bare_bear: (Library=Knowledge)
I just bought a Kobo (ereader thing that's not an Amazon product).  I'm actually pretty excited about this despite my technophobe tendancies and the general pro-book-anti-ereader stance I've generally taken.  I can load all sorts of fic and ebooks that I normally read on my laptop, as well as pdf documents like my knitting patterns!  To be honest, it was the pdf reader thing that won me over.  :D

Now if I could just get this thing synched with my computer...
bare_bear: (wtf)
I finally got a local number, so now I'm not paying through the nose for every call and text I make.  Unfortunately, I can't actually use my old phone, which pisses me off to no end.  I wound up buying a crappy bottom of the barrel pay-as-you-go-phone.  Which utterly utterly sucks, because my first cell phone (aka, the one that Yukon has rejected) had a full qwerty keyboard, and I got hooked onto texting with it.  Now I'm stuck with a numeric keypad only, and I cannot text on it.  Well, I can, but it's pathetic.  D:

Oh well, it'll do until I can afford to buy something else.  I'll just be over here, sulking over my crappy new phone and gazing longingly at my old one.  :(

bare_bear: Caution sign showing a monster leaning over a cliff to eat a car (Default)
I have achieved wireless!

I bought a router ages a go, and it's been sitting around in the box ever since.  Partially because I'm lazy, but mostly because I wanted a fun name for my router.  This morning, when I walked into my living room and looked around, it finally occurred to me:

Unsubtle birds.

It's the little things.  :D

bare_bear: (wtf)
So I was in the field this week, and it was probably the crappiest field excursion I've had since starting at this company. 

ExpandCut because omg the whining. tl;dr. Basically, car trouble and discovering just how much my companies sucks at supporting field staff during emergencies. )
bare_bear: (wtf)
I bought a new laptop today.

Okay wait, let me go back.  Not long after finishing my thesis, my poor old HP kicked the bucket, in July or August, I think.  I knew it was coming, there were tonnes of warning signs, but I just needed it to get me through to the end of my thesis.  I was really sad when it finally flailed itself to death, because he'd been a good little laptop and my companion through the thesis hardships, and he had cute stickers on him, to boot.

Of course, it's never a good time to lose your lifeline computer, and at the time I was job hunting.  So my Uncle offered me his.  This thing is a beast, huge and cumbersome, crappy and slow.  Decent battery life though, I'll give it that.

Anyways, I've been using it ever since my own deary kicked the bucket, and argh I hate it.  It's been especially slow and annoying the last few weeks.  This afternoon, I finally screamed in rage and high-tailed it off to the computer store to get an idea of what's out there now.  And in my usual method of shopping, walked out the door with a new computer within 20 minutes.

I haven't started to set her up yet, but she's pretty and shiny.  I'll give more details tomorrow one I've played with her a bit. 

YAY NEW LAPTOP!  \o/
bare_bear: (Clean ALL the things)
Spent the day setting up the wireless router here at the house, AND setting up the printer so my Grandma can print things.  She's only been waiting for this for about 4 years, and it was basically nothing to do.  They're very good at making excuses for not doing something, but then complaining about how nothing gets done.

BUT ANYWAYS, it's done, and I'm glad that she can print her letters again (she can't write long letters anymore).

AND!  I now have internet access in my personal and sewing space!  EEEE!  No more connecting to the cable in the office anymore!  \o/

Time to SURF THE ENTIRE INTERNET, WHENEVER I PLEASE.  :D
bare_bear: (wtf)
I think so, anyways.

It's been threatening to die for a while now, but it kept limping along, and i thought it was simply being its own melodramatic self (I encourage it by spazzing out every time something weird happens).  But yesterday, I closed the lid on it in the middle of reading a pdf ebook, and when I came back and opened it, the screen remained black.  The dash was still lit up, but no one, apparently, was home.  Repeated hard reboots yielded the same results, and now I'm in panic mode (again).

Of course this happens when I find a job in Winnipeg, that I believe I need to apply for by the 25th (I hope).  Since it took me about 10 minutes to navigate to here to vent on my Grandma's old dinosaur, and the bloody thing crashed when I tried to access the company website, I don't think I'll be able to apply on here.  Stupid piece of crap dinosaur computer.  ARGH!

But, my Uncle has been a saint, and is lending me his laptop.  Which he's had for 2 years and has never ever used.  While I'm incredibly grateful, I really REALLY hate setting up new (old) laptops.  :)  Oh well, so long as I can apply for this job by tomorrow.  

Luckily, my laptops repeated attempts to die made sure that I backed everything up often, including (especially) my resume files, so that's a bonus, at least.  :)

Data Angst

May. 6th, 2011 05:51 pm
bare_bear: (wtf)
The final draft of my entire thesis is due in exactly 2 weeks from today, and not only do I have a lot of writing to do yet, I just found out I need to re-fit at least some of my XANES data.  I've re-fit my data set at least 5 times before, and while I've gotten quite quick about it, it still takes a day to do.  Nevermind I don't even know how to do what I'm supposed to do to improve the fit.  ALSO nevermind that this new way of fitting the data will require me to fiddle around with the fit much more, so will probably take even longer.

I just want to cry.  There's no way I'm going to be finished for the 20th. 

Fuck.
bare_bear: Caution sign showing a monster leaning over a cliff to eat a car (Default)
I am not entirely pleased by this.   Mostly because, crap, now I own a cell phone.

And to exemplify why exactly this is a bad thing, instead of coming home and tidying and making supper and writing my thesis, as planned, I tracked down phone numbers and proceeded to text with my best buddy for an hour and a half.  

And I don't do multitasking.

*headdesk*

ETA: It's a Samsung Linx, if anyone is curious.  Everyone else on facebook seems to be (I don't really know why, but I hate cells, so I'm not an authority on the subject).  
bare_bear: Caution sign showing a monster leaning over a cliff to eat a car (Default)
I've never really owned a cell phone before, except for a clunky thing my parents got me when I was in university that sat dead the entire time and the minutes expired 3 months later without a single one used.

I'm not a fan of cell phones.

But today, I'm headed to the mall to look into them.  Oh God.  I don't wanna!  But I can see the draw, when I've got no way for anyone to reach me by phone.  Plus it would've been super handy last night, when I headed downtown to a friends for game night, and totally forgot to jot down the address.  Wandered about where I thought she lived before giving up and coming home.  :(

ARGH CELL PHONES.  Maybe if I could find this one on the cheap.

bare_bear: (wtf)
What a bad day.  A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Well, most of it.

It started off well enough.  I ran away this afternoon not long after waking up (I'm on a 2 pm to 6 am wake schedule, so it's a little off from most normal people right now) to do some research at a local coffee shop.  That went all right, and I got a lot of work done.  I was extra pleased because I it was lovely enough outside that I wore a new grey knit dress - with cardi and tights, of course - and was feeling pretty good about myself.

But it's still early spring here, and there's still lots of water and melting snow around.  On the way home, I hopped over a puddle onto the grass to avoid a larger lake puddle on the sidewalk, and promptly slid and fell on my butt.  In the puddle

And the day sort of went downhill from there. 

For the last few hours, I've been fighting with my computer.  It's lagging like crazy, suddenly working hard and overheating, and the system icon that tells me my battery power is no longer working accurately.  It'll say I have 70% power left, but then shut down because the battery is dead.  It did this to me yesterday, although at least then it was at ~20% power.  I don't know what's going on, but I'm running lots of spyware and anti-virus software right now to see if that's the problem. 

Hmm...the last spyware program just finished running, and it - along with all the other programs I've run - says everything's kosher.  Well, what the heck, computer.

Maybe it's just that my battery needs to be replaced.  It's been draining faster and faster, the last month.  It used to last a good 2-3 hours on battery, depending on what I was doing.  Now, I'm lucky if it lasts an hour.  If the change had been more gradual, I might be less concerned, but this was rather sudden.

In addition, the last couple months, my disc drive isn't working anymore.  Or rather, rarely works.  Oft times, after opening the computer, the disc drive will start running really fast, making this loud whirling sound and causing my whole computer to vibrate.  The only way this stops is when I either shut the computer down, or close the laptop and let it sit for a while (the drive will stop running after a few minutes).

ARGH COMPUTER!  The stupid part is, I paid an arm-and-a-leg for a 3 year extended warranty from Best Buy when I bought this thing, and it's still under coverage.  But there's two problems with that: 1) I can't just give up my computer for the weeks - months they'll take to do any repairs, and 2) I've been trying to get them to order a replacement keyboard for this thing since they promised to replace it AT THE TIME I BOUGHT IT since it was a floor model and the escape key was broken.  That was 2.5 years ago.  ALSO, when my harddrive bit the dust, they gave me the wrong information and I ended up shelling out about the same amount of money for the replacement harddrive as I paid for the extended warranty.  When I came in with some installation problem (oh hey right, the re-install discs I BOUGHT FROM THEM didn't work), they told me that it should've been covered under my warranty.

Fuck you, Best Buy.  I don't trust leaving my laptop with you.  I'll probably never get it back.

Anywho, yay computer problems.  So of course, because of all this, my little productive streak came to a (sliding) end.  I've got 3 hours left before bedtime, and frankly, I just want to go sew.

*headdesk*

BTW, FUSS IF YOU'RE READING THIS, SO SORRY I WASN'T ONLINE FOR A CHAT.  I RAN AWAY THIS AFTERNOON AND DIDN'T REMEMBER UNTIL MUCH LATER.  I'LL EXPLAIN NEXT TIME I CATCH YOU.



Touch Wood

Apr. 1st, 2011 11:15 pm
bare_bear: (lollie)

Reblogged from [livejournal.com profile] dragongirl16 because it's hella cool.  It's a cell phone ad that's totally sold me, and I hate cell phones.  And ads.



bare_bear: Caution sign showing a monster leaning over a cliff to eat a car (don't ask)
ExpandThere are days when I don't think I'll ever finish my thesis. )

Alright, I'm done complaining.  This is what I love about this journal, I can get it off my chest and move on.  Off to go for a walk, get some fresh air and exercise after being cooped up in my apartment for...ever.  :)
bare_bear: Caution sign showing a monster leaning over a cliff to eat a car (Sewing)
After days of fighting with it, I think I've worked out how to work one of the computer programs I have to use for data analysis for the Thesis.  Maybe.  I hope.  Stupid PHREEQC.  And it's the easier one of the bunch, too.  *facepalm*

BUT at least I've done what I can.  :D

In other news, I'm a week and a half away from the deadline for the wardrobe contest I joined.  EEP!  I have 2 bottoms (a pair of pants and a tight tight tight denim pencil skirt) started, 1 complete top, and a new topper to finish.  I had a cardigan topper finished, but it's a disaster.  So I need to come up with something else.  I'm thinking of a jacket, possibly the one below (without the ties), but I'm nor sure yet.


Not the dress, though, because that would be an absolute disaster for my body type.  :)

Tonight, I'm going to chill out, watch tv or maybe some more Merlin or White Collar, and work on the top, a simple knit t-shirt.  And then spend the entire weekend sewing because OMG A WEEK AND A HALF!
bare_bear: Caution sign showing a monster leaning over a cliff to eat a car (wtf?)
While not making the work any easier, it is considerably nicer to have to learn how to use a certain program for my thesis while sitting on the back patio with a cup of coffee at my elbow, rather than in my humid and hot office.  :)

*le sigh*  I hate learning new computer programs, and I have 3 of them to suss out in the coming weeks.  Blah thesis blah.

In other news, nommy raisin spice cookies are still nommy.  Mmm...cookies.  Poor Cookie Monster is jealous.
bare_bear: Caution sign showing a monster leaning over a cliff to eat a car (wtf?)
Well that was fun.  I went to open my masters thesis file, and my computer rebooted.  ARGH!  So instead of doing my XRD analysis today, I'm going to back up EVERYTHING, and spend the day cleaning out my computer and running virus scans and such.  Maybe this'll help figure out why the bloody thing has been running so slow lately.

I love the internet and all it's diversions, but I HATE computers.  Don't mind me, I'll just be over here grumbling to myself in a pout.

*le sigh*

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