Posted September 26, 2010, 11:43 pm. Permalink
Moving Days
At the end of last year I moved into a two bedroom house with Mica & Trenton. The drywall was falling off of the red bricks surrounding the fireplace (housing the TV), so we called it that house The Alamo, naturally.
Spring came around and Mica got into Berkeley, which is awesome.
Over the summer Mica moved South and Trenton got work in Sacramento. When I got back from Boston it was just me in the house, which now fit like a father’s sweater. Too big, smelled weird, get it off me.
So in these first few days of Fall I’ve moved in with Molly, Janae and Jeremy. The house already has a name, it’s been the Green House for years. The exterior looks like an off-white to me but I’ve been reassured it’s a pale green.
Packing took a few days, but I moved everything over by myself today. Packing and lifting and driving and lifting and unpacking all of those things I keep has reminded me of the constant rule: I have far too many things, and they all weigh far too much.
Xue reminded me that this is the third mailing address I’ve had in the past year. And I’ll probably only stay here for a few months, but it’s a nice place to be for now.
Posted September 20, 2010, 10:52 pm. Permalink
The Troubles I've Seen.
There’s someone using my computer at work on the days I’m not there, but the software they need is all for Windows. No problem! Purchased a copy of Windows 7, partitioned the drive and let Bootcamp do it’s magic. In a day it was dual booting OS X 10.6 and the 64bit flavor of Windows 7, in two days it was running smooth as butter.
I’ve got 10.6 and Windows 7 sharing a drive on my home computer too, but the Windows install is only 32bit. That wasn’t good enough for me, for some reason. So I brought the 64bit install DVD home with me, planning to wipe out the old Windows install and start anew with twice as many bits.
Bootcamp assistant obliterates the old installation of Windows no problem, but starts throwing errors in my face when I try to divvy up the drive again. Something in the hierarchy of my drive is all messed up, and it wants me to boot from my install disk so it can root around and repair things.
Where’d I put that damned 10.6 DVD? Fuck it, I’ll just download an image of it.
Copy the image over to an external drive, rub it the right way, and presto-change-o it’s like a DVD but rectangular and goes whirrrrr.
Apparently the version of Disk Utility on the installation “DVD” thinks my system is pretty ugly. Should I just reinstall the Mac OS too? Ennnngh, okay fine. I’ve got backups for days.
OS X 10.6 installs in like half an hour off the firewire external. That’s pretty sweet. Oh, and it can migrate over all my documents and applications from the Time Machine backup? Fuckin’ rad!
I come home from work and the Mac side of my system is just as it was before I blew a hole where the operating system used to be. I mean, exactly as I left it, except a bit snappier. Cool.
Okay, fire up Bootcamp and pop in that Windows 7 64bit DVD, let’s get this thing dual booting again. Uh, that’s a weird error. Googling on my phone while the BIOS-esque screen waits reveals that, ummmm, fuck, ummmm, okay it won’t work. My laptop doesn’t have the latest firmware, I guess it’s got EFI32 and not EFI64. Bummer!
Well, I’ll just boot back into OS X and google a fix or two. Well I would, but the internet is out.
Did I mention that my sole connection to the net is via my tethered phone? It works, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the best. It’s kind of annoying having your networking all tied up in a media management app. And now it’s not even working.
Okay, I blame iTunes. Some more googling on the little screen in my hand says the Apple Mobile Devices something-or-other can get fucked up sometimes and if I know what’s good for me I’ll just pitch my local version of iTunes and grab the latest and greatest copy from the mothership. Would if I could.
I’d just download it to my phone and then move the installer from there to my computer, but MobileSafari doesn’t like the idea of storing anything locally, it is Mobile, after all.
But of course there’s a fix. Rifle through Cydia and you’ll find Safari Download Manager, a kickass little life saver that let’s you stash files from the web in /private/var/mobile/media/Downloads.
So I let iTunes.dmg download (at a zippy 200kbps) and then drag and drop it over to the Mac’s desktop after SSHing in.
Old iTunes in the trash. New iTunes installed. AND FUCKING T’DAH the internet tethering via iPhone is restored!
Wait, what was I doing in the first place? Why did I want 64bit Windows? All these bad ideas.
Posted September 1, 2010, 4:50 pm. Permalink
Date #4
“How was your Summer?”
“Oh, it was great.”
“Yeah?”
“Best Summer.”
Technically, when I moved to Boston to live with Xue for the Summer it was only the fourth time we had gotten together. Maybe that means we’re moving a bit fast? Or perhaps, if you consider that she and I had our one-year anniversary on August 5th, it could mean we’re taking things very slowly. Or maybe we’re doing it just right, I think so.
When I flew into Boston at the end of May she met me with flowers and root beer. I almost knocked another traveller over when running to greet her. We took the T back to her place in Allston and the city felt very familiar.
We went on a tweed ride!
I worked for the Dutch Bicycle Company in Somerville, occasionally tuning up bikes and helping customers. Primarily, I was there as a not-even-wet-behind-the-ears-yet engineer, generously hired without a real interview or degree. Dan and Maria, owners of the DBC, gave me a great opportunity to design a few small projects for them, it was very much a sweet gig and I look forward to seeing if anything I designed for them comes to fruition.
Xue and I went to her boss’s wedding! She helped me dress myself as not an asshole, and we danced until we fell down. We fell in front of her boss, of course.
Cohabitation with Xue came completely naturally. We both wondered at what point the sharing of personal space would drive us to hate one another, and well, we’re still waiting. I’m not going to say I was surprised we got along so well, but I couldn’t imagine how great it would feel to come home to her everyday, or how much I would relish simple things like sharing a home cooked meal.
That is not to say that we didn’t eat out. We did, and often, and I loved it. There was bubble tea and awesome pizza, and countless disappointingly small burritos. There was an anniversary dinner with over a dozen dishes and another excuse to dress up.
Xue’s friends in Boston were all so nice! May they live forever in my twitter feed.
We traveled a little, as far as upstate New York for a family reunion and as near as Walden Pond to dip our feet in the cool clear water. Before the end of my stay we drove South to Connecticut with Xue’s parents (and the entirety of her belongings in the trunk). We made more than one trip to Ikea.
Looking back I wish I had written more often while I was there. Xue had encouraged me to do so, as she does with most things I enjoy, but I was stubborn. I am stubborn. One of my primary motivations for writing here and elsewhere is to force a little structure and sensibility upon my thoughts. Living with her it was so much easier to just hurl my idea over to her brain and listen to what bounced back.
I’m really glad I brought my digital camera, but I probably could have left my 35mm and my Polaroid in Chico. The 1200 photos I took will go a long way in keeping me from forgetting the best Summer yet.