Me vs. The I-Phone

I took the Xpress bus home today, because it goes right by my local library.  It means a longer walk home from the library, but I had a book that was being recalled--Too Many Curses by Gil Martinez.  I won't be doing a full book review, so here goes the quick version: Wizard with a castle full of various monsters dies, and his kobold apprentice is left to hold things together.  Good premise, but the execution is a little pondering.

But that's not the focus here anyway. The story really begins after I return the book, and decide to take out another one.  I try to scan my library card, but the barcode is too faded. So I go up to the librarian, and she tells me that I need to replace my card, which is what I figured.  Then she told me that replacement will be $3.  That's kind of annoying, since it's not my fault their cards use ink that fades fairly easily, but well, it's only three dollars, and I value the service the library provides.  So I pay up.  Then this happens:

"Are you still at XXX St?"
"Oh, no, I'ved moved. I'm at YYYYYYY Ave now."
"Well, then, we'll need to see a proof of address to issue you a new card."

This is not a new problem.  And I am still a student living in a building where the landlord takes care of the utilities, I don't have cable, and my phone bill is about three addresses behind at this point. So the only proof of address I have is the original lease.  And I certainly didn't bring that with me, since I wasn't expecting this problem to begin with. But--and imagine a lightbulb appearing over my head--I did have my iPhone. I could just present the digital lease copy that the landlords sent me.

And this is where the nightmare proper begins.

I barely ever use my phone to surf the Net.  I try to limit my use of online things except when I'm on a local network, and if I'm on a local network, I generally just use the laptop anyway.  So it takes me a little bit to locate the university website. Then a bit longer to figure out how to get to the email (our university has a fairly stupid web layout, and I usually just use the autofill on the address bar of my laptop to get to my mail). Then I have to log in, which takes a few attempts because it's not easy to switch back and forth between  capital letters and small case letters on the iPhone, in order to type the password. Then it's a simple matter of searching through 4000+ emails to find the one from my landlord.  Problem is--and I had no way of knowing this going in--the iPhone version of my university's email system doesn't have a search bar under the default minimal settings.  Or, as I eventually determine, regular settings.  Finally, I find a search option, but it only lists the first seven emails that contain the name of my landlords on the immediate screen, and I can't control the drag bar on the side because every time I touch it, the iPod thinks I've touched the edge of the screen and scrolls down on the main window rather than this sub window.  I also  take time to spend a moment cursing the fates, that my landlords' last name is also a very common regular noun, and is thus found in no less than 360 of my emails.  Of course, searching for them in the "from" category rather than "body" would have found them immediately, but the iPhone version of the email site doesn't have that option.  So I get the idea to sort all my emails alphabetically, and look for them that way.  Good idea, but the execution is slow: the option for next page is right above the option for previous page, and again, even enlarged, the links are too small for me to not hit the wrong one about one time in three. And when I get to the appropriate letter, I figure out that the email sorter is taking a very liberal perspective on the term "alphabetically sorted"--in short, their emails aren't where they should be.  So I set it back to chronological order, and start going through each page of emails--starting with 1 of 247.  Finally, after a good dozen or so pages, I realize that I can skip ahead by changing the number in the address bar. Starting on page 124 and dividing the remaining entries in two every time, I eventually whittle the correct email page down to 101. And I find the email.  And I open it. "Here's the lease, Michael!" and the attachment.

This is when I realize that I can't open attachments on my iPhone.

I explain all of this to the librarian, at great, great length, and eventually she lets me sign out one book, probably to get me to leave.

The worst part is, I can't even hate the phone, because thanks to it, I got to snap some pictures of a bad-ass snowman I passed on the way home:

These photos don't really demonstrate the scale of the snowman--my head came about up to the top of the middle ball.  He's a big fella.

To sum up:  Snowmen good.  Phones good for pictures.  Phones not good for library.

Later Days.


*EDIT: Crap, I just realized I had my laptop with me the whole time. I could have opened it up, logged on, and shown the attachment in under two minutes.  You know.... some days....

Melancholy Meanderings on a Most Monstrous Moment

Person of Consequence, you might ask, what did you do today?  Did anything interesting happen?

Oh, no, I answer.  Only THE MOST ANNOYING THING EVER.  Whatever was it?  Sit back, folks, and I will regale you with the Tale of the Board-Bound Key.

First: I have a laptop.  I have an M-14X Alienware gaming laptop.  I love it.  I need it.  I strongly suspect I can't live without it. That is the problem.
Second: I have a Book Hug. I got it for Christmas. It is one of these:

It's the metal thing holding up the book, in case that isn't clear.  For someone who spends a lot of time typing passages from books into computers, it is also essential.  Between this, the rain cover for my backpack, and the wool socks, my mother has been bang on this year in giving me things I desperately needed without knowing it.

Today, however, my beloved laptop and my beloved book hug ran afoul of my stupid hands (Futurama reference), which proceeded to drop the book hug on the laptop's keyboard from an unfortunately high height.  The result was that it dislodged the "m" key.  Not knocked off, mind you--just dislodged.  I could, conceivably, kept on typing, with only a minor annoyance.

But now.  Like a scab on the knee, I couldn't resist pulling at it.  Poking at it.  Whirling it around and around like a ten year old twisting a loose tooth in its socket.  And just like those teeth, it suddenly came loose. I was suddenly holding three pieces in my hand: the key itself, a small plastic tab, and a large plastic tab.  I then spent about fifteen minutes trying desperately to get the piece back in place. It prompted this facebook post (heretoafter posted in bold; responses will be posted in italics): 

Is there anyone here who has ever successfully put back a key that has fallen out of laptop? Is there any useful advice? Bonus: try to guess which key is absent. It's not one that I've had to hit on this post...

which prompted the quick response  I'm going with "m," assuming that you couldn't write "my" laptop. Sound detective work, sir.

I also got one piece of good advice: I found tweezers helpful when one of *redacted*'s popped off awhile back. 
I requisitioned my roommate's tweezers, and continued. I began to peruse the internet for help. Laptop Repair 101 had some very nice pictures, but they also advise removing another key to see how everything fits together, and that was clearly madness. Replace Laptop Keys had a free video of someone actually putting the pieces back together, and had a different video for dozens of models. (And no, I'm not being paid for advertising.  I just think people should know, dammit.) So that gave me the idea of what to do, but not how to do it.  I struggled for about an hour to come up with something, anything, to do...
 
 In case anyone's wondering how the repair's going: Aaaaaaagh. Why do I have such tiny hands if the fingers attached to said hands are too thick for anything useful?
And yes, there's a dirty response to this question, but I'll  thank you to keep your mind out of the gutter. But shortly after this, I had my first major breakthrough:
Yeah, I've been working a pair of tweezers into the routine. They're co-ing in handy. Pun INTENDED. Oooh, I got the two plastic tabs to fit together. That's pro--- that's pro--- that's a good step.

The lack of an m, despite the relatively small number of common words that use it, really hindered the comedy there; co-e instead of come really detracts from the "handy" bit, and the Porky the Pig stammering doesn't really work unless you can deliver more of the word "promising."  The art suffers, you know?  But once I figured out which side of each tab was up, how the two fit together, and which had to be connected to the keyboard first, it all fell into place. 


Then it was a simple matter of mashing the keyboard button into place until it clicked.  That was actually a pretty weird part; it was like following a precision surgery with a blunt hammer.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmkmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmjmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

This is going to be a fun day to explain to my supervisor tomorrow.

Indeed, Facebook me.  Indeed.
All in all, I was very lucky.  None of the pieces were broken, either in the original error or my ham-fisted attempts to fix it. And I managed to do something actually requiring manual dexterity, which doesn't pay off outside of a videogame very often.  But it all worked out in the end, and I learned a valuable lesson:

Don't drop your book hug on a keyboard.

Sage advice.

Later Days.

Game Play: Onward, Captain Man-Pig.

It's been an odd week.  My focus is, as usual, all over the place, as I've been doing some dissertation writing, some editing, but also reading other things (Alan Liu's The Laws of Cool, Christoper A. Paul's Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games), playing other things (The Binding of Isaac, mostly.  I've really got write something about that one of these days), and doing other things (started my RA-ship, which mostly so far is discussions of organization that edge ever closer to actual organization).  But that doesn't mean I'm neglecting my blog entirely, and so, a post.  It's the second installment of my Game Play series (the first is here), my first hour on Beyond Good and Evil.

Game Play: Problem Solving

Back way back, I asked people to vote for what game they'd like to see me play, with the implication that I'd do a write-up here.  Well, I didn't actually like the result (2 votes for Dark Crystal, the pony-raising sim game, and one vote for scattered others), so I decided to spend one hour on every game on the list, and any others I got in the mean time, and when I'd played through each and every one of them, I'd decide what warranted a longer playthrough.  If you think the one-hour format is a little like that of the departed but not forgotten Games for Lunch blog, then you are mistaken.  It is exactly like that.  I'm even stealing the "Do I want to keep playing?" question and disguising it with the much less useful "Play more?".  Remember: when you do it fondly, it's not a rip-off, it's a tribute. And if Mr. Kyle Orland feels differently, then I'll... back away, and put the blame on you, for peer pressure.  Yeah, I'm like that.  Shall we begin?  My playthrough of Bastion, after the break.

The $1300 lesson in self-esteem

Exactly where things began to go wrong... well, there are a few theories on that. There was a warning sign of sorts a few days ago, where my audio started to get periodically choppy--was this the sign of larger problems, or just a momentary blip? Or it may have happened yesterday, when I slipped on some ice and went ass over heels flat on my back, landing largely on the artifact in question. Whatever the cause, my very expensive, very still new laptop's hard drive decided it had enough of this vale of tears, and shuffled off the electronic coil last night.

My computer froze last night, and upon turning it back on, I received the message that it detected no bootable drive. I then spent a few hours in my office running diagnostics routines (the only programs that still functihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifoned), a few more hours downstairs in the computer lab verifying that the results meant what I thought they meant, and finally a few more hours in my office on the phone with Dell tech support. Not the best way to spend a Friday night. (Not my worst, though, which is depressing in a different way.) The first guy on tech support was less than helpful; since I said the final freeze had happened while I was playing a game, he insisted that my problem was with the game manufacturers. I was not particularly displeased when ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifur call was cut off (or, possibly, he got sick of me and hung up). The second response was much more helpful, identifying the problem and coming up with the same answer I did, the faulty hard drive. So they're sending out a self-addressed box for me to ship the thing back out to them for repairs. I figure it'll be about a month or so before we're back up to full business.

The interesting thing in the whole affair (besides the lesson in dealing with overworked, underpaid tech people) and probably the only positive note is my own reaction. Years ago, I did , discussing how I'd feel personally guilty when something went wrong with my computer. This time--well, I'm annoyed, and not thrilled about the work setbacks and readjustments. But I'm not really blaming myself. Could I have been more careful with the laptop? Well, maybe, and I'll certainly take more care when I get it back. But it's not like I was overly negligent, either. I bought it for my computer needs and used it accordingly. I like to think my lack of guilt is part of the new outlook I'm trying to move toward. Essentially, bad things happen; just because they happen to you doesn't make you a bad person. And good thing happen too; the key is to face both the good and bad with grace. It's nice to know that wherever my self-esteem is these days, it isn't tied up in things I can't control, or in second-guessing myself. It would have been even nicer to know that without the cost in efficiency, time, and dollar signs, but, well, live and learn, I guess.

Later Days.

First you get the laptop, then you get the power, then you get the women

I've had a lot of trouble with technology over the years. I came across a prime example of this misfortune when I was dredging up posts for the 500th compilation--there was a period of about three weeks when the keyboard on my computer was so broken that I couldn't use the spacebar button. I'd copy a space from regular texts, then insert it in by first typing "*" and using a find and replace function to change them all. How well did that work? It*didn't*work*well.

And my dear computer, beloved as it was, really wasn't any better. Just prior to moving down here, the graphics card burnt out. With a bit of jury-rigging, I got the computer working again, but it wasn't the same. Without a graphic card, even the scrolling changes, as the screen can't process as fast as you're moving. And when you're focused on game studies, not being able to use a reasonable graphics card means that you can't play anything beyond 1997 or so.

Thus, I bit the bullet, and bought a laptop. The very same laptop I'm using now! Since I needed something capable of a bit of gaming, it's an overpowered behemoth Alienware thing that cost more money than I've ever paid for anything except tuition. And I have to say, despite my miserly, luddite streak, I love it. It's transformed where and when I can work. (and play for that matter, but it hasn't, in the two days I had it anyway, cut into work time) And thus, I go one step further into technological sophistication.

So it begins.
Later Days.

Toronto Part II: Libraries are the New Raves

My bike fell over yesterday, which means the chain got caught in the rear axle, which means I'm currently back to being without transportation. Further, since it's Labour Day today, the bike shop is not open, so I've got to wait till Tuesday at least to take it in. And since I don't feel up to the eight kilometer hike back and forth to the university, that means I'm working from home today. And as yet another direct consequence, that means I'm stuck using my keyboard with the broken spacebar, since my bike isn't my only possession with a tendency to crap out when I need it. And for added fun, my internet connection is randomly going out every few seconds.(In case you're wondering, I created the spaces for this post by copying a single space, then pasting it every single time necessary. YES IT IS TEDIOUS.)

And all this cause-and-effect is to make this point: if this post comes across slightly peevish, the above events are the reason why.

Anyway, today's vacation topic is libraries. When I went to Toronto, I went with the goal to maintain my minimum hundred-pages of lit theory a day, a goal that had already been recently tarnished, thanks to all the time I spent on that Batman game. (Still worth it.) I managed to fulfill that goal for two of the three days I was in Toronto, which was about as good as I could realistically hope to have done. And most of this reading was done in the environment I still find most conducive for it: libraries.

All right, I realize that "The Libraries of Toronto" isn't going to become a popular walking tour anytime soon. But even if I hadn't set the comp goal, there was about even odds that I would have wound up in a library or two anyway. See, the truth is, I like libraries. Especially public libraries. I like seeing how the assortment of books differs from branch to branch. I like seeing how the interior architecture complements the building's function. I like the wide swathe of humanity that comes through the door. It's almost like a franchise store chain, where you can travel the world over and still feel like you never left home--only the libraries are allowed to express a sort of individuality that your average heartless conglomerate lacks.

(Incidentally, here's too things I don't like about libraries, and I'll admit both have a certain amount of snobbery on my part: the large swarm of people in public libraries always buzzing around the DVD section, because Heaven forfend you actually read something; and the fact that any given time, a university library seems more a place for undergraduates to sit and study on laptops than a place for people actually reading or looking for books.)

So anyway, I went to three different libraries during my stay in Toronto. The first was the big kahuna: since I was on campus, I went to the U of T main arts library, the Robarts. This is the Robarts:
The Robarts Library, I'm told, was built in a style of architecture called brutalism. Why someone thought that it would be a good idea to construct a building where the end result being considered brutal is the best case scenario is left to other minds than mine. Here's what wikipedia says about brutalism:

Brutalism as an architectural philosophy, rather than a style, was often also associated with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style. Critics argue that this abstract nature of Brutalism makes the style unfriendly and uncommunicative, instead of being integrating and protective, as its proponents intended. Brutalism also is criticised as disregarding the social, historic, and architectural environment of its surroundings, making the introduction of such structures in existing developed areas appear starkly out of place and alien. The failure of positive communities to form early on in some Brutalist structures, possibly due to the larger processes of urban decay that set in after World War II (especially in the United Kingdom), led to the combined unpopularity of both the ideology and the architectural style.

You know what else is unfriendly and nonintegrative? The fact that in order to go beyond the first floor of the Robarts library, you need a U of T library card. Admittedly, any grad student in Ontario can apply for one, but that didn't do much good right then and there. I could have sat on the first floor and worked, but it would have been like working in an afterlife waiting room; you don't know if what you're missing is heaven or hell, but you do know you're missing it. And since the interior isn't much less brutal than the exterior, I went elsewhere.

Specifically I went here:

Here in this case being the Lillian H. Smith Branch. It's not brutal, but, well, we can't have everything. It was, however, quiet, and that was all I needed to get my work done for the day. If I had more time, I would have loved to peruse their Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy,but there was some sort of sign in policy, and after being turned away at U of T, I couldn't bring myself to face rejection again so soon.

I never made it to a library on Thursday, but I did go to see lots of second hand bookstores, which I'll talk more about later. But on Friday, I spent multiple hours at this library:
This is the S. Walter Stewart District library. I wasn't actually intending to spend quite so long here, but the theory book I was reading was a little harder to read than I anticipated. Ah, hubris. The SWS library was a lot like the area itself. Again, I'll be talking about it in more detail later, but I think I can give you a good idea what it was like just by saying that its most frequent customer is mid-twenty to early thirty year old new mommies with baby strollers. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it bears an interesting constrast with the student atmosphere of the Robarts library, or the more cosmopolitan mix of social classes at the Smith branch (in that the Smith branch got a mix of students, the elderly, what looked pretty much like hobos, young women, and children. The SWS was missing the students and hobos. That might be to its credit.). It also had the best graphic novel variety. Take that to mean whatever you'd like.

And that was the library portion of my trip to Toronto. According to the Toronto Library website, there are 99 branches in the city; I have now seen two. It's nice to know there's something left to do on the next visit.

Okay, that wasn't nearly snarky enough, given the conditions I'm writing under. If you really want to get my mood at the moment, just insert a random curse word every five words. Yeah, that does it.

Laterdays.