Not to have sour grapes about my new computer or any thing, but…
In the row of status indicator lights at the base of the screen there is one for WI-FI status. When it is lit you have a WI-FI signal. And when you have traffic on said signal the light BLINKS. Over and OVER. Since I have Wireless here at Chez Nichols the freaking light is always BLINKING. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off.
I’m just N.A.D.D. enough that having a BLINKING light in my field of view drives me insane.
Now I realize that some engineer at Lenovo World Domination Headquarters thought it would be really slick to overload the information channel provided by the light; instead of two values (off = no signal, on = signal) we can add a third: (incredibly annoying) BLINKING for traffic.
I guess the information starved among us would like this feature, but I would vastly prefer an option to turn the freaking BLINKING off.
I’m seriously considering getting a bottle of model airplane paint and touching the indicator up a bit.
In the Summer of 1999 we were living in Summerville SC, just outside of Charleston. I had read about a new television game show where 16 people would be marooned, compete for food, and vote about each other to determine the winner of a $1,000,000 prize. At the time I thought it sounded farfetched and didn’t consider watching the show. But then one evening, part way through the first season of Survivor, Michele and I watched an episode and were hooked. Although existing in a contrived setting, and certainly controlled by the dictates of the shows parameters, having real people interact in a stress filled situation and watching was fascinating to both of us.
Together we watched every episode of every season with out fail. That is until last October. I finished the season myself after Michele died. At the time I didn’t associate the since of dislocation during that program to her death; every thing I did was oddly dislocated from where it had been before. However, with the start of the spring season of Survivor tonight I am discovering what I already knew but wasn’t admitting to myself: shows we watched together just aren’t fun any more. Good Eats, Jeopardy, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Amazing Race, and Survivor were all shows we shared. Except for finishing out the season of Amazing Race and Survivor last fall I really haven’t been watching any of “our” shows. Instead I have largely been watching CSI and American Chopper. I think the only show to survive Michele’s death so far is The Daily Show.
Watching the season opener of Survivor has been difficult this evening. When I realized I wasn’t really watching it as much as I just had it on, I paused it for later in the weekend. I need to keep doing the things I liked doing, even if they feel odd to me now that I am doing them without Michele’s participation. I know that she would want me to watch the shows we loved, eat at our favorite restaurants, and enjoy the home cooking we shared. And I am doing all of those things, but sometimes, like tonight, it is harder and more poignant than others.
After three years of only using Windows machines at work, I once again have a Wintel box on my desk. I had grown frustrated with the issue my two towers were having with the development software I wanted to run. While still good computers they are now a little long in the tooth. The newer one is 5 years old, and the older one almost 7.
So I saved my money and got a new ThinkPad Z60m notebook computer. Two things really sold me on this particular machine, the widescreen (and a nice 1680x1050 resolution) and the Friends and Family discount I got through a work mate employed by IBM. (Thanks CN!)
This post also marks some thing new for zanshin.net - pictures on Flickr. Check out the out of box experience.
The first home computer I ever owed was a Laser 128; a clone of the venerable Apple II. I don’t remember doing much with this machine, although I am sure I did use it. My parents gave it to me as a gift one year for Christmas in the late 1980s. Since that time I have purchased eight computers of my own, totally roughly $13,150.
#1 - Gateway 486SX/33 I believe this machine cost around $3000 in 1993 when I bought it. Not only did I save up for months to buy it, I built a wooden teachers style desk to place it upon. It had a 170MB (yes megabyte) hard drive and 4 MB of RAM. I later added a modem and upgraded the hard drive to 400 MB. While it came with Windows 3.1 I promptly wiped the hard drive and installed IBM OS/2 2.1 as that was the OS I was using at work at the time.
#2 - Gateway P5-90 The second computer I bought had a gigabyte hard drive and 16 MB of RAM. I still have this computer, and it still runs, albeit slowly. The RAM has been pushed to 48 MB, and a second hard drive of 6 GB capacity was added also.
#3 - ASUS 600 MHz Celeron The next computer I owed was one I built myself using parts from MWave and directions from my buddies at work. Totaling about $800 in parts this machine was a huge step up in power and performace for me. It had a 600 MHz Celeron processor, 512 MB of RAM, 32MB video RAM, Ethernet, and a 20 GB hard drive. Later I would transfer the guts of this machine to a new purple case for Michele to use as her primary computer.
#4 - ThinkPad 380ED The first laptop I owned was acquired by being in the right place at the right time. The company I was working for at the time had written the machine off after it quit working following a bath in spilled Coke. The IBM service tech indicated a new system board would be required at $1100 so the company wrote it off and was going to throw it away. I took it home and discovered it booted perfectly off a floppy - the system board was fine; only the hard drive was gummed up. $90 for a new 3GB hard drive it was working perfectly again. Michele used this 166MHz MMX machine with 80 MB of RAM for several years as her primary computer.
#5 - ASUS 1GZ Celeron Deciding to build a second computer, I build a 1GHz, 512MB RAM, 30GB hard drive machine and gave the 600 MHz machine to Michele. The 600 MHZ machine, which had been quite noisy in my metal case was dead quiet in her new purple plastic case. The new 1GHz machine cost about $600, and was even nosier in the metal case. Go figure.
#6 - 17" iMac G4 #7 - 15.2" Powerbook G4 After months of talking about it and exploring the demo machines at the local Apple reseller I was ready to switch to Macintosh. Repeated virus problem with Michele’s machine and her dawning understanding the the Mac wouldn’t suffer the same problems convinced her to switch as well. So three years ago this month we bought two Apples on the same day. Hers was a 17" iMac G4 with an 800MHz PPC processor, 256 MB RAM, a DVD/CD burner, and 80 GB of hard drive. My Powerbook had an 867 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive. Both machines have been upgraded to 768 MB of RAM, and I replaced the 40 GB laptop drive with a new 100GB drive this past fall. The total for these two machines was about $4100.
#8 - Lenovo ThinkPad Z60m Sitting at the freight terminal in Lenexa KS (about 5 miles from my apartment) is my newest computer, a 1.86 GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB hard drive laptop with a DVD/CD burner. The machine made it from China to Kansas in less than 24 hours, and has been sitting just out of my reach for the past 48 hours or so. I’ve already ordered aftermarket memory for it; I’ll replace the 512 with 2 1GB arrays giving it 2 GB total. Thanks to working with several IBMers I was able to order this machine at a 20% discount through the Employee Friends and Family purchase program for a low $1350.
This will give me a total of seven working computers at home, plus two Tivos (a Series 1 and a Series 2) and a Palm m515. Yes, that’s right, ten working computers in one apartment. Overkill? Perhaps. But never dull.
For no particular reason yesterday, other than wanting something to fill the day, I watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Extended version of course. Weighing in at a svelte 682 minutes running time (that’s eleven hours and 22 minutes), the extended edition more than filled the day for me. I didn’t get started until shortly after 8:00 in the morning, and I had breaks for meals, showering, and a phone call or two. By 10:30 in the evening I was within an hour of the conclusion and determined to complete the film in one sitting.
It is just as good as the last time I saw it, and the first time too. Like a legion of fans I am eagerly awaiting Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit to complete my Middle Earth collection.
Today has all the earmarkings of a lousy day. I was awake at 12:30, 2:30, 4:30 and finally 5:40 this morning. A series of two hour naps does not make for a good night’s sleep. Being awake at 5:30 on a Sunday morning really sucks. There’s nothing to do except sit around and wait for it to be 8:30 or 9:00 in the evening so you can lay down for another series of two hour naps.
Deciding that breakfast out would at least cause me to eat, and maybe fill up an hour of the day, I set off for my favorite greasy spoon. On the way I knew I’d pass the car wash and decided to wash the car too. After only one pass around the car the laser guided marvel at the car wash quit working. The car was covered with thick foamy soap so I couldn’t really see where the machine was or why it wasn’t working. I waited several minutes before pulling the car out of the bay and into a manual bay. I rinsed the car off, but since it was only 6:15 am there was no one there to complain to or get my money back from.
Setting off for the restaurant again I realized that I was boiling mad and any attempt to eat would on result in my having to throw up in the bathroom. So I turned around and came home. Fully enraged by the time I got home I slammed the garage door several times. It’s solid metal and makes a very satisfying boom with the garage as an echo chamber behind it. I bumped into the trash can knocking it over and had to give it a full-power roundhouse kick. It is made of stern stuff as it didn’t break, and the dent popped out almost immediately. My big toe is a bit sore now, however, and the pain has cut through the cloud of mad I had going on before.
It isn’t even 7:00 am yet and all I want to do is crawl back into bed and sleep all day. I still have the Xanax Michele was given the day she got her diagnosis, and I remember how sleepy and dopey a whole one made me. I am sorely tempted to take one and just drift away on it today. My fear is that I’ll grow to like drifting away and will want to nothing but more Xanax, so I won’ take one.
It all just sucks.
It’s going around, and while I haven’t been official “tagged”, I thought I’d play too.
Four jobs I’ve had:
Four Movies I can watch over and over:
Four places I’ve lived:
Four TV shows I love:
Four places I’ve vacationed:
Four of my favorite dishes:
Four sites I visit daily:
Four places I’d rather be right now:
For the past few months I have been using the keyboard that came with the iMac as my primary input device. Through some nifty software to allow one keyboard and mouse to control two computers with dedicated LCD screens. The arrangement has worked very well for me except for the keyboard itself.
I find the keys unresponsive to my style of typing. There is not a good tactile feel to the key when it is pressed and I often mis-key as a result. In particular the shift key is problematic. I would venture to say that a third to a half of my shift strokes are botched as a result of the mushy keys on this keyboard. I have been looking for a new one for some time but two problems stand in the way. First, there aren’t a lot of after market Macintosh specific keyboards to choose from. And, second, there are only a couple of stores selling them locally in which to try them out.
Last evening I wanted to try one that had “laptop style” keys thinking that since I was quite happy with the laptop keyboard, having a full-sized desktop model would be perfect. The clerk in the store was unwilling to allow me to open the box and try the keyboard in the store. Had he done so I never would have bought the iKeySlim USB Keyboard from MacAlly. Low profile keys work well on the smaller plane of a laptop keyboard, but on a full sized layout you have to move your finger father than you expect to depress the key. Also, they did not include any kind of reference mark on the “F” and “J” keys making it impossible to find the home position without glancing at the keyboard. The numeric lock key flat out didn’t work at all. On a scale of one to ten I’d give this a three.
As for the store, well. they get a three too. Two minutes to allow me to open the box and test the keyboard there would have saved me the return trip I’ll be making after work today. And, an in-store trial run might have caused me to buy one of their other replacement keyboards. Now I feel like getting it online or from the other local computer store.
After saving my pennies for a very long time I finally reached my goal and have ordered a new laptop. In an interesting bit of synchronicity I ordered the new machine three years to the date of getting my current Powerbook. The new machine is Intel based and will run Windows XP Professional. More on that in a minute.
Having placed the order I am now anxiously awaiting its arrival. The order status page had an initial status (Processing) that changed within hours of the order being placed to “Packing.” I took this as a very good sign; the estimated availability information I had before placing the order indicated it would be at least two weeks before the machine shipped. Along with the “Packing” status the estimated ship date was set for today, 1.25.2006. I have been checking the status page every day (more like a gazillion times every day) only to see the same information every time: Packing. How long does it take to pack a notebook computer into a box?
The computer itself is a new Lenovo (formerly IBM) ThinkPad Z60m. This is the first wide-screen ThinkPad every offered, and sports a maximum resolution of 1680x1050. A 1.86 GHz chip, 512 MB RAM, DVD+/-R CDRW, and an 80 GB hard drive round out a very nice machine. I’ll be upgrading the RAM to the maximum 2 GB as soon as it arrives.
No, I am not leaving Mac OS behind. My professional work requires software that only (presently) runs on Windows OS. I’ve got a couple of older Intel machines that aren’t quite up to the task of running the suite of applications I want. Nor are they portable, something that has become increasingly important to me after three years of laptop ownership. With the ThinkPad I will have the best of both worlds in roughly 12 pounds of traveling weight.
Time to go reload the order status page again. Maybe it’s finally changed to “Shipping.”
My demons are getting the better of me this evening. I feel jittery and sluggish at the same time. My neck is a rigid bar of pain while my head feels as if it is stuffed with cotton. Emotionally I feel spent, however, there are spurts of white hot anger just to keep me (and anyone near me) on their toes.
I’m deep in the wilderness that is grief and, although I may have made some progress in the last 108 days the reality is I will be moving through the grief process everyday for the rest of my life. Maybe not as intensely as I am right now, but still dealing with it for ever. When I realize that my being here without Michele will not end until my life is over I feel utterly spent and devastated. This doesn’t end - she is NEVER coming back. I will never again feel the touch of her hand in mind. I will never again be able to reach out in the night and touch her hair. I will never again be able to hear her laughter outside of my memory. I have lost her for this lifetime.
It hurts so very badly. I can hardly swallow and my eyes burn with tears that only provide momentary release. My anger unleashes the urge to smash and rend, to destroy, and I hit the desk over and over until my hands are red and my arms ache from the repeated impacts. I have this unending tired that never goes away and I wonder if I’ll ever feel light again. Grief is a tremendous weight that pulls at you, drags you down with every step you take.
My recent spending spree has been fun, but ultimately spending can’t buy me out of this hell. There is no way to run away from my self fast enough to leave behind the pain and sorrow. My understanding of people who lose themselves in alcohol or drugs has increased tremendously in the last three months. There are times when oblivion of any sort would be preferable to conscious awareness of my life. I fill my days with activities to distract myself from the gaping wound that is my heart. Little feints to ward off the unrelenting pressure of grief that never really goes away.
I’ve heard people say, people who’ve lost a loved one, that they would do anything for one more minute of time with their lost partner, child, parent, or lover. I’ve said it myself more than once in this ordeal. However I would now like to change that statement. If I can’t be with her forever then I don’t want that one more minute because after the high of seeing her again I would only crash to a new depth, one from which I might never recover. Salvation lies in movement; movement away from the pain, movement towards a new reality that is “Mark” and no longer “Michele and Mark”. The pain comes from two places: realizing that in order to continue to live myself I must let go of her so I can move forward and realizing that I can’t let go of her yet. Even though I understand I won’t lose her memory by moving forward I can’t bring my self to release the scalding hot rock of my grief.
The pain lets me know that I am still alive. The trick is to remember how it felt to be alive without pain, and to find a pathway to that place inside myself.