Dolphin's Dock
Small Splashes
Working…
January 21st, 2008
on MLK Day. It’d wouldn’t be so bad if the parking garage wasn’t so completely empty this morning, serving to remind me tat apparently nobody else is.
Not a Theocrat, huh?
January 16th, 2008
Is there anybody who still doubts that Mike Huckabee is a theocrat?
“And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”
Roar!
January 14th, 2008
My copy of Mac OS X Leopard arrived to my house at 9:27 am this morning. It’s torturous to know it’s sitting there waiting for me and I still have to work until 5. It’s funny how I’ve been patient through all the mail problems and then “over-weekend” instead of true over-night shipping that has delayed it from getting here until 18 after it’s original expected delivery date, but now that it’s here and I’m only hours away from getting it installed, all my patience has vanished.
Main Posts
One Unhappy Cat
Today is the day that Sigyn gets spayed. That meant no food after midnight last night (this morning?), which was a bit disconcerting because on occasion, our Jiu-Jitsu class has put us getting home after midnight (it tends to run over, way over, and is located 45 minutes away) and the amount of sleep a cat owner gets is directly proportional to the amount of food in the cat’s stomach. Fortunately we got home around 11 so there was plenty of time to feed thema nd let them eat their fill before picking up the dishes at 12.
Unfortunately there was no “nice” way to feed the other two while keeping Sigyn on a pre-surgery fast, so I waited til the last second before I was about to leave. Put her in the carrier and then fed the others. Talk about flipping out. She was more or less fine in the carrier (she sleeps in the laundry basket when more or less has the same kind of netting as the carrier), until she heard the first kernel of food strike the bowl. Then that carrier started rocking as she began throwing herself around determined to get out and get to the food. So I got her out to the car as fast as I could. She’s usually a good little car passenger, but not today. The entire trip to the vet’s office she sat there clawing at the sides of the carrier, desperately trying to free herself. Of course, we arrive at the vet and she’s a little angel. Just sitting there casually looking around, seeming neither scared, angry, or anxious in anyway. I was waiting for somebody to come up and comment on how well behaved she was so I could think to myself, ‘Oh yeah? You should have seen her five minutes ago. She was a vicious monster!’I suppose it was a good thing that she got some of her energy out early on because I suspect she’s not gonna be feeling to energetic when she gets picked back up this afternoon.
Light As…
The only (minor) concern I had when I opened up my new iMac for Christmas was that I had heard the rumors that Apple had recently made a purchase of some obscene number of ultra-thin LCD displays meaning a brand new sleek and sexy MacBook was certainly just around the corner. Well that MacBook, the MacBook Air, is here and to be honest, I’ll happily stick with my iMac. Apart from its dimensions, the MacBook Air doesn’t impress me.
It’s not that the I don’t like the idea of a laptop that is only 3/4 of an inch thick at it’s thickest point (though I admit I have some questions as to the durability of such a machine), but with a $1799 price tag, this isn’t something many people are going to be able to buy for the “cool factor” alone. I suspect anyone paying that price will be using it as their primary computer and, for that purpose, the MacBook Air just doesn’t stack up.For one thing, the hard drive is a wimpy 80gb. That might be ok for Joe Schmo who doesn’t do anything but check his email and surf the web, but then if that’s all you do with your computer, why are you buying a $1799 laptop? And if you don’t mind the smaller hard drive, why not go with the baseline MacBook. That’ll land you a faster processor and even if you add an extra stick of RAM to match the Air’s 2gb, you’ll still be saving yourself $500. I find it difficult to believe that there is a significant market out there of people wealthy enough to drop an extra $500 bucks to shave a quarter-inch thickness (and .4 GHz of processor speed!!!) off of their laptop.
Then there’s the lack of a CD/DVD drive. Kudos to Apple for looking to the future, but… …I’m not sure that future is here yet. Sure, you can download alot of your movies, music and software from the web now, but what about when you want to give a 500MB file to a friend (or a client)? Without the ability to burn to a disc, I guess you’re left purchasing webspace (a .Mac account perhaps) to upload to, so your friend can download from. And what if you want to watch your home movies on your home tv? I suppose you may be able to wirelessly transmit them there if you own an AppleTV, but that won’t help Grandma three states away see them. Not to mention that if you’re storing your films on your hard drive, that 80 gig ain’t gonna go far.
Now, you could BUY an external drive to burn your discs with (in fact Apple would be happy to sell you one specifically intended for the MacBook Air), but my question is where do you plug it in? The MacBook Air contains a single USB port. Plug a (wired) mouse into it and you’ve lost that.
I’m not saying I don’t think the MacBook Air is “cool.” I just don’t think it would fit the bill as my primary computer. I’d love to have one as a cool toy (err… a secondary computer), but I think at $1799, it’s priced out of the toy range.
Crafty Me
When I was a child (until 4th grade), I spent the summer days with my grandmother while my mother was at work. At one point she taught me to knit, or at least to do a knit stitch so she could cast on a few stitches and let me occupy myself by making long, skinny chains of knitting. As an adult, I picked it back up a few times during fits of boredom, making 2 or 3 knitted mice for the cats to play with, but that’s about it. I can’t read a pattern or do anything besides cast on and off, and knit, but last night I completed my first real “project.”
A few weeks ago my Sensei was kind enough to buy me a set of Eskrima sticks for Christmas. I knitted a carrying bag for them. I suspect it’s a very small project by a hard-core knitter’s standards, but I don’t think I have the patience to to create anything big (like the afghans Aunt B. crocheted over at Tiny Cat Pants). Still I’m pretty happy with how it turned out despite there being a few noticable imperfections on close examination.
Update: I should add that any feminine points I earned by knitting something should be canceled out by the fact that that “something” was a container for weaponry, no?
Privilege Meme
There’s a new (to me) meme going around. Apparently it’s a test given to college students illustrate privilege taken for granted by many people. I suppose it could be a helpful tool for a few but I think it largely confuses “privilege” with “wealth.” While the two are certainly not mutually exclusive, they are far from synonymous. In that same vein, I think the meme is probably ineffective in its purported goal, simply because I think (hope??) most people can easily see the material privileges they have in their life. It’s the more subtle, but equally important, privileges that often require an outsider to open our eyes to. That said, I’ll give it a go anyways. The statements that applied to me at age 18 are bolded, maybes are italicized:
If your father went to college before you started
If your father finished college before you started
If your mother went to college before you started
If your mother finished college before you started
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If your family was the same or higher class than your high school teachers1
If you had a computer at home when you were growing up
If you had your own computer at home when you were growing up2
If you had more than 50 books at home when you were growing up
If you had more than 500 books at home when you were growing up3
If were read children’s books by a parent when you were growing up
If you ever had lessons of any kind as a child or a teen
If you had more than two kinds of lessons as a child or a teen4
If the people in the media who dress and talk like you were portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it before college
If you had or will have less than $5000 in student loans when you graduate
If you had or will have no student loans when you graduate
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp 5
If you had a private tutor
(US students only) If you have been to Europe more than once as a child or teen
(International question) If you have been to the US more than once as a child or teen
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels rather than KOA or at relatives homes
If all of your clothing has been new
If your parents gave you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house as a child or teen
If you had a phone in your room
If your parent owned their own house or apartment when you were a child or teen
If you had your own room as a child or teen
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School
If you had your own TV as a child or teen
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries as a child or teen
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family
- I don’t really know what the class of my high teachers were [↩]
- We had one computer in the home growing up. I was the only person who reallly took any interest in it so it ended up being placed in my room since we didn’t have and extra room to put it in [↩]
- I don’t know how many books I owned as a child. I was, by far, the most voracious reader in the house and the number of books of my parents and sister was negligible. Over the course of 18 years I’m sure I owned over 500 books though I think it’s unlikely for space reasons that I ever owned 500 at one time [↩]
- If sports count I played soccer and baseball in addition to swimming lessons, I also got piano lessons during my senior year in high school when I informed my parents I intended to major in music [↩]
- I was a counselor for numerous summer camps but never attended one as a “camper” [↩]