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refusing to be fixed or happy
Monday, September 3 2007
Yesterday I'd spent lots of time setting up a Tecra 9000 laptop after it was kicked down to me by a client. With the exception of its flaky USB ports, it seemed to work fine, although with its ridiculous 14.1 inch screen (which displays a screen of only 1024 by 768 pixels) and other embarrassingly engorged dimensions, I won't be taking it far from home.
With laptops, an important issue is how easily it goes into both standby and hibernate modes. My old Sony Vaio refused to read its screen hinge, and it had to be put into hibernate mode manually. I never realized what a pain that was until I got an iBook (which handles its various power saving modes sensibly by default). For some reason I kept finding that the Tecra 9000 wouldn't provide standby (let alone hibernate) as a viable mode. At first I thought perhaps that Toshiba hadn't seen fit to provide these modes, but after some research this morning, I found that this was just a side effect of not having the proper video driver installed.
I spent most of the day trying to solve a computer problem our neighbor Andrea was having. Her brand new replacement DVD burner would write some fraction of a disk and then hang, refusing to make progress or give up the disk until rebooted. It seemed like a minor problem at first but as I tried different possible solutions I found myself growing increasingly frustrated. Eventually I took the computer back to my place to reinstall its cursed operating system, but when even that didn't work I was thrown into existential despair. I found myself ranting so loudly that Eleanor came trotting into the laboratory to comfort me. I eventually returned the computer to Andrea and told her to buy an external DVD burner for it. At this point I suspect there might be a subtle motherboard problem, since everything (hardware and software) except the motherboard has been replaced!
Meanwhile Gretchen had been off to her first day of the semester at Bard College (where she is a professor). She returned soon after I'd washed my hands of Andrea's computer. Soon thereafter, Gretchen told me she wanted me to put a string on her acoustic guitar. Unfortunately, though, it was a case where she wanted to be an active participant in this stringing, and for some reason she didn't like the details of what I was doing and kept demanding revisions.
[REDACTED]
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