Tuesday, October 24, 2006

stupid stupid machines

I'm back to work reality this week. I'm currently trying to test something on Mac OS 9 (yeah, moldy oldie) so I've obtained a creaky old machine from the company pile o' useless hardware. And it boots up into German. German. Wonderful. Too bad I took French in high school. Useless new mad job skillz: "Abbrechen" means cancel.

As part of my job (and jobs past) I have to work with a lot of different flavors of computers and operating systems. I've pretty much lost all fear of computer hardware, software, and buzzwords. Most computer buzzwords sound impressive but are, almost entirely, just a new way for computer/software/camera A to talk to piece o' hardware/software B. Ethernet, USB, XML, wifi protocols, blah blah blah blah -- it's just A talking to B.

And really, nothing works. No, really. It's mostly all broken, and the fact that you might be able to push the "on" button and the computer actually starts and talks to the internet correctly is a little miracle. Too often it's like today where I'm clicking through German menus, hoping I'll find "English" in one of them. I attached another monitor to my machine the other day and the machine fuzzed out, went to sleep, then, quel miracle!, came back to life with the monitor working. I almost cried.




San Francisco was gorgeous. So was San Jose (weather-wise). I shouldn't have bothered bringing a coat. No fog, no rain, all sun, all the time. I was generally pretty busy seeing old friends in the evenings and going to class during the days, but I did make it to Commuknity one afternoon while doing laundry in the coin-op down the street (Tip: before you walk away from the washing machine, be sure that the cycle has ACTUALLY STARTED). It's a very nice shop, very airy and light-filled. It just felt comfortable. As well as having a big selection of kick-ass yarn, needles, and books. I wish I could have just sat there and knit all evening.

I took Caltrain to Bart to San Francisco on Friday afternoon and met K the Love Monkey downtown. The hotel room was fabulous - in this old Victorian, but right on the edge of the building, so we had light coming in from 2 sides. I love the old houses and buildings before everything was built at right angles. Each window bowed out over the street.

We went to the farmer's market, took the ferry over to Sausalito to get a whole-bay view, I made it to Artfibers to pet the fiber and gawk at the displays. We walked over Nob Hill to North Beach, climbed up Telegraph Hill to Coit tower to see the WPA murals and the view of the bay, and even got to see the parrots (hi, squawky parrots). It was a good weekend.

No comments: