Apr. 10th, 2003

katallison: (Default)
A mild, benign, sunny afternoon, after a chilly morning, the kind of afternoon that lets me believe that winter is finally, at last, for the time being, over. (Unless it, y'know, snows again.) This morning I was as depressed as I've been in a long time, but once at work I somehow snapped into gear, got my desk *cleaned off* for the first time in ... well, a *long* time, and then had student appointments all day, bing-bing-bing, and did good work with each of them.

I think I may have finally pulled myself out of the winter's crazed impetus to flight, and then the rancorous period of adjustment to that impetus being thwarted, and am now coming to terms with the reality that I'll probably not be going anywhere, for the time being. It's the eternal struggle of middle age: which battles are still worth fighting, which things do I simply accept with some effort at grace?

One battle I'm still definitely fighting is to get the whole computer system successfully hooked up. Grr and also arrrgh. I've got a good array of helpful documents--the quality of Apple's on-line support makes up for the extreme inadequacy of the print manuals that come with hardware--but I think I just need a big block of time to fiddle with things. Like, maybe, this weekend.

I realize part of the problem is just the difficulty of manouevering around with cables and connections, and *that* is basically a problem with my desk. I have a big long rant in the Box of Unvented Rants about the unsatisfactory design of most computer desks; the immobility, the lack of appropriate storage for peripherals and accessories, the inability to accommodate a 19" monitor, the difficulty of accessing the back of the CPU. This and this are not too far off what I want, though I dislike the sunken-and-angled monitor space (yes, I know, it's supposed to be ergonomic). Casters are essential; I'm so bloody sick of crawling around on the floor, groping blindly, trying to plug and unplug stuff.

Oh, and I was going to post some disjointed Connexions comments, wasn't I?

Read more... )
katallison: (Default)
OK, upon further dinking around with the iBook, I have discovered one serious problem: when I run it on battery power (after having fully charged-up the battery), it runs for maybe 45 minutes, until the battery capacity is (according to the indicator at the top of the screen) about 60-65%, and then -- kablam, it dies, abruptly and without warning, and the only way to get it running again is to plug it into the AC power input, at which point it comes back to life and indicates that the battery is at -- ta daaa! -- 0% power.

My fear is that the battery is just flat-out defective, which means I'll need to replace it, which means $129 out of pocket. I've written a politely-worded note to the guy I bought the computer from, and will see what ensues; but I've got that gripey rankled feeling of having bought a pig in a poke. Grrr, grrr. If anyone out there knows of any tweaks that might fix this (powersaving settings? something?), let me know.

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katallison

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