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hese days I do all my work exclusively on my own equipment. Accordingly, my computational habits have changed enormously. When I used to share my equipment, or do stuff at UVA, I was fatalistic about the computers I used. After a weekend spent elsewhere, I'd come back to my workstation and find useless new gizmos installed and some of my favourite features disabled or inoperable. A few minimal tweaks, a little cussing at human Macintosh viruses, and I'd be ready to go again. As long as the machine worked at all, I counted my lucky stars and buckled down to whatever tasks were at hand. No longer. I've spent much of the past week customizing my work environment, installing software, and tweaking hardware, not so much for immediate benefit, but for the potential of future comfort and ease. I'm fussy about my desktop now. I won't settle for crippleware and shareware splash screens; I've been giving lots of hits to Warez sites in Russia1 and teaching myself the rudiments of Windows 95 cracking. I used to crack software all the time back when I had a Macintosh and no network connection, but it hardly pays to learn how to crack Windows 95 software when you have an unlimited internet feed; chances are if you need a serial number or something needs to be cracked, the solution is already available out there on the web somewhere. Does anyone know what the statute of limitations is concerning culpability for the creation of a computer virus? Just wondering. The coolest accomplishment so far today was connecting a Macintosh to my PC's SCSI chain and being able to read and write to any drive from my PC (using TransMac, which allows a PC to look at Mac volumes) and any Mac volume from the Mac. Everything works fine until both machines try to access the SCSI bus at once.
hat a sadly antisocial day. Me, up here in my room in front of a computer doing these things, coping with frustrations, successes and defeats, and feeling almost like I should apologize to the real world for walking by it on the way to another cup of coffee. I look for activity, but only in the confines of my monitor. Hey there, online world, you're slacking! Everybody seems to be away from their interactive glowing boxes, gathered 'round the tussin tree singing tussin carols except for me. I'm checking your web pages and there's nothing there. Why do I care? I should go hang out with Deya, but she's kind of got the same problem in her own way. She needs to learn to speak even when not spoken to. Sex. I have an unfocused horniness; it's not directed at any one person. I've been fantasizing about currently inaccessible girls I once rejected. They're sexy mostly for their lack of dignity. They're far more flexible in the hands of my fantasies than the girls who rejected me. Beyond that, though, is a feeling of sexual indifference. I don't know why, but I don't feel like I need to experience sexual encounters any more to justify my status as a sexually valid being.
1My, how the times have changed! The internet is nowhere near the bastion of free speech in this country that it is in Russia. The English is a little wooden on those Russian web pages, but I feel tears coming to my eyes when I see the nonchalant freedom being expressed by those former Klingons & storm troopers.
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