Boston—I will not join in
April 15, 2013
It’s awful that some people have died and that many more are injured. But what about the circus that is no doubt going on on the television? I haven’t tuned in. It’s true that I mostly don’t have cable TV any more, but I do still get CNN. But I’m not going to turn it on. CNN has probably already composed theme music with a purpose-designed graphic to telegraph to its viewers that this is serious, very serious. It is serious.
I’m guessing, though, that the focus of [most any television news outlet] is not on investigating how—with what must have been meticulous preparations and beefed up security—explosives were able to be stowed in the highly public area of the Boston Marathon finish line. That’s not dramatic and emotion-inducing. No. Are they perhaps sensationalizing that one of the dead is a child, or that a Saudi man in hospital was questioned (but not arrested) by police? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Read News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier. Especially the following part. I’m going to guess that this is what’s going on right now.
News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What’s relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. That’s the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it’s dramatic, it’s a person (non-abstract), and it’s news that’s cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.
We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists – who have powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards – have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely.(1)
I’m not uninformed. I’ve sought out coverage that I figure is among the less hysterical. But unlike with 9/11 or, more recently, Superstorm Sandy, I’ve chosen not to saturate myself with coverage. The facts will emerge, and I will get them then.
Many people who I know and who I don’t know have reached out with their social media missives to offer prayers and sympathy, or at least empathy. We all react and cope in our own way. I am massively glad that the one person who I know in Boston is fine. The fact is, though, I live in Minneapolis and the events in Boston don’t directly affect me. Maybe, for the very reasons outlined in the article cited above, overexposure to the constant barrage on my feelings over the years has desensitized those same feelings. It’s too bad that people have suffered today but it won’t change my life. That’s obviously easier for me to say because I’m a 49-year-old woman of western European heritage and have little fear of being ethnically profiled in the coming weeks, or ever.
Who is having empathy for the Saudi man in hospital?
(1) News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier. © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. Quoted in good faith.
Ghost bus
April 13, 2013
That was the oddest bus ride home—or anywhere—ever!—because I had the whole damned thing to myself! I have a 1.75 mile ride home. There were eight stops on the way, give or take. Nobody got on. I didn’t get off. Weird. This was at 9pm on a Friday evening. There should have been somebody else, even if only onebody else.
I’ve said before—I’m so incredibly fortunate that I don’t have to drive my car to work. Home to work is less than two miles.
I have the light rail available, for a five-minute walk. I like that best because it’s the smoothest ride and once you get on it, it’s the fastest and it drops me off kitty corner from my building, thought I usually get off the stop before because I can walk to my door about a minute faster, and sometimes that important, so it’s the habit I’ve gotten into.
I also have several bus options. If I walk five minutes, I can find the 3, 16, or 50 which will then drop me off half a block from the office. Or, I can catch the 22 practically right outside my door. The trouble with the 22 is that once I get downtown, I have to either walk seven minutes or catch a bus connection on 4th Street. It turns out that three of those connections are the aforementioned 3, 16, and 50. Difference is, if I hop onto the 22 first, then I only have to walk 50 yards rather than five minutes to their own stops.
If I end up on the 22 to downtown there are also two or three express bus options to transfer to, because once they get downtown they’re pretty much like any other local bus. I still get dropped off half a block from the office. Life is tough.
In the Google Maps scheme of things if you’re inclined to stalk me, there’s not much difference between my home neighborhood and downtown proper, really. Well, if you’re from Chicago or something. Or if you’re from a small town. Which probably more people are than not.
It’s good to know I have options.
Winter weather, whoa!
April 11, 2013
Spring has not sprung. I was willing to overlook the fact that I wore longjohns and a parka to the Minnesota Twins baseball season opener. I don’t even mind that I can’t wear shorts yet—though many break them out as soon as the temperature hits 40F/5C. This is Minnesota, after all.
Mother Nature teased us with mild daytime highs last week. They were a little below average but still warm enough for people to wear shorts and to inspire me to drag my bicycle out of the storage room. It was an exciting development to pedal to work for the first time in months. After work I stopped at the local bike shop to enquire about a spring tune-up. I was told of my bike’s immanent demise, that I would be lucky if the thing didn’t fall apart right under me, and that with the labor and parts for the required complete overhaul, it would be less than $100 more to just purchase a new one. But I digress.
My friend Jon is hardcore and bikes everywhere all year. Even he was optimistic enough about the weather to make the switch from his winter beater bike to his nicer summer ride.
None of this was meant to be. The temperature went back down to around freezing and for days we listened to dire predictions about a late winter storm. Yesterday the drizzle began. Jon showed up on (I think he said) his wife’s beater bike because he had stored his already. An Instagram friend lamented that he’d have to switch the summer wheels on his car back to the winter. People do that? Another friend, Brad, was not looking forward to his #30DaysOfBiking ride after he got home last night.
I had been keenly radar-watching all day. The system was moving very slowly and Minneapolis was above freezing. I brashly predicted that the forecasts of six to twelve inches of snow would not materialize, that it wouldn’t be nearly that bad. I’d had a meteorology class in college in 1983, after all. Were you even born then? You would have seen me walking my dinosaur.
By the time I went to bed, the radar had bloomed. I knew I’d wake up to whiteness in the morning. I did.
Fortunately, the temperature hasn’t been spending much time below freezing. There were about 3 inches/8 cm of slushy snow on my sidewalk and it was raining snow. On the radio, the traffic updates reported slick entrance and exit ramps, and “too many spin-outs to mention them all.” I knew that in downtown Minneapolis where I live and work, things would be sloppy but the urban heat island effect would preclude too much slipperiness. What I wasn’t expecting to hear was that light rail trains were not in service because of ice build-up. In the eight winters that I’ve lived where I can use the light rail, I’ve never heard of service being suspended for any weather-related reason. Metro Transit does a nice job with the rail line. And really, the buses, too.
I personally was not put out by this storm. I don’t drive my car very much, and I certainly don’t drive it to work. I train, bus, bike, walk. I got to work this without too much inconvenience, except for having to wait while the Brothers Deli cooked my breakfast because I failed to phone ahead.
“Look closely ….. that’s the amount of rain we received last year June through October.” Photo by Bossy Acres. They grow organic vegetables. Get some this summer.
Sure, I might wish for milder temperatures and dry roads so that I can continue riding my dilapidated bicycle. But let’s all of us put aside the selfishness of our personal comfort and conditions for a moment and think about the bigger picture. Though it sucks to get a major snowstorm in April, for sure (and let’s face it, if it were 50F/10C and had been raining for a week, we’d still be whining), let’s remember the inconvenient fact that since last summer, Minnesota is in drought. Our late snowfalls and slow temperature warm-up are a boon for the farmers who put food on our tables. The slower melt reduces flood risk, which means more of the water can be absorbed into the ground rather than just running off. In a couple of months when you’re walking around your local farmers market in your Crocs with your wild children, you’ll be thankful.
Ahem.
“Priority parking shoveled out.” Photo by Harriet Brewing. They make Belgian-style beers. Go drink some.
This is Minnesota. If you’re going to live here, you must have a sense of humor about the weather, whatever it is and whenever it’s occuring. Just look at this photo posted by local brewery Harriet Brewing. They know people like Jon will still be out on their bikes, even in these shit conditions. This too shall pass.
I can do this again!
April 7, 2013
A large part of the reason why you’ll notice that I’ve written only sporadically in the last year is because my writing computer, my Apple iBook G4, decided that it was tired and didn’t feel like working anymore. I vaguely recall that I got excited for one entry because I had found an external keyboard that worked pretty nicely with my iPad. That didn’t last long, though, because the keyboard wasn’t part of a case/cover so I returned it, and the keyboards that were small enough to be part of the cover didn’t quite impress me enough. I kind of gave up.
That gave me time to wistfully remember the good old days of writing on the iBook and ruminate on its troubles. The more I thought about it, the more I figured it was the hard drive that was acting up, versus the motherboard or something even more dire. Once I realized that, I knew that resuscitation would be possible. And so began my adventure.
Disassemble #1. This isn’t so bad.
DISASSEMBLE #1
I found an excellent step-by-step online for digging into the heart of one’s G4 iBook to replace the hard drive. I purchased a 60-gigabyte Solid State Drive (SSD) and set to work unscrewing, prying, and unplugging my way into the machine. The instructions were very clear and I found that it was not intimidating at all to have pieces of my computer strewn across the kitchen counter. The biggest worry was finding a surface that would be unperturbed by feline folly.
REASSEMBLE #1
In fact, it was kind of nothing at all. I got in, installed the little SSD drive, and got out with success. I confidently pressed the power button. I slipped the Mac OSX install DVD in. I waited for the computer to find that system. It did. The installer launched. I was excited.
It got to the window where you choose the drive onto which you want to install. There was a yellow caution triangle on the new SSD. It couldn’t be a bootable drive. Crikey.
I consulted with my genius boss who lives for figuring out solutions to problems. I knew he’d have advice. He handed me a dongle with which to attach the SSD externally. I thought he said that I needed to format the SSD in a Mac-friendly way first before installing it in the computer and installing an OS.
Disassemble #2. The egg carton wasn’t as helpful as it seemed like it might be.
DISASSEMBLE #2
I took the iBook all apart again. I removed the SSD from the iBook. I attached it externally to my Mac Mini. I launched Disc Utility. I selected the SSD and saw that it appeared already to be in the Mac format. Okay. Let’s throw the OS X 10.5.8 installer DVD in and do this. The Mini spit the installer DVD back out. Re-insert. Re-spit. Times two, times three. Ah. The Mini won’t even mount this DVD because you can’t install that old system on newer hardware.
Not a problem. My old G4 Mirror Door Drive (MDD) desktop is fully functional in every way. We’ll take care of business over there.
I plugged the SSD dongle in and waited. I vaguely remembered (I thought) from past experience that when you plug in a virgin drive which isn’t formatted for your system, you get the one, initial chance to mount it, and that if you unplug it before doing anything to it something happens and it won’t show up again. That’s not true, I know, but I went there, because the SSD which only minutes earlier had mounted on the Mini now was nowhere to be seen on the MDD.
But being ever the optimist, I unplugged and replugged the dongle a few times and eventually the SSD did show up. Yes! I rebooted on the OS install DVD and moved through the screens.
The installer got to the window where you choose the drive for the install. There was a yellow caution triangle on the new SSD. It couldn’t be a bootable drive. Crikey.
Then I got the bright idea. There seemed to be a “clone” option in Disc Utility (it’s not called exactly that, but that’s what happens), let’s try that. Source: Install DVD (it has a system, duh). Destination: SSD. I waited the half hour it took to copy. Okay. The SSD is showing up with an OS. Excellent!
REASSEMBLE #2
I nestled the SSD back into its slot in the iBook guts. I put the thing back together. I pressed the power button. I watched the screen expectantly. Question Mark Flashing Folder of Uncertainty. Flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash …
Ugh.
I once again consulted my genius boss and learned where I went wrong. He did actually know that I couldn’t directly install an OS onto the SSD. He informed me that I’d have to install the OS onto an external hard drive attached to the iBook, then clone that OS from the external drive onto the SSD which also was external at that point. Ah. It actually made some sense, even to my pea brain. We also determined that there was no lost virgin opportunity with connecting the SSD, that the dongle simply had a loose, delicate, tenuous connection. How often have you thought that about your dongle?
Dasie the cat supervises.
DISASSEMBLE #3
So, guess what? For the third time, I disassembled my iBook. I removed the SSD—again—and pondered the question of an other external hard drive. I figured that I could remove the extra internal drive in the MDD and put it in the external case I have, or I could briefly sacrifice the actual external drive to which I do a Time Machine backup of the Mini. But my mom was immanently arriving for the weekend and I had to delay any more futzing around.
It was that extra time to think that I needed. One time when my mom sat down at the Mini and woke it up, the resolution on its display was all screwed up. As an ace troubleshooter, I knew the first thing to try was unplugging and replugging the display. While I was sitting on the floor under my desk looking at all the things that I never use, I heard a chorus of angels. My eyes had come to rest on an old external Firewire drive named Hilda after my second rabbit. Bingo.
Hilda the external hard drive helps with happiness.
I attached Hilda to the iBook. I attached the SSD to the iBook. I engaged the power on the iBook. I slipped the Install DVD into the iBook. The iBook booted off the Install DVD. Hilda and the SSD mounted. Release the hounds!
REASSEMBLE #3
I installed the OS onto Hilda. I cloned the OS from external Hilda to external SSD. For a third time, I snapped the SSD into place inside the iBook and reassembled the iBook. It’s true that practice makes perfect. For the third time, I pressed the power button on the iBook. I watched the screen with great expectations. Question Mark Flashing Folder of Uncertainty. Flash flash APPLLLLEEE! BOOOOOOT!!
Not wanting to get my hopes up too soon, I ejected the OS Install DVD. Still okay. But let’s be sure. I powered down the iBook. I powered up the iBook. I watched the screen with great expectations. Question Mark Flashing Folder of Uncertainty. Flash, Apple, boot!
Okay, but let’s really make sure. I powered down the iBook. I powered up the iBook. I watched the screen with growing confidence. Question Mark Flashing Folder of Uncertainty. Flash, Apple, boot!
But srsly, let’s make sure. I powered down the iBook. I powered up the iBook. I watched the screen not really believing it could be true. Question Mark Flashing Folder of Uncertainty. Flash! Apple! Boot!
Hurrah!
An old-school, spinny hard drive gives you the Apple right away. I realized that an SSD does not. Because it’s (apparently) actually RAM rather than a true hard drive, the computer needs a flash or two of the Question Mark Flashing Folder of Uncertainty to have time to find the OS on the SSD. But then everything is okay.
The iBook fucking works again!
Glossary
MDD – Mirror Door Drive – the affectionate name for an Apple G4 desktop machine with shiny faux-chrome CD drive bay flaps, a tank of a Mac if ever there was one; decommissioned only because it couldn’t update to a subsequent Mac OS X that could run Adobe Creative Suite in the version by which I earn my living
Mini – Apple Mac Mini, the modern version of the Performa, the desktop computer for the masses, as opposed to the graphics professionals
OS – Operating System
RAM – Random Access Memory
SSD – Solid State Drive (no moving parts; technically, as I understand it, RAM, just bigger)
My name is Kelly. I love social media and I’m not ashamed to say it.
December 20, 2012
Lamenting the depersonalization of social media (a boring title for some personal whining)
December 4, 2012
Make this soup, I command you
November 27, 2012
I’ve been eyeing up this recipe of Andrew Zimmern’s, ever since he posted it a day or two before Thanksgiving last week. And I thought, wouldn’t that be delicious as soup? Wild rice soup, in fact. Tonight I finally had time, well, took time because it was 7:30pm when I got started, due to working late. I thought, I’ll whip up the soup in no time (because it’s chopped and sautéed vegetables, white sauce, and meat), have a beer while I’m cooking, then have more beer while I’m eating and watching the last performance show for this season, 14, of Dancing with the Stars*. It will be a perfect evening. And it has been (other than the fact that none of the three different beers I enjoyed managed to get above 5.5% ABV, but at least I drank the tastiest one last). Okay, so the soup took an hour and fifteen minutes from the time I started boiling water for the wild rice until the time I was ladling the finished product into my maw but all in all, that was pretty quick, as cooking from complete scratch goes.
The day in shopping: ugh turned into ahhh
November 25, 2012
It’s not that I’m into Black Friday shopping, or even shopping, but I needed a new sleeping bag winter coat and today was the day I had the time and cash flow to take care of it. So I set off.
MicroCenter. Lucky for me, MicroCenter and Burlington Coat Factory are in the same strip mall. I popped into MicroCenter to get an HDMI iPad cable. Last weekend I discovered (belatedly) the joy of Netflix online. Happy day! Unfortunately though, the G4ness of my old PowerMac that I have hooked up to my TV isn’t acceptable to Netflix. Then I thought, well, I can hook up my iPad.
This is what the day boiled down to, besides getting (putting on layaway) my coat. I learned last night that the new restaurant of one of my favorite food trucks, World Street Kitchen, was soft-opening this weekend, so stopping there on my way home from horrible shopping was to be my reward. Only the shopping wasn’t so horrible, so really, it was just the frosting on the cake. The menu is expanded from the truck plus they have adult beverages.
So here I am, testing my new iPad keyboard at the bar. I can confidently say that it has allowed me to write with more pace and accuracy than the on-screen keyboard did, despite the beers I’ve been trying (and I’ve tried all new ones here at Acadia). The external keyboard is definitely the way to go with an iPad, and once I get the case version I think the set-up will take over nicely from a small laptop such as my (once again) G4 iBook, as I had hoped, and that’s a good thing.
Watertower weather is not the Dust Bowl
November 19, 2012
It’s just another frantic Friday
November 17, 2012
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 