Life

General ramblings connected to my personal life and activities.

Finally!

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Tiger arrives!After far too much stürm und drang, UPS finally managed to get their act together and drop my box from Amazon on my desk this morning.

I got home after work, popped in the disk, and hit the fateful “Erase and Install” button. A few minutes later (probably about 15 or so…I didn’t time it, but it went faster than I expected) I was prompted to reboot, and Tiger was up and running.

OS X 10.4

So far, I’m really liking the upgrade. Things are definitely a bit snappier than 10.3 was (I love the fact that each successive upgrade from Apple is actually faster than the prior version). Dashboard I’m not entirely sold on yet…great eye candy, I’ll see how useful it actually is as I keep playing around. I haven’t had much chance to play with Spotlight so far, as aside from importing my mailboxes, I’m running on a pretty clean slate at the moment, so there’s not a lot for Spotlight to work with yet. That will change with time, of course — and even without using Spotlight’s document-searching capabilities yet, it’s proved to be just as capable of an application launcher as Quicksilver was.

Most of the evening so far has been spent downloading the latest versions of the applications I use frequently and getting my day-to-day workspace set up. I’ve only run into two noticeable snags so far:

  1. The most current version of Microsoft’s keyboard driver (I have a nice keyboard I got for free when I was working on the Microsoft campus — unfortunately, it’s one they don’t make anymore) doesn’t appear to support the extra keys on this keyboard. I’d gotten very used to using the handy shortcut keys for ‘cut’, ‘copy’ and ‘paste’, and they’re now non-functional. A little frustrating, as it’ll take some time for me to re-train my muscle memory away from using them.

  2. No matter how carefully I try to back things up, there’s always something that I realize that I’ve forgotten later on. I’ve grown to accept that over the years — it’s rarely anything I can’t live without if I have to, so I’ve gotten used to this element of Russian Roulette when doing a full Nuke and Pave. Unfortunately, this time the casualty was one I’m definitely going to miss: Photoshop (yes, I’m one of the many people who…ahem…’acquired’ a copy of Photoshop at some point). A definite bummer, as I’m not likely to have the $600 to get my own legal copy anytime soon, and I’ve long since lost track of any sources for less-legal means of acquiring software. Ah, well…so it goes, right?

So all in all, a pretty successful upgrade, and I’ve got lots of little nooks and crannies to play in as I poke around. Yay for new toys!

Update: Well, one more issue, this one potentially a little more serious. For some reason, I don’t seem to be able to send mail through either my Speakeasy account or the account on my own mailserver. Not sure what’s going on here.

I can receive message from both those accounts, and I’ve set up POP access on my gMail account, though, so I can at least send messages through gMail, but I don’t seem to be able to send through my @michaelhanscom.com address, which is a bummer. My mailserver’s been a bit tweaky for a while anyway…maybe it’s time to investigate rebuilding that. Oh, boy is that going to be fun…

iTunes “Where Time Becomes a Loop (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album Difficult Listening Hour (full mix) (1999, 58:41).

UPS, they did it again!

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This is getting ridiculous.

Because I’m paranoid after all the issues I’ve been having so far, I just logged into UPS’s tracking site to check on the current state of my shipment.

May 9, 2005 12:39 P.M.: A SECOND DELIVERY CHANGE REQUEST WAS SUBMITTED FOR THIS PACKAGE.;THE RECEIVER REQUESTED THE PACKAGE BE DELIVERED TO AN ALTERNATE ADDRESS
May 9, 2005 6:06 P.M.: AS REQUESTED BY THE CUSTOMER, THE RECEIVER WILL PICKUP AT A UPS FACILITY WITHIN 5 BUSINESS DAYS;THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

What.

The.

Fuck?!?

I really want to know what’s going on here. That first entry from 12:39pm is from when I talked to UPS, just before making my last post. That 6:06pm entry? Not the faintest clue, but it sure wasn’t me.

Even worse, I can’t do anything about it. If I click on the ‘Delivery Change Request’ link, I get the following message:

A Delivery Change Request cannot currently be performed on this package. For additional information, please call 1-800-811-1652 (Monday-Friday, 7:00 A.M. to Midnight Eastern Time and Saturday 7:30 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time).

And, of course, it’s too late to call the customer service center now.

Looks like the first thing I’m doing tomorrow morning after my alarm goes off is calling UPS and raising holy hell. Oh, joy.

Update: I just got up 2 hours early, at 4am, so I could call the service center as soon as they open at 7am on the East Coast. Just as I was told yesterday, I’ve been assured by a representative (who I did get a name from, this time) that even though it looks to me like the package is set to be held, it is actually on a truck, set for delivery to my workplace today. There’s a new entry on the tracking page…

May 9, 2005 6:38 P.M.: DESTINATION SCAN

…that, though it looks to me like it would mean that the package has been accepted by the UPS facility, I’ve been told actually means that it’s on the truck.

Hmmm. We’ll see.

(Just to be absolutely sure I just called back again, got a different customer service rep — whose name I wrote down — who told me the same thing as the first one did. That’s two different people who have told me that it’s on the truck to be delivered. Keeping my fingers crossed, but that’s at least slightly reassuring.)

For now, though…back to bed for another couple hours.

Update:

May 10, 2005 9:00 A.M.: DELIVERY

‘Bout damn time.

iTunes “Dream Lover” by Spacey, Kevin from the album Beyond the Sea (2004, 2:46).

Why ‘UPS’ is pronounced ‘Oops!’

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I am so not happy with UPS right now. Not that I’ve ever been a big fan of theirs — historically, I’ve always had more trouble receiving packages shipped through them than getting packages shipped through FedEx — but it just keeps getting worse.

I pre-ordered my copy of Tiger a few weeks ago through Amazon, and chose their el-cheapo free shipping rate. A little slower, but it saves me a few bucks. The downside, though, is that it meant the box was shipped via UPS instead of the normal postal service (I’ve never quite figured out when Amazon decides to ship via the postal service and when they go with UPS, I’ve gotten packages both ways and haven’t seen the pattern yet).

Because I didn’t know that UPS was going to be involved, the shipping address was my apartment. While this works fine for postal packages, UPS invariably tries to deliver to my residence during work hours. It’s just a given. So, when I got the notice from Amazon that the box was on its way via UPS, I figured that I probably wouldn’t be home for the first delivery attempt…wasn’t thrilled, but that’s just the way it goes.

The day the box was supposed to arrive, I arranged with the building’s resident manager to sign for the package, and left a note on the door of the building authorizing UPS to leave the box with the manager. Of course, that didn’t work. I got home to find a UPS Infonotice waiting for me — apparently they need my signature. A little frustrating, but it was worth a shot.

So I call UPS to have the box re-routed to my work address so that it would be delivered today. While on the phone, the customer service rep I talked to was puzzled that my note was ignored, assuring me that that should have been enough. Apparently the driver disagreed, though, so whatever, and at 5:33pm we get things set up to have the box delivered to me at work today.

This morning, I checked in on the tracking notice on UPS’s site, and saw the following:

May 6, 2005 5:33 P.M.: A DELIVERY CHANGE REQUEST FOR THIS PACKAGE WILL BE PROCESSED;THE RECEIVER REQUESTED THE PACKAGE BE DELIVERED TO AN ALTERNATE ADDRESS
May 6, 2005 9:10 P.M.: AS REQUESTED BY THE CUSTOMER, THE RECEIVER WILL PICKUP AT A UPS FACILITY WITHIN 5 BUSINESS DAYS;AS REQUESTED, THE RECEIVER WILL PICKUP AT A UPS FACILITY AT THEIR CONVENIENCE. THIS MUST BE WITHIN 5 BUSINESS DAYS

Um…no, I don’t think so. My only call to UPS was at about 5:30 that afternoon as noted in the log. I don’t know who or where this 9:10pm call was from, but it wasn’t me. So, I call UPS and talk to one of their customer service reps, a very cheery-sounding woman who assures me that no, that’s incorrect, and my package is on the truck and set to be delivered to me at work. “You’re sure?” I ask, as that’s not what the website says, and yes, she’s sure. Okay, must be a glitch somewhere.

On lunch, I decide to see what the site says. It hasn’t changed, so I call UPS’s Infonotice phone system, where I hear a recorded message telling me that the package is sitting at the UPS facility waiting for me to pick it up. Not good — the reason I don’t want to go that route is the facility is somewhere over in the Beacon Hill/South Seattle area, which I can’t get to easily — and besides, that’s not what I asked for, and had been told this morning that this wasn’t going to happen.

I hit ‘0’ a few times until I finally get shunted over to a customer service rep. They, of course, can do absolutely nothing for me except re-route the package again to my work address, to be delivered tomorrow (apparently there’s absolutely no possible way to get the package to my workplace today). There’s nothing in the system that tells them anything about the 9:10pm call — they don’t even mark which customer service person made the change, as the system is set up so that people can call in from their cell phones, and there may not have been a customer service rep. I, of course, didn’t think to get the full name of the lady I talked to this morning (who apparently told me what I wanted to hear, and not what was actually going on), so there’s no way to figure out what went wrong there.

All in all, an incredibly frustrating experience. A mysterious 9:10pm call on Friday to hold the package for pickup that I didn’t make, and some twit this morning who didn’t tell me what was actually happening.

I’d originally planned to have the weekend to upgrade, doing a full drive wipe and install from scratch and then reinstalling all my apps for as clean a system as possible. With the first delay, I was now planning on upgrading tonight after work. Now, I’m pushed back again until tomorrow. Grrrr.

As the title says…there’s a reason UPS is pronounced ‘Oops!’

iTunes “Peace, Love and Grease (Hot Tracks)” by BT from the album Roadkill 2.19 (1997, 6:48).

Clutter

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Okay, granted, I’m not the world’s greatest housekeeper. I come from a proud packrat heritage, in a family household where no flat surface will remain unused for more than a few hours.

But…nothing I or my family has ever managed to come up with even comes close to comparing to this house. Amazing…and a little disturbing.

The problem with time travel…

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Yes, the problem. Because there is only one. ;)

I don’t even remember how we got on the subject, but something in a conversation with Prairie last night got me rambling on about the biggest problem I have with time travel stories. As fun as they are, there’s always been one thing that bugged me about them — though, admittedly, it’s most likely because in the majority of instances, worrying about it would essentially negate the possibility of the story working at all.

Essentially, it’s that while what makes the story fun is the ability to travel temporally, nobody ever seems to take into account the need to travel spatially as well.

The Earth rotates at a little over 1000 miles per hour. It also orbits the sun at around 67,000 miles per hour. Our solar system is moving through the galaxy at approximately 447,387 miles per hour. Our galaxy is moving at roughly 1.34 million miles an hour through the universe. So, assuming that those are all the variables we have to work with (that is, assuming that time is a constant within our universe, and that there is nothing “outside” our universe to measure its relative speed), we travel (very) roughly 6,679,393,200 miles per second relative to our universe.

So, were I to invent a time machine and move myself one second back in time, I’d end up popping back into the normal time stream somewhere more than six and a half billion miles away from where I started! Needless to say, I’d be incalculably lucky to end up arriving anywhere that would allow me to survive — most likely, I’d just end up floating out in the vacuum of space somewhere.

Any feasible time machine, then, would somehow have to ensure that the traveler was able to move temporally while remaining stationary spatially relative to their starting point, and not to the universe as a whole.

Tricky.

Not that that keeps me from enjoying time travel stories anyway, of course. But there’s always this niggling little voice in the back of my head…

05/05/05 5:55:55

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From Jonas:

  • :55 seconds — once a minute.
  • 55:55 — once an hour
  • 5:55:55 — twice a day, once a day (depends on cultural approach towards 24/12h clocks).
  • 5th @ 5:55:55 — once a month
  • 5th of May @ 5:55:55 — once a year
  • 5th of May, 05 @ 5:55:55 — once every 100 years
  • 5th of May, 005 @ 5:55:55 — once every 1000 years
  • Thursday (5th day of week), 5th of May, 005 @ 5:55:55 — once every 2000 years

(And yes, I’m back-dating this post slightly just so it fits. Silly, sure, but why not?)

Happy Birthday Royce!

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Today Royce, whom I’ve known since fourth grade, turns 32. All these years and I’m still two days older! ;)

Happy birthday!

(The best birthday card I ever found was one I gave to Royce a long time ago. On the front was a picture of a man’s hand holding a hamster. On the inside, the card read, “Have a happy birthday or the hamster goes squish.”)

iTunes “Come Fly With Me” by Sheep on Drugs from the album One for the Money (1997, 3:02).

For Mom: One year of hair!

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After having had long hair for ages, a few years ago I cut it short, and for the past couple years I was regularly shaving my head. While I liked the way it looked, my mom always lamented the loss of my “beautiful curls.”

Last year on my birthday, after having found some old shots of me with long hair, I finally decided to start letting it grow out again. I shaved my head one last time on my birthday, and have just let it grow since then. This, then, marks one year of not cutting my hair…and here’s the result:

[One year of hair!][1]

[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djwudi/12264104/ “One year of hair!”

It’s a bit bunched up from having been in a ponytail holder, but you get the idea. Long (and getting longer), red, curly hair. The curls are back, mom! :)

Of course, most of the time I keep it held back in a ponytail, so here’s how that looks (along with a birthday present to myself — my new favorite t-shirt, custom-made because I just don’t wear [white t-shirts][2] all that often):

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p align=”center”>One year of hair!

iTunes “I Don’t Think They Know” by Mesh from the album Cyberl@b (1998, 4:40).