Author Archives: David Crampton

Technology is a sultry minx that toys with me.

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So, we had one of these little gadgets that was sitting around, fairly inoperable, at the bottom of a desk drawer. eBay to the rescue! I have a battery en route, as well as an upgrade sleeve that will accept PC cards. I’ve already got the 4GB SD card. The idea is to get it able to connect to an 802.11 network, as well as play an appreciable amount of MP3s. I mean, the thing has a standard headphone jack right there on the top! It’s practically begging to be turned into a flashy mp3 player, on top of being a PDA and wireless… aw, hell. A palmtop. There, I said it.

Of course, this can’t go easily. I’ve been waiting on the battery forever, and had auctions (like the SD card) that I won after the battery show up before it. If I unplug the A/C adapter, *poof* goes all my data. So, I’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern. At least, when the SD card arrived, I could test it, right? Well, it appears that it doesn’t want to format the card. And while Googling seems to solve most Apple and Linux related questions, not so for HP/Microsoft amalgamations.

The only information I’ve been able to find is outdated. Compatibility listings only go up to 1GB, but there are spotty reports of getting 2GB cards to work. HP’s support won’t even attempt to answer the question because it’s so far out of warrantee. That’s odd to me, because their live support was always great at handling questions about my old Compaq laptop, and it was a Pentium 1. WAY out of date. Perhaps this is a difference between their live support and their email support, and I should try the live support again.

In any case, if any of you has knowledge of such handhelds, and wouldn’t mind shedding some insight in my general direction, I would appreciate it crazy-like. If I have to downgrade to a 2GB, or there’s a software update out there that I need, lay it on me. :)

Horoscope

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Should we attribute any oracular significance to the fact that hundreds of flowers bloomed on a cherry tree in Brooklyn during the first week of winter? Is it a portentous marvel akin to, say, the births of three white buffalos on a farm in Janesville, Wisconsin? (The odds of a single white buffalo are a million to one.) I don’t know for sure, Taurus, but my meditations do suggest that the Brooklyn miracle is an apt metaphor for a scenario you’ll soon be experiencing: an early ripening of a possibility that you had assumed wouldn’t be ready or available for quite some time.

Horoscope

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive and more constructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.” So said Dr. Frank Barron, a pioneer in the psychology of creativity. I believe that describes you pretty well right now, Taurus–even if you don’t usually think of yourself as creative or artistic. The astrological omens suggest that you’ve got more lust for life than any other sign of the zodiac; you’re in an intimate alignment with the throbbing hum of the Divine Wow. Please remember how important it is to be discerning about where you direct that much energy! Don’t waste it on trivial pleasures or goals that are unworthy of you. You now have the power to change things you thought you could never change in a thousand years.

I had a witty subject line earlier, honest.

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I’ve got my old 30 gig HD installed into my shiny new external hard drive enclosure. I have found out that with 3.5″ drives (which is what I happen to have), neither USB nor Firewire has enough power to operate the drive. So, it works, but it has to be plugged in to a power cord, which makes it only a little more irritating when carrying it around for data mobility. However, I now have the data mobility that I was looking for, and am already chock-full of ideas on how to use it.

Also, for the last two mornings, I have had good showers. Not exceedingly long showers, and not showers with water pressure that could blast me across the tub, but -good- showers. What do I mean by that? I mean that, with the new shower head that got me, the hot water doesn’t run out at the end of my shower. Not only that, but I’m using quite a bit less water to shower than I ever have before.

Also, I have a new Transformer on my desk at work, thanks to Will. It’s amazed me how the subtle differences in this repaint’s mold, as well as the obvious differences in color, have created a totally different personality. Despite the nearly-identical body to Smokescreen, Ricochet comes off completely differently. This kind of thing -almost- makes up for what they did to Prowl and Optimus Prime. I also have an Optimus Primal statue for my desk at home, thanks to .

Some brilliance from about us and our food:

The other problem is squimishness. And this is, in my opinion the thornier of the issues. It does’t just involve completely restructuring our infrastructure, but something much more difficult: changing people’s opinion. Time and time again, I have been talking about food and meat comes up. I mention that the animal that I ate was known on a personal basis by someone, maybe had a name, maybe lead a good life before I was lucky enough to eat it. The reaction I think I’m going to get is. “Wow! I didn’t know meat animals could be someone other than a number. I think it’s really wonderful that you can eat meat that doesn’t come from immense cruelty and pain, but from animals that lived peaceful decently happy lives. Good for you.” The reaction I get is “Oh. Ummm. Ewww. I don’t think I could eat that. Why would you name it if you were going to eat it?” Why? Because by naming it I respect it. I honor it as a being worthy of being named and hopefully treat it both as an animal and as food with a great deal more respect than he or she would get in a factory farm or on the shelf at Kroger. I honor the animals I eat. I use every bit, I am grateful for their sacrifice, and I know that their lives enrich mine in a mulititude of ways. I thank the animals I eat as well as the plants, as well as the earth and the sun that have provided the sustanance for them to grow and eat. By being afraid to name your food, you distance yourself from that food. You categorize it as the Other as surely as a nazi footsoldier did with the Jew he shot. It’s easier to see the distancing with people harder with animals and plants. Our whole society is made up of ways to distance us from stuff. From meat animals, from ecosystems, from various subdivisions of other people, from pain, from reality. I think it inadvertantly distances us from life, from joy, from esctacy as well. We are numb and in pain from it.

Horoscope

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): It’s possible you’ll live for 150 years. Scientific studies on how to outwit the aging process are generating increasingly compelling data, and so is psychospiritual research into the attitudes and emotions that encourage longevity. The coming year will be prime time for you to make yourself aware of these explorations, and to adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Here are two places to start your investigation: (1) the article “I’m Going to Live Forever” at http://tinyurl.com/6w4wh; (2) the book *Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever,* by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman at http://tinyurl.com/nv35y.

Heat my house.

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From ‘s journal:

I know that, at this time of year, it’s very hard to think about anything after the first of the year, let alone plan for it. However, I wanted to give you all more than enough time to plan for this thing:

What:
Benny and Skippy’s Annual House Warming Party
(also, nods of recognition to Benny, Will, and Joe’s Birthdays)

When:
January 6th, 2007.
Starting at 8pm

Where:
(the same place it is every year?)
119 N. Fairview
Lansing.

Come Help us warm our house for another year.

Disclaimer: You’re coming to celebrate, and have a good time. The warming of our house doesn’t require gifts (it requires bodies, and love) so don’t bring them.

Par-tay! :)

Rest in peace, prowl.local

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So, armed with a combo drive and a 512 MB SO-DIMM, I was ready to upgrade the crap out of my iBook. By that, I mean keep track of the screws while did most of the work. But, this is neither here nor there.

I had acquired both from ebay, and I was boosted by the fact that the machine had powered itself on, while closed, booted, and gone into sleep mode while I was off galavanting around the Flint and Detroit areas for family fun. So, it was working again, but the upgrade required a power-down. I knew it was risky, but I was bound and determined to squeeze every last drop of cool out of this thing. 1 GB of RAM and the ability to burn CDs was just the kind of cool I wanted. (cool)

This is where things took a bit of a turn for the worse. After tearing apart the entire laptop, layer by layer, we discovered that this particular generation of iBook does not have a second RAM slot for its onboard RAM. Nope, it has actual onboard RAM. Well, at least we could upgrade to the Combo Drive, right? Sure!

But it won’t turn on. Again. Same exact problem. *sigh* So, I have activated the actuators, perpetuated the perpetuators, set the gears to grindin’, reversed the polarities, increased the transporter buffer, re-routed power through the secondary coupling, and have decided to part out the iBook and sell its bits on eBay to fund a newer, better, faster laptop.

If you know anybody who’s interested in these sort of bits, please feel free to send them here. Also, please do the same if you know people looking for used White Wolf books. :)

In the meantime, I am not without a machine, thanks to . His timely gift of a used tower is much appreciated. I’ve already brought my old 17″ CRT monitor out of storage (AKA gathering dust on the floor next to my desk), put some extra RAM in it that I had lying around, and the Ubuntu install was completing when I left the house this morning. I still need to find the video card drivers and find a better place for my printer, but all is well.

So, the electronics saga continues. I’m not sure why this happens to me in cycles (power supply and motherboard on my last desktop gave out on me simultaneously, power wouldn’t turn on with the iBook…), but apparently I’m rolling with it well this time. :)