My Thumby Has Transmuted Into Socks

The other day, I had some urgent matters arise, so I put a number of vital items in my rucksack and went off to address them. One of those items was my USB thumb drive, which is named Thumby.

Upon returning, I unpacked most of the items but inadvertently left Thumby hidden deep within the crevasses of my rucksack. This morning, I had urgent need to copy off some files and, failing to find Thumby in its usual place, I realised it was probably still in my rucksack. However, a search of its deeper pockets revealed not Thumby, but rather, a pair of socks that I have absolutely no recollection of ever putting in there. They're quite clean and clearly a style I typically wear, but I haven't the faintest notion of what they were doing at the bottom of my rucksack. And I still haven't found Thumby. I can only assume that Thumby grew weary of toting vital files and so transmuted into socks.

Why Do All My 30-Year-Old Electronics Keep Breaking On Me?

Lappy took a spill. Screen broke.

OK, it's not the end of the world. In fact, the lappy is still entirely functional save a smattering of dead pixels that are hideous to look at but don't actually render the screen unusable. And a replacement screen is hardly going to break the bank; these things apparently come pretty cheap. Although it's a Macbook, it's not one of the horrible "unibody" machines that are virtually impossible to repair so swapping the screen will only take about an hour, a few odd screwdrivers, and a heaping helping of profanity because those tiny screws are annoying.

Maybe I'll find another laptop for free in a bin. I've been having surprising luck with that.

Features That Need To Happen

So I hit command-A, command-O (select all, open) only to discover a millisecond too late that I wasn't in the window I thought I was and had accidentally opened over 500 diverse documents in a dozen-odd apps between them all at once.

Obviously not the end of the world, but definitely annoying.

Way back when Macs were actually Macs instead of PC clones running a Unix-based OS, typing command-period immediately after making such a dumb mistake would nullify said mistake and make everything right again by canceling the app openings before they started fighting over RAM and clock cycles. It was a very useful feature that fixed a lot of boneheaded mistakes in the past.

Unfortunately, that feature is no longer in place. And it needs to come back.

I Have A New Computer!

Yes, I have been using a decade-old computer I found for free in a bin, but no more! My local computer store offered me a deal too amazing to pass up! (By which I mean I found another computer for free in a bin.)

As of a few days ago, my local computer store (the bin two streets away) has furnished me with a five-year-old Macbook with nothing but a head crash separating it from a long(ish) career as my primary PC.

As of now, it has a brand new hard drive and is running quite happily. So a hearty thank you to whoever didn't realise that hard drives could be replaced or that a hard drive failure was the reason their magic box stopped working, and decided to chuck it where I could find it.



Now I get to experience the thrill of computing luxuries as yet unknown to me, such as a reasonably up to date version of Firefox and a flash player that's still reasonably serviceable! (The PowerPC maxed out at 10.1, while this happily runs Flash Player 11.3, a version that was still supported within some semblance of recent memory.)

The PowerPC has been demoted to Computer I Can't Use Without Getting Out Of Bed status, but I'm keeping it anyway; turns out I'm not willing to abandon ShadowWraith and Diamonds 3D and other wonderful games just because they can't run on Intel hardware.

Vital stats:

Computer: Newer
Date: Today
Current Mood: Bouncy
Sleep Status: Not a wink
Word of the Day: Lurid
Platform: Macintel
Browser: Actual proper Firefox now.
RAM: 2 GB
No, the RAM on the table: That was the broken one from the old computer.
Why?: Well now it's my bookmark.
Oh: Yeah, it's not very useful as RAM anymore but it holds my place in books.
Redundancy: A bit.
Do you has?: Five bucks.
Boond you like?: No.
Favourite character: The Doctor
Doctor who?: I believe his name is Graben.
Sayan?: No, and the demonym is "Siana."
Rambling: Yes
More: No