Journal Archives - April, 2002

April 4, 2002 ... I'm back.

Have been for two and a half days, now.

Stuck.

Don't want to do anything ...

Fighting to tread water.

Trip update when I can.

April 9, 2002 ... Okay ... feeling a little better, although I'm going to be slow to warm back up to normal emotional operating temperature. Please bear with me through the process.

One of the factors that has cheered me up immensely has been, perhaps unsurprisingly, the advent of Daylight Savings Time this last Sunday. Overnight, I suddenly have been getting abnormally large doses of sunshine. Instead of getting up slightly after noon and getting half a day of sun before it becomes evening and my social life turns back into a pumpkin, I'm now getting up around noon and getting nearly eight hours of sunshine -- a full workday! And I don't even have to change my schedule to take advantage of it! Hurrah for summer, I say.

At any rate ...

uh ...

Mood swing. I was going to write something else here, but never mind. I'll be fine -- go out tomorrow, bask in the sunshine -- but suddenly there's nothing more to say.

*engine coughs, sputters, dies. key turns. engine rolls back to life with an unsteady hum*

April 10, 2002 ... Remember way back in March, when I bought some RAM? And two days later, when I tried to install it? And it was defective ... and I returned it? Remember when I got the replacements ... and tried to install them? Yep, defective too, so I gave the vendor a call. I spoke with both customer service and tech support, had a wonderful, productive discussion, and sent the second set of chips back in ... to find that, when I returned from California, they'd shipped me a third set. I opened that package yesterday, and spent some time this evening fumbling around with computer innards.

And guess what?

IT WORKED

... and I have a beautiful, glorious 160 megabytes of RAM on my computer. Two and a half times what I used to. I tried loading every application I regularly use ... then some applications I don't use all that often ... and still couldn't fill the space. I now have to try to run out of memory. Witness the spiffiness. (Note to PC geeks: Macs have a very different virtual memory support than PCs. You can actually turn it off entirely, saving both time and hard drive wear. I habitually do this. Thus, the number of applications I can open is contingent on available RAM. Despite this, I will now never see another "Insufficient memory" message again.)

I would also like to say that, despite getting two defective shipments of RAM from 'em, I am extremely impressed with Other World Computing, vendor of Macintosh products (and also Illinois ISP, apparently). Dealing with not one but two returns on the same order had the potential to be a massive customer service nightmare, especially given that this was a web order for a company I've never before heard of. But customer service was polite and knowledgeable, and the tech support guy I spoke to actually knew more than I did (and told me something I hadn't found out during all my research on the matter -- that zapping the PRAM can actually resolve some problems with new DIMMs). Not to mention, on the say-so of the tech support guy, they actually pre-tested the memory they sent me on iteration #3 -- on a Power Macintosh 4400 they had around the office. Color me impressed, not only that they went the extra mile for me but also that they had a spare 4400, a model owned by approximately four people worldwide. (I sure can pick 'em, I guess.)

As I've commented to several roommates by now, anyone can send you bad equipment ... but it takes a good company to handle those failures gracefully. Consider me a repeat customer, next time I actually need some hardware again.

So, in conclusion: Lots of memory. Happy Bax. More to follow.

April 17, 2002 ...

This journal is temporarily closed for a contemplation break.

Will return whenever convenient. Until then, interact with me in the forums; check out some inane babblings in my Livejournal if you haven't already (this will remain my journal -- my LJ account is for site updates, inconsequential bits, and items for an LJ-specific audience); or listen to the ocean.

Ssssshhhh.

You can hear it, distant and inviting, if you put your ear to the screen.