The Other Season

It is now that Other Season -- you know, the one that isn't the Dry Season. Even without the deluge of rain yesterday (which I found extremely refreshing, despite the amount of running around outside I was doing) I would have known this because the Cat has informed me that it's time to pull out the electric heated bed. She informed me of this by taking a nap on top of the down comforter on my bed. This activity has been strictly forbidden ever since she's become rather lacksidaisical about tracking dirty cat litter out of the box. I will put up with a number of things from an elderly cat, but having urine-soaked cat litter tracked across my bed isn't one of them. *sigh* On the other hand, in general she's doing quite well for an elderly cat. Thinking on how my last burglary happened three years ago reminds me that when that one happened she was in the middle of an uneven recovery from a self-inflicted abscess on her neck and I was coming to grips with the possibility of losing her. Since then she's gone through a variety of psychological issues (esp. "The Floor Is EEEEEVVVILLLL!", "whaddaya mean I've been grooming this same spot for two hours straight?", and "cat box? what cat box? oh, I suppose it's somewhere around here"), gotten slower and creakier, and been subject to several restrictions on her allowed activities for the sake of my exasperation level. In return, I have instituted the Electric Cat Bed during the colder months and bought one of those armchair-side-desk-thingies so that she doesn't have to competed with the laptop for my lap in the evenings. We get by.

(no subject)

As projected, I spent much of yesterday shopping for burglary-replacement items and now have a new laptop, digital camera, and fireproof file box. The insurance company will be delighted to know that I've replaced the latter two at a lower cost than allowed (despite the camera being, of course, more powerful than its predecessor).

The insurance company's research determined that they would consider the MacBook 13-inch 2.4 GHz to be equivalent to my old machine for the purposes of "replacement". However their research didn't take the brand new MacBooks into account, and it turns out that the new 13-inch MacBook fits their allowance nicely. I briefly considered upgrading to the MacBook Pro or the Airbook, but when it came down to it, their advantages aren't things I use, and their disadvantages affect things I care about.

I've done all the initial set-up and copied over the applications and user files from the desktop machine and my backup files. Now it's a matter of going through all the applications and making sure they're happy. (Some will need to be reinstalled; some will need new authorization keys; some will need a bunch of tweaking to get the preferences set correctly.) As usual, I'm finding it annoying how many of the programs have user data in forms that are really hard to restore from backup. Like web browser bookmarks. Safari explains to me how to import bookmarks from a different browser program ... but not how to import them from a backup file. Similarly for my old mail archives. I know I've done that one before (several operating systems ago), but I also know that it was really annoying -- all the old mail ended up marked unread, and for the most part it lost the original date-stamps and was relabeled with the import date. So I've got a bit of slogging through to do. On the up side, since the new laptop has, of course, come with Leopard installed and is running the near-continuous backup routine through Time Machine, the theory is that if I ever have to do this again (no No NO!) then restoring from the Time Machine backup should be much simpler. Yeah, right.

Now for the pluses (in addition to the aforementioned Time Machine backup, which I do wish I'd gotten around to installing on the old laptop). I really really like the new display. The old laptop had real problems being visible when working in outdoor situations. Even sitting near the windows in a cafe made it difficult to read. The new screen display has no problems in this direction at all. Very happy. The touchpad is the new "multi-touch" version debuted on the iPhone. I'm still picking up all the tricks, but I like the concept, especially the ease of scrolling. The aluminum case is also nice, although I'm not one of those who worry about keeping their hardware cases in pristine condition. The machine is also -- I believe -- a bit lighter in weight than the previous one. Not enough for a big difference, but still nice.

Separate topic: I've confirmed that the problem synchronizing my Treo wasn't the cable, alas. The new cable non-worked the same with the desktop machine, and both old and new worked ok with the new laptop. I had a few problems synchronizing with the laptop, but they seem to boil down to one program that needs to be reinstalled. So I'm perplexed by the non-working sync on the desktop machine. The cable checks out. Other peripherals work on that usb port (and I tried multiple ports). I synchronized successfully a month ago and haven't made any significant changes in the hardware or software since then. I guess the next step is to reinstall the Palm software and see if that makes a difference.

One further plus of the whole new-computer-setup process is that it gives me an opportunity to audit all my software, remove items that no longer work under Leopard, make sure I have all the specs, passwords, codes, etc. up to date in my reference file, and see if there are any updates and upgrades I might want to make.

Looking for a Name

(Just Posty McPosty-Pants today! It may be worth pointing out that I finally feel like my burglary-induced depression has lifted. It may be purely coincidental that this corresponds to having a laptop again. My mental health couldn't be that closely tied to my hardware, could it?)

I'm brainstorming for a name for my new laptop. My computers, networks, and external storage devices all tend to have Welsh names either with a personal place-name connection or with functional meaning. The desktop computer, for example is "Ty Rhos" (several possible meanings as well as a bilingual pun, but also the name theoretically given to my real-world house ... not that I ever use it much in day to day life). The old laptop was "Mynydd Gwyrdd", after my original SCA locative byname (and, via that connection, the name of the now-dissolved partnership under which my parents and I owned my house). The network is "Glasvryn" (after my current SCA locative byname). The external drive I used to use for all my backups, and now need to reorganize is "Y Byd" (the world), because it was designed to hold my whole electronic world. (I used to have another external drive that I used for backups when I didn't need as much space that was formatted into four independent partitions, named after the four branches of the Mabinogi.) The Time Machine drive is, alas, boringly named "Time Machine" but I didn't want to mess with it too much, and besides which I don't interact with it directly so I don't feel a need to personify it.

So now I'm brainstorming for the new laptop's name. I suppose I could be boring and re-name it Mynydd Gwyrdd after the old one. But I don't mind taking the position that it needs its own fresh new name for good luck.

So far I've finished auditing the software on the desktop machine to verify that everything is working properly (at least as far as opening successfully) in Leopard. The only programs that seem to have problems are a couple of games that I'd more or less gotten tired of anyway. I've successfully imported my backed-up mail files to the laptop. I think maybe I'll spend the rest of the evening reconstructing web bookmarks and leave the software testing for another day.