Click images for desktop size: "Red Flute" by Unknown Last week was one of those lost times. Pain, worry and concern blinding me to life.
What I know is that these sort of weeks used to be prevalent. They ran to months. Times where you walk through life and it does not touch you. It leaves no remark and accepts no input. I would feel like a hunk of meat and symptoms. I simply endured.
Even the good times, because for some reason I never stop working, even the good times were simply blurred like a 16 mm movie slipping its sprocket holes and showing the sound stripe.
Now those times are rare. Rare enough to notice.
One thing I did this weekend was install Windows on my friends new
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Dark Art MacBook. Ended up staying up most of the night.
The Apple side of things was no big problem, actually no problem at all. It did what it was intended to do and did it fine. But Windows . . . No wonder little geeks sit out there believe they are computer experts because they can work with that clodge of make believe.
I've never seen anything so inept and silly as Windows XP. Granted Apple has an advantage in that its OS is designed to work on a restricted set of hardware and Windows is expected to function on any piece of junk that you want to cobble together it still doesn't justify the inherent stupidity of the OS.
When installing Boot Camp, the Apple app that partitions the hard drive and preps it for Windows, it reminds you that it will be necessary to have Windows reformat the HD. It sets it up as FAT32. Windows might not be able to read to this.
After waiting for 30 minutes the Windows installer asked if I wanted to reformat the drive. It did not give me the option to reformat as FAT32, only as NTFS (another horrible clodge that emulates HTFS). I foolishly decided that it meant that it could read and write the FAT32 fine.

Click images for desktop size: "Waiting" by RiftSurround (Fran Rivera) It could write to it but couldn't read it . . . which probably makes sense to Windows only guys. As does the installer not realizing that it could write but bot read the partition.
I found this out because when I rebooted to finish the Windows install I got nothing but a disk read error. I futzed around and tried to fix it but the only solution was to repartition the drive and blank the old partition. Fortunately Boot Camp makes this a no brainer with no risk to the Mac data.
This time I reformatted the drive as NTFS and the install progressed nicely.
The problem with the NTFS file system is that when my friend is in Mac OSX she can read but can't write to the partition. She can't save docs to Windows. This is a secondary problem as when the partition is over 32 gig you can't write to it either (from OSX). Of course Windows is so stupid it can't read any other file system or OS (even linux). If it were my computer I'd have set it up for 32 gig and used Parallel to run any Windows apps I might need. Of course I also hold to the principal that any tool should be used by the user in the way they see fit.
Now I finally had the Windows actual installer going. It said it would take anywhere from 2 hours to 39 minutes to complete the install!!
I love that sort of accuracy.
It took 50 minutes.
After doing all the password set up I finally got to the screen and was nothing but appalled at the sheer ugliness of the interface. I'd forgotten just how pig ugly it is especially with the inane way it tries to beautify itself. That wasn't all the issue. It was the way EVERYTHING stopped at all the stupid security fixations.
All the notices were growing tedious. With its huge list of supported machines and hardware it couldn't find the WIFI card, the sound drivers etc.
Installing the Apple drivers fixed that but it seems rather foolish that Windows can't find anything.
But its up, running and looking pig ugly. Only took 5 hours.

Lest you think I love Apple blindly I note that the new iPod shuffle is charging A FEE to anyone foolish enough to want to design third party headphones that will work with the thing. So unless you want to pay the Apple tax and an extra premium for premium earbuds your stuck with the cruddy
Click images for desktop size: "Jimmy Hendrix" by S4W $29 buck-ers they pack in. This could be Apple's biggest failure since the Newton.

We took the car in for some warranty work. Nothing at all serious but all annoying. The squeal from the brakes and the constant squeaking, the blown speaker and a funny clunk when you turn off the rear window wiper.
We got a loaner. A Ford Focus that really sucks! But, as my friend says, it's better than n car at all.
The thing that startles is how easy the whole thing was. The salesman even remembered me! (Which my friend points out is probably an indication of what a pain in the neck I can be.)
We stopped at Taco Bell. My friend had TEN vegetarian tacos. I had a burrito and a quesadilla and her french fries (that came with her Family Taco Meal). The fries were hard for me to eat. She didn't get sick or smelly so the meal was a success.

Sunday I spent getting the yard ready for spring and summer. It was over 50 and sunny. The dogs and I had a good time. I'd clean and then they'd mess it right back up. The gentle dog got into trouble. He got tangled in some dead Virginia Crawler behind the garden gate. He had cornered the stupid cat back there. The cat was taunting him. While he was all tangled it was hissing and swatting at him.
It was a hateful thing for it to do. As I got the gentle dog untangled and the stupid cat saw he was free it took off with the gentle dog in hot pursuit.
The cat went to the defunct bomb shelter. The same one the gentle dog had gotten itself trapped in during the winter. After that escapade I blocked off any easy dog access. Good thing as there's no doubt he would have dived right in there.
He hates that cat.
I might have to rename the gentle dog. He really hates that cat.