's that tape), be re-taped in place, and the whole thing must be reassembled. Even the screws are highly non-standard. I'm a computer geek, and anything that involves both proprietary tools and semi-permanent adhesives starts to worry me. It's usually not worth my aggravation. But $169 is kind of steep.

I bought the m130 specifically because it had a rechargable battery. I'd messed around with a Palm III, before, and it chewed through a pair of batteries every six weeks. I stopped and calculated: 2 years and 9 months is 143 weeks is 23 six-week periods. That's 46 batteries, if the formula holds roughly true. That's about $35--almost exactly equivalent to my replacement cost on the m130 battery if I decided to do it myself.

Also a moot point, evidently. Palm no longer makes PDAs that run on alkaline batteries. The Treo phone has a replaceable battery, but it's pricey to start with and I don't need a whole phone. Heck, I don't even need a whole PDA, with what PDAs have become. While I can't get by with paper (I've tried), I don't do a lot of things with a PDA that I thought I might. In practice, this is what I really use:

• Memos. Lots of memos. Everything from shopping lists to fragments of poetry.
  
• The address book. I feel naked without it.
  
• The calculator, occasionally.
  
• The stylus. I can't get by with something push-button.
  
• Did I mention the memos?

In other words, if I had my shit together, I don't really do anything that couldn't be done on paper. I just don't have my shit together, and the cost of the initial PDA was a concession to that.

So now, I have to decide if I go with the low-line Palm Z22, on the theory that I'll only have to spend $100 every two or three years. But I'm not sure the Z22 will hold up to the physical abuse I dish out. Do I look for some other brand, one where the battery is designed to be replaceable? If I do, do I stick to the Palm OS (which I like), or do I open my options and risk not being able to import my data? I type fast, but that doesn't make re-keying any more pleasant. Will it use the same stylus input-system I'm used to? And how much am I willing to pay on the base unit for the privilege of being able to change the battery out?

It's not that I think it's not worth $35 to make the attempt on the m130 battery replacement. It's that I'll have to wait for the back-ordered tools to come in in the first place, and I know myself well enough to know that I'll put the project off and off again because the instructions don't look comprehensive and that makes me a little nervous. Do I want to spend the $35 and the aggravation when I think the odds are good I might not succeed, anyway?

Thoughts?

All work and no play . . .

I have no idea if this is true. But it's amusing, in a macabre sort of way.

Little Boxes

I hate apartments.

Mind you, I don't hate our apartment. One of the things I like about where we live now is that I don't feel like I live in an apartment. We have the end unit, parking in front of our door, and the whole thing has character. Kendra and I have a common weakness when looking for housing: the tendency to pick interesting floor plans over amenities. We once agreed we were sold on pictures of an apartment in Seattle just because it had great windows and a claw-foot bathtub.

But in general, I hate apartments. Cookie-cutter units with thin walls and cheap appliances. Life in a little white box. I have no desire to live in an egg carton, not even if it has a washer and dryer in the unit.

No, we're not moving. There is news I can't share, yet, which may peripherally affect me, which disgruntled me enough that I went looking at housing online, made these stunning observations, and decided to share them with you.

As much as I hate feeling like a tenant farmer, I have no desire to get into a mortgage situation while I'm seriously dating a guy in another city. And I just so don't feel like moving again. I've spent so much of my life moving. I feel like staying exactly where I am until it's time to settle down and have three kids with blue eyes and a somewhat-less-difficult last name.

We'll see how the cards play out.

Germs, germs, germs, I'm so sick of germs!

My boss breathed on me. He had a sore throat yesterday. I woke up coughing today. Now I've acquired a headache and a decided inability to concentrate. I'm really not far enough removed from bronchitis not to be very uneasy about this. It's all his fault.

Quote of the Week

"WARNING: This product contains mature content, sexual references, and language that may not be suitable for children. Besides, they won’t get it anyway."

--found in an ad for You Don’t Know Jack XXL

The IT Shop Blues

(There are reasons I don't filk very often, but it's been a long couple of weeks).


The IT Shop Blues

I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
Yeah, I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
O, Murphy, don't you tell me that failin' hard drive don't make for a bluesy sound.

I can't live with that GPF, means I got a bad memory stick.
No, can't live with that Blue Screen of Death, means I got a bad memory stick.
Think I'd better get to the parts store, get me some PC-2700, quick.

Got a copy of Office 2000, but don't got no license key.
Oh, I got me this Office 2000, but don't got me no license key.
And I got this Office XP Pro, but this one ain't got no CD.

I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
Yeah, I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
O, Murphy, don't you tell me that failin' hard drive don't make for a bluesy sound.

There's a bunch of old Gateway computers, don't like to do no bankin'.
See, this old batch of Gateway computers, they don't wanna do our bankin'.
Can't shake us them little red X's, gotta go out and give 'em a spankin'.

There's this floppy disk, Lord-a mercy, that I'm thinkin' grew some teeth.
Mad little floppy disk, baby, maybe it went out and bought it some good strong false teeth.
Went and bit some keys out of a laptop, showed off all the pretty metal, beneath.

I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
Yeah, I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
O, Murphy, don't you tell me that failin' hard drive don't make for a bluesy sound.

Got a 33-pin floppy drive, gone straight to that big parts bin in the sky.
That poor 33-pin floppy drive, gone off to that big parts bin in the sky.
Got me only 34-pin replacements. 'Bout enough to make a good geek cry.

Got a box that can't find it's hard drive, tryin' to tell me it's all gone.
Same hard drive in another box, box still tryin' to tell me that it's gone.
Cross our fingers, hold our breaths, gonna hafta get our chkdsk on.

I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
Yeah, I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
O, Murphy, don't you tell me that failin' hard drive don't make for a bluesy sound.

Gotta back up our servers, in case the server go and expire.
Gotta get good back ups, baby, or sooner or later, the server, it gonna expire.
Now you watch that backup software crash the server, make you wanna retire.

See, I work in the IT shop, buldin' boxes out of spare parts and air.
Back here in the IT shop, sometimes all we got's spare parts, duct tape, and air.
Find I'm fixin' junk with more junk, chewing gum, baling wire, and maybe a little prayer.

I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
Yeah, I got six broken boxes and the seventh one's fixin' to go down.
O, Murphy, don't you tell me that failin' hard drive don't make for a bluesy sound.

Brokeback Mountain

Okay, here it is: the inevitable Brokeback Mountain post. No spoilers.

Pete and I saw Brokeback Mountain on Saturday. Pete is so sweet that it's occasionally alarming. Under normal circumstances, I'm not sure I would have asked him if he wanted to go see this movie, because I wouldn't have been sure if I was getting an honest answer or an answer he thought would make me happy. Every DJ on the air calling it "the gay cowboy movie" does not make straight men very interested in it. (From what I can tell, not one of the DJ's in question has actually bothered to see the movie, but I guess that's beside the point). However, I figured since it was my birthday weekend, I got to do a few things just because they'd make me happy.

When we bought our tickets, the sixteen-year-old kid at the counter looked straight at Pete and said, "Let me guess--she picked the movie?" I smiled sweetly at him and told him it was my birthday--I could do whatever the hell I wanted. Afterwards, I asked Pete if it had been worth seeing, or kind of a waste of time. He said that while it wasn't something he'd have picked on his own, it was definitely worth seeing. Since I've seen a few movies like that, myself (Dude, Where's My Car? comes to mind), I can accept that.

Now for the nitty-gritty. Brokeback Mountain is not "the gay cowboy movie." That is an accurate description, but not an appropriate one, rather like if I were to describe Gone with the Wind as "the gold-digger story." Brokeback Mountain is a love story. That it happens to be between two men is contextually relevant, but not really relevant to the theme of the movie, let alone its execution.

I saw a ten-minute "making of" featurette, during which they evidently asked both the lead actors about the love scenes. One of them laughed and explained the level of detail in which they'd choreographed those. The other one said (and excuse me if I don't have the words exact), "Filming love scenes is always awkward, whether it's with a guy or a girl."

I think that more important to whether or not you'd want to see it is the fact that it doesn't pull any emotional punches. While there are not a lot of sex scenes in the movie, there is nothing delicate about what is there: You're left knowing exactly what's going on. There are a lot of high emotions and outbursts, including yelling and fighting. The intensity of the human interactions within the movie is often gut-wrenching. In my opinion, this makes for a good movie. But it's not to everyone's taste. And half the theatre cried, I think. I don't usually cry at movies--I sniffle a lot, but it doesn't usually result in free-flowing waterworks. I cried two or three actual tears during this movie.

The acting and direction are phenomenal. In fact, they're both more striking for the fact that there's so much silence. A lot of movies are defined by dialogue. This one is defined by what happens between the words. Glances. Expressions. Body language. Every character is drawn with such intensity that you see the frisson between personalities on the screen. And some of that is the sheer skill of the actors, and some of it is the director knowing exactly what he wants out of a scene, and getting it.

The thing that I was not expecting, that caught me off-guard, was the cinematography. It's just breathtaking, and sometimes, it's breathtaking very quietly. Sweeping vistas are easy to shoot. Getting the scene framed just exactly right is harder. Here, sometimes the cinematography was such that your attention in a frame would be in one location, and you'd see something in a different location, and go, "Wait a minute--did I really see that? Did he really do that?" And the answer, of course, is yes. It was done that way on purpose.

Yeah, it's good. Probably great. Kind of rough to sit through, maybe. And yeah, it's a love story . . . but in the last two minutes of the film, it becomes something more than that. I won't give it away. In one of my better literature classes, the professor hadn't liked any of the novel-writing books he looked at, so he had us use a screen-writing book as the class text. The author of the book mentioned that you always ask yourself, "So what's it about?" when you're writing a script. And then you ask yourself, "So what's it really about?" Brokeback Mountain is about being in love, will-ye, nil-ye. It's about being wrong, even when you're right. Or right, even when you're wrong. But in those last two minutes, you ask, "So what's it really about?" and the whole movie becomes something much greater than that.

Standing Still

After a triple-whammy of time-consuming, unexpected problems at work yesterday, I am now back exactly where I started. Exactly.

Oh, wait. I take that back. I had to canibalize something for one of my intended projects to get one of the unintended ones done faster. So I'm technically a few hours behind, as I'll need to re-prep that. And part III of the triple-whammy is sitll up in the air.

But still, I'm sitting here preparing to tackle the exact same task I was prepared to tackle 26 hours ago.

I am greatly amused.

A, b, c, d, e, f, g . . .

There is an individual involved in an online game I play in who I actively hope is dyslexic. Not because I wish him, her, or it that difficulty; but because I want there to be a reason for spelling "possessed" as "possed," "salad" as "sald," and "battle" as "batte." I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was about ready to cry over it.

He sent me this.

I feel strangely better.

These boots . . .

Pete and I went out to play in Catalina State Park on Saturday. Not so much to hike--we're both more serious hikers than to consider 3.5 miles a hike. But the terrain is kind of rugged, very sandy, and quite steep for portions. We had a great time, but . . . I've been breaking in new hiking boots. And I think the laces slipped as we hiked. And by the time I noticed it, I had blisters. Thank the gods I only have to break hiking boots in about once every ten years.

My good walking shoes that I ordered are too small in one size and too big in the next size up, so I had to return them. Instead, I stopped by the discount shoe store while we were up in Foothills Mall killing time before a movie. And put my poor blistered feet into walking shoes, and actually found a pair that will be quite comfortable when the blisters have healed. So not only did I invest in a pair of $100 walking shoes (for which I only paid about $60), I actually bought both pairs they had in stock in my size--one black, one white, but you can't have everything. Yes, I really do hate shoe shopping this much.

On the other hand, I am something of a shoe whore when it comes to non-practical shoes. And one of my favorite online discounters sent me a sale notice yesterday. They have $40 thigh-high boots. *drool* But in the size I think I need, they only have them in red. I'm not sure the next size down will fit, they can't be returned due to the clearance special, and I'm just not sure that red is $40 worth of versitile the weay that black would be. Decisions, decisions . . .

Demonstration of the communal brain in action.

My little birthday party turned out to be just lovely. Among other things, Pete's parents and Joanne's boyfriend, Lance, both called to wish me a happy birthday. I asked Lance if he wanted to talk to Joanne while he was on the line. He said no, he'd just called to wish me a happy birthday. I think my words to Joanne were, "Right, so why aren't you married to that boy, yet?" ;)

The highlight of the evening was playing Trivial Pursuit (my idea). Mind you, my mother's edition of Trivial Pursuit probably dates back to 1983. And we split into teams so I could have somebody else with me who could answer the pink questions (Entertainment. I do not suck any less at Entertainment questions from 1983 than from any more recent time). I got Pete on my team. Kendra and my mother were the other team, and Joanne decided to be their handicap (she was sick and maybe a little delerious).

Between Kendra and Mom teaming questions out loud and Joanne interjecting smart-ass answers, Pete and I were just in stitches. Which was as well, because we lost. :)

Quote of the Week

"I learned this week . . . that sometimes, it is actually as bad as I initially think it is. And that that is the moment I get to help people the most."

--Max Bernhardt

It's good to be loved.

I had my anual review today. I still like the job, they still like me, and they're going to pay me more. This is how it's supposed to work, in a perfect world. My world ain't perfect, but I'm just ecstatic about finally having a job I love. That they recognize that there's more to employee satisfaction than just the love is an added bonus.

My childhood--gone horribly, horribly wrong!

Well, mine, and half of somebody else's. I thought I'd post this between gales of laughter.

The Ultimate Showdown

Cute kitties!

http://www.livejournal.com/users/moraya/37405.html?#cutid1

Muchos graphics. You are warned.

Quote of the Week

"A fantasy shared by thousands is a culture.
"A fantasy shared by a few is a cult.
"A fantasy shared by two is love.
"A fantasy shared by one is psychosis."

--Magnus

Why?

Everybody else has had the shitty stuff happen to them this week. So how come I feel like a lonely child, cold and needing to be cuddled?

Celebration

My boyfriend and my sister have both asked me, in the last twenty-four hours, what I want to do for my birthday. Sadly, the first thing to pop to mind is "sleep." This is probably not a good sign. Thank the gods we have a new hire starting in our department on 1/30. That'll help.

The big birthday celebration is going to be a trip to Disneyland, current dates set for Sat-Tues the weekend of Presidents' Day. Kendra and I both have birthdays at this time of year, and she'll be taking her sister as a graduation present, and I inited gabefinder and marinredwolf, who both have birthdays in the same timeframe. So that's kind of where my money is going.

On the other hand, my Phoenix people are actually offering to drive to Tucson for me, so maybe I should think of something. There's always the comedy club thing, but I've done that before. I'd love to do a teddy bear party at the Build a Bear Workshop, but some of the folks I'd drag along probably wouldn't be nearly so interested, and it'd be a little pricey as parties go. Part of me would be really tickled to turn twelve for my birthday, and do a party at Peter Piper Pizza or something, but everybody would look at us funny, pizza is not on my eating plan, and the crowds of screaming children are off-putting. Hmm. Anybody else got any suggestions?

"I think I'll take off my skin/And sit around in my bones."*

Where the hell is winter?

Yes, I know, I live in southern Arizona. We don't get snow but three times in five years, and people from cold climates come here because they can wear shirtsleeves in January. However, there's generally three months of the year where it's actually cool. Three months where you want long sleeves or a light jacket. (Okay, I'm maladjusted, there's only usually six weeks where I want a jacket, anymore, but I remember what it was like in high school). Three months where 60's are more normal than 70's, and you even get some 50's thrown in their for the daily high temperatures.

We've had one "cold snap" this winter. I don't think it got below 63F for the high. We're halfway through our three month period and we're still turning on the air conditioning in the middle of the day at work. I'm starting to feel dragged out and frustrated. I haven't had to scrape frost off my window even once.

(subject quote from "It's Hot," by Shell Silverstein)

Living History

Pete and I went to see The Wizard of Oz at the restored Fox Theatre this Saturday. Wow, is that a venue. I've kind of been following the restoration, which is impressive all on its own. But not only have they restored it to essentially the state of the original 1930's opening (some changes for handicapped accessibility and wider modern butts, but that's about it), in terms of the back-stage and behind-the-scenes stuff, they've set it up to be a state of the art performance venue. I was incredibly impressed, and had great fun holding Pete's hand so the flying monkeys wouldn't get him. ;)

Prior to that, we wandered up to a site where an archeological survey is going on. There's a law, in Tucson (or perhaps it's county- or state-wide, I'm not sure) that whenever you build, you have to take reasonable precautions that you're not trashing buried artifacts. Well, someone did one of these downtown and found not only a piece of the original presidio wall, but a tower they had only speculated might be there, and at least four Hohokam pit houses. Currently, there's a project to create a site that displays one of the pit houses, a piece of the original wall (both of these protected from the elements), and build a replica of the two-story tower. We just thought we'd peer from outside the chain link fence and see what we could see.

They had the gates open and were giving tours. A couple of archeologists who were busily engaged in sifting excavated dirt for small artifacts stopped to point out the charred sections at floor level of the pit house they were excavating. Those were the remains of the original posts that held up the walls; evidentlly, the house had burned. They had sample trays of artifacts from three periods: frontier/pioneer, Spanish colonial, and Hohokam. There were several drawings of what the presidio would originally have looked like, what the project they're working on right now will look like, etc. The find of the day was a porcelain spittoon with a big chip out of its lip. I studied archeology in my gifted class when I was in fifth grade, but this was the first time I'd actually seen professionals at work. I was just tickled.

Quote of the Week

"Okay, one monster. Height, weight, distinguishing marks? Last known address?"

--Michael Peacock, in The Sword of Maiden’s Tears, by Rosemary Edgehill

Question #5

What are your feelings on porn?

Bent

I saw a play by this name once. Accidentally--I had a student's season pass to the student productions at NAU my freshman year. Incredible play, but not to everyone's taste. Also one of the finest productions I have ever seen, and I've seen full-scale productions of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. Not that this has anything to do with my post.

I've read Les Miserables, too. Abridged. I'm told the extra thousand pages is all political commentary.

Not that that's on topic, either.

Last night, I was bored. I went back and checked to see if there was any new fan fiction by someone whose work I read. Fan fiction is not really my thing, because it usually sucks. But I was bored some months ago, and had one of those Google acid trips where you start out searching for one thing and through some odd chain of links end up somewhere else entirely. And I stumbled across this story.

I had never read anything quite so hot in all my life.

Not everything she writes is like that. There's some completely harmless stuff. I finally realized that the stuff that won me over was labeled "X [V, S]." Which stands for: eXtreme [Violence and Sex]. Last night, I found something new in her archive, with the right label. I was just delighted. And, since I'm not particularly shy, I figured I'd post the link in my blog.

Then I stopped and realized . . . I don't know if I can share this. I mean, I'm open enough with telling people that I'm kinky, but come to think of it, I'm bent in a couple ways that very few of my friends are. And what little porn I read (because, let's face it, porn usually sucks, too) or look at, I seem to get something out of it in large part because it's bent in the same places. So some of my friends won't be interested because something isn't straight. And some of them will be fine with handcuff porn, but nothing with pain in it, thank you. And when I find something that I think is hot, if what's depicted is non-consensual, it doesn't bug me. It bugs a lot of my friends profoundly.

So I guess I finally talked myself out of posting the link. (Though if anybody thinks this is right up their alley, I'll be happy to send it to you). And I started thinking, instead, about those places where even to my friends, I'm a little bit a stranger. And maybe not a stranger they want to know.

Bit by a Meme

I don't usually do memes, but this one intrigued me:

Reply to this post with a fictional (book, film, television, game, etc) character that I remind you of.