So the hard drive in my Powerbook is failing. Grrr. Disk Utility is showing it's S.M.A.R.T. status as "failing" and the "repair disk" option says it can't complete the task. So I guess I'm going to visit the Genius Bar tomorrow. It should still be under warranty - and at least I had enough notice to grab all my files. But I have bad feeling I'm about to have a few days without Kool-Aid. (grumble)

(So I wrote an entry in the park a week ago Wednesday. That was the day I drove into SF and then the alternator died. Which flowed straight into my birthday party, which then flowed straight into the several days of network redoing and PC construction. I never actually posted that post, but here it is. And Pic_A_Day will have the matching pic) Spring is finally here in the Valley and me and Kool-Aid had to get out of Dodge today anyway. So I'm writing this from John Morgan park in Campbell - which is just freaking gorgeous. The grass has been cut recently, enough that the smell is still in the air. I'm sitting in the shade of this huge tree, looking out over the field. I can't really do much editing work on Playing Cops and Robots - I need the hardcopy for that. So I just started writing something fluffy - something more dialog focused, hopefully something that has more of a sense of humor than my more serious projects. I don't know that anything will come of it - I've been finding that my writing flows better with a plan and this was just entirely random spew from the top of the ever-simmering brain. But it gives me a sense of peace, a connection to the world and the seasons that is too easy to lose in our modern world. And spending the afternoon in a park makes me feel a zillion percent better about missing GDC! (Interuption for phone call - I just got the word from Chuji on the dinner and drinking plans. So I'm not even missing the good part anyway) If you read this blog you should come to my birthday party this weekend (and you should have already gotten an invite - if not give me a holler). I just went by BevMo earlier and I have a trunk-ful of booze and soda. There are periodic things were I feel less like a self-employed creative writer chasing a dream, and more like a slacker slouching around. Having a cart full of booze at 1 PM on Wednesday afternoon is definitely more slacker-feeling than writer-feeling :-) But it should be fun. Tomorrow morning I'll do the grocery run and we should be all set. The weather looks like it should stay nice so we'll have the back yard open as well. Anyway, I'm looking forward to it.

As I write this on . . . Thursday (grumble) my office is blissfully quiet. I have two PC's (my Linux and Windows boxen) running quiet fans, but that's easy to fade below conscious attention - especially with iTunes playing, like it is now. What I don't hear is that crazy whine the router Linux box has made for the last several months. It was tolerable as long as I ever did in here was Quicken (loud music) or played video games (often with headphones anyway). But now that I spend all day in here it was driving me crazy. I had thought it was due to the power supply in the old case, so last week I ordered a new case & power supply, which arrived Monday. Monday I started trying to transplant the router and realized that most of the noise was the CPU fan and the hard drive. Replacing the CPU fan was easy, the hard drive turned out to be impossible. I bought an 80 gig drive at Best Buy (smallest drive they had), but the BIOS wouldn't handle a drive that big. A few hours getting a BIOS update, scrounging the only floppy drive from my Windows box, installing that, etc, etc. and I got the BIOS patched. Still no joy. No problem, - I have a second drive in my Windows box (for data backups) that is only 40 Gig. Nope that doesn't work either. So for all of Tuesday and Wednesday I had two PC's open and it was even noisier without the cases muffling the various whines and roars. Next problem - Jester (the Windows box) somewhere along the line killed the NEW POWER SUPPLY I bought for it last week Grrrrr. At this point I snapped and decided to try to simplify. Maybe I should just buy a commerical router. Hang on - the Airport Extreme Base Station HAS a router. Sure enough - about ten minutes of messing with it and bam - everything is back on the internet without the third PC. That frees up the new case to transplant Jester (now with 2 power supply silhouettes painted on the case). Last night I finally got all that working. This also moves Jester out of my leg space - an accidental benefit. So that's why there have been no posts lately. The noise was the sort of thing that while I was ignoring it I could do so - but once I started trying to fix it I could hardly bear to be in the same room as the router. It's interesting that I keep sliding away from Linux now. I'm one Mac Mini away from replacing all my Linux software with OS X. And honestly - the next time Fedora end of lifes (which must be soon right? Like every four months? Maniacs!) and I need to upgrade to get my patches - it would probably be less time and effort to switch it all to OS X - and get SUPPORT for a while. Ironically Apple will now sell me hardware and a OS X license for $500. Compare and contrast with Red Hat - who will sell me a license for $299 and I bring my own CPU. Anyway, it's all good now and my office is starting to be a pleasant place to spend time.

This may seem obvious but iPhoto doesn't actually delete a photo when you select it and hit "delete". It moves it to the iPhoto trash can - it's still on your disk (and not in the system trash either - which I think is a little unexpected). Since the mantra for taking good pictures is take a lot of pictures I've been taking 4-5 shots of each Pic_A_Day subject. I had 235 pictures in the iPhoto trash can - all still eating up disk space. The only reason I even noticed was that I've been importing from the memory card with iPhoto but then browsing the iPhoto directories with Photoshop Elements and I realized the "deleted" files were still there.

Errr . . . what happened? Last week tunneled around in astounding ways. Sitting on my Powerbook is a blog post I wrote Wednesday afternoon while sitting in a park. I had some pictures for Pic_A_Day and everything seemed straightforward. Then Chuji called me and I signed on for dinner in San Fran with the GDC-ians. Pleased with myself I set out. Partway there the battery light lit on my dashboard. "Hmmm", thought I. "How can their be a battery problem - we aren't using the battery here on 280." I figured it was probably some odd misdiagnosis and the light would go off soon. My oil light occasionally clicks on for 30 seconds and disappears and never seems to mean anything. But the light didn't go out. In fact, the electrical systems in the car started getting funky. The dashboard dimmed, the CD player started stuttering, etc. By this point I was much closer to my destination in SF than I was home. After some spur of the moment thought I decided to press on. Killed the radio, closed the sunroof (in case electrical failed totally) and started willing the car to hold together. I made it to the garage at Fifth and Mission and parked it. Now I'm thinking that if I turn the engine off it's likely to not restart. And the last couple of turns the turn signal light and clicker hadn't even activated. So I put it in neutral, turn on a turn blinker and get out of the car - no turn signals visible externally. OK that tears it - I'm not driving this back to San Jose. So I turn the car off and sure enough it won't restart. After some quick thought (easier when I'm not navigating a car that might lose its headlights at any moment) I figure that what has probably happened is the alternator died and I drained the battery after that. What to do? Well, I'm meeting people who will be driving back to SJ so I'll just meet them, have dinner and bum a ride home. So I did that - I had a great time, got to see Chuji (too bad he didn't feel 100%) and Bwana. Jungle Porthos kindly gave me a ride home. Thursday morning I drove Karin to school so I had her car. After some calling around I determined I needed to go back to SF that AAA can have the car towed out of the garage no problem. So I drive up to SF (I looked at trying to use public transit but I was too worried about not knowing where the car would end up ultimately and whether public transit would get me there.) I scheduled an appointment at the nearest Saturn dealer (in Colma) and drove up to SF. The tow driver asked why I was taking it to the dealer - since it would cost more than a local shop. I explained it was basically an "out of town" problem and he recommended a local shop (just on Harrison - like three blocks from the garage). So I dropped the car there, and they said I could get it around four PM. Great - just enough time to hop in Karin's car, drive back to San Jose, get her and have her drive back to SF so I could get my car before the shop closed. Which I did. Turned out it was the alternator, and the battery was still solid once recharged - total repairs were less than $400 and the alternator has a solid warranty so I scored there I think. $20 for leaving the car in the garage all night but it was safe so I'm happy on that account. Now its dinnertime and bad traffic to leave the city so Karin and decided to hook up with the city/GDC crowd again. We had to kill an hour so we had milkshakes at Mel's Diner (espresso milkshakes are becoming one of my favorite aspects of SF ever since I was turned on to them during NaNoWriMo), saw the "Walk of Game" at the Metreon (lame), and kicked around Yerba Buena for a bit. Had huge amounts of sushi and a great time with Rachel, Lee, Caroline and Lance (from DoubleFine). Kept Karin out way past her bedtime for a school night, but she was a good sport. Drove home - tired but reasonably pleased with the day. I'd blown the task list for Thursday - I had planned on cleaning up my office and cooking some foor for my birthday party. I figured that was fixable on Friday, so no big deal. I was still a little wired so I decided to play some games. I got my copy of Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich but I want to replay the first game (which I never finished first) so I dig it out, install it and start playing. Partway through the second mission my power supply goes "Bamph!" and emits nasty smelling smoke. Murphy seems to be on the electrical train with me this evening. Poor Schrodinger was sitting right next to the power supply in question (my linux box is a slightly shorter case and she likes to sit on it when I work at the computer.) So she got quite a scare and I have to confess I thought she had done something so I yelled at her a bit (which I feel pretty guilty about). So Friday I have to do some of the Thursday work plus get a power supply. Hopefully nothing else fried and resurrecting Jester (my Windows box) will be simple. It turned out to be simple, but I slept in late recovering from all the SF fun and then I had to buy groceries and the power supply, etc, etc. and I didn't really get anything done on Friday until late. All day Saturday was party preparation and then the actual party, and today was mostly recovery, cleaning the kitchen and playing some Magic Online. The party rocked, I had a lot of fun and I think all the attendees did as well. We had too much food (people: RSVP means let us know whether you'll be coming or not! I know too many unreliable folks!) but it was fun and I won't have to cook until Wednesday or Thursday now :-) So yeah, next week should be calmer. And I'll post my pictures and text from calm and tranquil Wednesday soon. Unless Murphy blows up some other bit of electronics anyway . . . (Note to Murphy - try something OTHER than electrical next time, OK? Thanks!)