laptop musings

August 6 2009

It is very windy. I am at the bus stop at Glenroy waiting for the 542 to Roxburgh Park (well, to Jacana) and getting winded on in a major way. This happened this morning, too. I felt like the screen part of my laptop was going to blow off.

I need a new laptop, actually. I feel bad telling this via my old laptop but it doesn’t seem to be the phrase that unlocks Acer’s patent self-destruct process (yet). This thing is dirty and old and most importantly the screen has a big white-grey band right through the middle of it which is getting bigger and which, I am told, is unfixable though I’m not sure quite why. I know what I really want – a fabulous mac thing – but I won’t be getting it anytime soon, even though I do have superfunds coming through in the relatively near future (tax return, second part of advance on book I wrote purely by being in a zone, etc). Maybe those two together will do it but I suspect all the dosh will just get eaten up in the expenses of being a lousy bad person, which has pretty much been my forte in the last few weeks.

I am now on the 542 going through North Glenroy just near where the train would have once left the main line to go to Tullamarine, if that plan had ever ultimately been followed. Which it has yet to be. Now I am going over the Western Ring Road. It is dark. There are two people on the bus, not including the driver, who is on the bus too.

August 10 2009

It is 20 to 8 on a Monday morning I am en route to the workplace where I have many preparations to make before my class at the end of the day. It is raining lightly (so the laptop was once again subjected to stress, not from rain this time but from light water drops on the keyboard). When your laptop gets to this kind of stage in its life (except, does anyone really know; it’s unknown territory pretty much I would imagine, all they can do is use laptops furiously hoping wear and tear will be like time’s ravages) you are unsure whether it’s an old workhorse that enjoys constant use or whether it needs a long (permanent) sleep. Since all I really use it for is word processing (though there are a lot of images stored on it) I may as well use it until death, though there is always that thorny question of backing up, should I, the answer being yes, but who can be bothered, most of the stuff on here is bullshit. Old lectures, old notes from old projects, etc etc.

(Half an hour later) actually that was pretty interesting. I went through a lot of stuff and deleted heaps. It felt pretty good. Mostly drafts of papers, which seem to go through about 7 or 8 renamings/renumberings before they become fit to be seen as brilliant enough to submit and turn the world on its ear, no-one can ever believe the new insights into early C20 urban history revealed in my incisive text. Perhaps erroneously assumed that stuff I had already had published, I did not need in a word file. Hmm, now I come to think of it, that might be true. And since it’s all pretty easy to back up, maybe that’s what I should be doing, rather than deleting. Oh well, too late now. It’s not like stuff is lost; the worst case scenario is that it would be a hassle to retrieve it (worst, worst case scenario: retype). (Later that evening) It’s really a great feeling to hit ‘yes’ on ‘are you sure you want to delete these 87 items?’. It is dark and raining now and I am on the 401 bus to North Melbourne station. I wish the 401 would stop advertising itself as a new service (18 months new now, I guess). It is 7:17 pm I had a meeting after work which had to be done. Big day. Nothing on tv tonight I think though I have yet to watch back episodes of Rush which I am pleased is on again. You can see them all pixelated on the Channel 10 website. Pixelation looks pretty good. How long before someone evokes/ fakes it in a retro piece of filmmaking?