Scattered Thoughts

Dear Neighbors across-the-complex-and-up-one-floor,

Thank you for acting as my alarm clock at varying intervals throughout the night. I was clearly rested enough to function for a whole day after only a couple hours of sleep and I appreciate that you made me aware of this. Listening to your domestic disturbance was just like listening to my favorite morning radio show and the endearing words you were using to describe your friends brought a little tear to my eye. When I peeked out my window, I saw you guys in a loving embrace outside the door. I'm not sure that everyone was comfortable with being hugged because of the struggle that ensued.

I do, however, have one question for you; what did the cat do to you? Why were you so intent on punting it off of the balcony? I mean, I understand… wait… no I don't.

Just a little word of advice before I go: Next time you decide to get wasted, remember that you're wasted. People who are drunk out of their minds shouldn't be driving and they definitely shouldn't be taking what others say seriously.

Next time you assholes decide to wake me up at 3 in the morning with death threats to your friends and your pets, I'm going to call the police. If this time was any indication, you'll be outside long enough for the entire Bloomington Police Department to respond.

Yours truly,
tm

I saw a story on the news the other morning that flat-out pissed me off. A carjacker walked up to a 91 year old WWII veteran, asked for a light for a cigarette then proceeded to beat the crap out of him, punching him in the face 21 times. The elderly man was pinned between his car door and another vehicle the whole time, so there was no escape.

Click here for the video
Click here for the story

The first time I saw the video, I thought the bystanders were accomplices and would jump into the car after the suspect finished beating the elderly man, but that was not the case.

I like to think that if something like that happened to me, bystanders would step in and at least do something. I know I would; I would feel obligated to do something other then stand around and watch.

I guess I also think that nobody in this world would be so desperate to need to have the balls to attack an elderly man in the middle of the day while other people are watching.

Just makes me sick…
tm

So last night, we had some friends over to hang out and chill before they leave town for the summer. It was just the usual crew plus some folks who were working pre-camp. We went to BW3's then came back to our place to hang out outside and enjoy the beautiful weather.

It got toward the end of the night and we were just sitting on the porch hanging out. I decided to bring Roark outside to visit with everyone — we've got little cat harnesses for them and have been bringing them outside to hang out with us pretty regularly.

Well, last night, we decided not to put his little cat harness on him because he usually doesn't go anywhere but your lap when he's outside. He was just being the glutton for attention that he usually is until…

…the air conditioning unit decides to turn on >.<

Imagine yourself as a small cat, sitting on someone's lap right next to what you believe is a small table. How would you react if that small table began growling and blowing on you unexpectedly (he had just started putting his paws on it, exploring).

Needless to say, he freaked out, and here are the results:

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The remnants of last night's Roark freak-out. It doesn't look bad now, but everyone around thought I needed stitches at the time (there may or may not have been a small flap of skin that was slightly covering the gash).

What you can't see in that photo is what he did to my chest and my shirt. Right below the right side of my chest, there are four, 4″ scratches, one dead center on my chest and one more right around my belly button. The latter two are quite small, but they're there nonetheless. And the shirt… Let's just say that it's no longer a 'nice' undershirt. Where there are scratches on my torso, there are matching holes in the undershirt.

The strange thing is that none of the scratches hurt. I got myself cleaned up, put a bandage over the constantly bleeding cheek and ended up going to bed. Woke up this morning and everything was in good shape. Needless to say, I won't be shaving for a while (or at least until the gash is healed enough to handle it) because I don't really want to have a scar on my right cheek.

Moral of the story: Keep Roark on his leash so when he freaks out, he doesn't destroy your flesh

PowerBook Woes

Thought I'd give everyone an update on my poor, sick PowerBook.

The prognosis isn't good. Monday of this week, I opened up my laptop after letting it charge overnight in the living room and the screen didn't turn on. No big deal, sometimes they hang in sleep mode. I force-restarted the machine hoping that would bring it back to life… still no illumination on the screen. I tried turning up the brightness, to no avail, and even tried switching video outputs (in case that got messed up somehow) with the same results.

Since it's a Mac, there are a lot of troubleshooting options I have, i.e. resetting pram, nvram etc. The next things I tried were: booting in Safe Mode — nothing, resetting the PRAM — nada — resetting the NVRAM — black screen, booting in verbose mode — nope, booting from the Tiger DVD — no luck, resetting the PMU — fail, and finally I target mode'd it to my iMac just to poke around, repair disk permissions, etc.

My PowerBook's HDD was in great shape according to Disk Utility, so I decided to back-up my Home Sparse Image. I navigated to my Home Directory to grab the disk image… but it was MIA.

At this point, I'm thinking, "Great, what the hell happened to my PowerBook!?" Nothing to back-up (no big deal because all my PowerBook's data and applications are mirrored on my iMac), no screen to view, no interaction other than target mode… this sucks! I did an external hard drive archive & install of Tiger using my iMac as the vector. I got the PowerBook's HDD to boot as the primary OS on my iMac, but I didn't get the chance to play with it.

My last couple options are:

1. boot the iMac with the PowerBook's OS as the primary again and mess with the System Preferences to see if there's something wrong there
2. open up the PowerBook and make sure the monitor cable is connected properly to the logic board
3. take it to The Mac Experience and pray that it's not a bad LCD screen

I'm going to try 1. tonight and see if I can get the thing working. I've tried 2. but I haven't been able to crack the case and I just sent my Apple Hardware Repair Manual up to Chicago in a box of books I don't need this summer, so I don't know how to go about it the right way. I really don't want to do 3. because there are possibly two things that could be wrong:

1. loose or bad monitor cable that needs to be re-installed or replaced
2. bad screen that needs to be replaced

I'm praying for 1. because I don't have enough disposal income yet to pay for 2.

So there's the update with the major happenings in my life. I hope to post again soon (before I have to write another wall of text just to give updates), but since I don't have my PowerBook, I'm less likely to be surfing the internet in the evenings, so it might not happen.

Evolution honors you all!

Until the next post…