well, that sucked

Holy hell. This post was supposed to be written on Friday night. In fact, I was just settling in for a long night of uploading pictures to Flickr and writing a blog post when I lost control of my motor skills and, instead of just picking up the glass of water next to the PowerBook, I dumped the glass of water onto the keyboard of the PowerBook. I don't mean a few drops either. I was afraid I was going to be electrocuted if I touched the thing. Luckily I regained my senses and turned it upside down to let the water run out (that's right, run out) and popped the battery out, but not before the pretty pictures started appearing on the screen. So to recap, I took a cup of water and basically poured it in to a fully functioning, powered ON, PowerBook. It is basically dead, and my only hope is that the hard drive didn't get fried.

The computer wasn't mine, it was a sort of backup lab computer that my advisor let me use starting about a year ago. Since my own personal computer is a Windows 98, 6 GB monster of a machine (as I'm sure you can imagine), the Mac became my de facto personal computer as well (my advisor was aware of, and condoned, this). So although I didn't have a stroke right then and there, I have spent no small amount of time worrying about all those great digital pictures that I've taken since February, and all those albums that I got from other people, and the latest draft of the paper I'm currently working on.

"Didn't you back up?", you might be thinking.

Funny that you ask. Several months ago I bought an 80 GB external hard drive for this very purpose, knowing that this wasn't a computer I would be taking with me after graduation. However, I have since then made excuse after excuse, putting it off until a later day when I had more time. Well, that day never came. So ironic. And a sad, makes me want to cry ironic. Maybe in a few months this will be the hey, laugh at me kind of ironic.

The upside (beware the staggering rationalizations ahead) is that I realized I basically have no computer, and need one anyway for when I begin my professional (or academic) life sometime in the near future, so it makes perfect sense to invest in one now. And really, investment makes it sound so much better. I could either waste $500 on a Windows box (I use Linux at work, and have found that the Mac is completely compatible for work related projects) that would be used primarily for internet, or I could invest more money into a MacBook Pro that would not only be portable, but would serve as my first real computer that I could use for research purposes (I do computational work). So, I bought the MacBook Pro yesterday! I was a little stressed out, realizing it's going to take me a while to pay off this investment, but feel very comfortable with my decision today. It's a bit sooner than I would have liked, but I am the one who spilled the water in the PowerBook. Every action has a reaction, so I hear.

I tried to use the Migration Assistant (import old Mac hard drive onto new Mac hard drive), which boots the old Mac in Target Mode, but the old Mac was having none of it. I'm trying not to worry too much. It looks like we're going to have to remove the hard drive and physically turn it into an external hard drive so I can try and get all my data (and the programs, oh the programs!) off the old Mac.

Man, I am already tired of this post, but I had to tell that story to explain the five day absence. I should also say, that I can't post pictures from Joe's birthday bash or the NEMS BBQ right now. Those are all still on my memory card though, so if worse comes to worse, I can upload them again.

But in the last post, I promised to talk about several things: my new niece, car troubles, fancy dinners, and violin updates - wow!

My new niece: somewhat self explanatory, but there are details. She was born on June 28 early in the morning, and her name is Evellyn June. She's kind of cute, but the novelty of the newborn definitely only works once. Iain (her big brother) is now 15 months old and has is own personality now, and is starting to talk. He is so much fun to play with. I sound like a horrible aunt, but I'm just being honest.

Car troubles: also kind of self explanatory. Nothing too major (in terms of money cost), but a lot of mental hassle. I was driving home last Sunday afternoon to visit my family and see the new baby, and home is about a two hour drive east of here, when I had a tire blow out on me on the freeway. Now this wasn't the kind of thing that causes spinouts and wrecks; the tread just suddenly separated from the inner tube, so it wasn't completely flat. Scary nonetheless! I was able to safely get off the freeway and into a nearby parking lot. I had to call AAA since I don't have a jack and still had to drive about 50 miles to get to either place - back to L.A. or out to my parents' house. In the process of taking off the lug nuts, the guy breaks one of the studs. Thanks man! My brother says plenty of people drive with just three studs, but I don't know...So they guy puts on my spare for me and directs me to a tire store just a few blocks up the road. I decide that is probably the best idea and head up there. I get there and they don't have replacement studs, and somehow manage to break a second stud while taking off my spare. I definitely cannot drive anywhere with only two studs! These people ended up being nice and got the job done well, but it was a bit sketchy for a while. One of them was sent on an errand to Auto Zone to get two new studs and all new lug nuts. In the process of disassembling my disk area, the guy tells me my brake caliper is leaking brake fluid. I'm really glad he told me.

I got to my parents' house safely and the next day I asked my Dad to take off the spare to make sure everything looked okay, and to check if the brake caliper was leaking. Of course, it was. Also saw that my CV boot was broken, and we decided to get a whole new axle rather than taking the time with a boot repair kit. Funny story: about a year or two ago, the BRAKE sensor on my dashboard lit up, I asked my Dad bout it, and he thought it was just that the emergency brake sensor was broken and didn't register when I took the emergency brake off. Sounds good to me. After we fixed the brake caliper (and it turned out I had no brake fluid in the reservoir), the light went off. So I was being warned this whole time. Awesome. I'm so glad this was noticed before the inevitable accident that would have occured one day while driving around town when I just...couldn't...stop the car.

Fancy dinners: this one is a good story. B's friends Liz and Matt hosted a group of people at the Athenaeum (the Caltech hotel) for dinner. The occasion was to celebrate Matt's birthday. The traffic sucked, and I again affirmed the fact that I could never commute more than three to five miles in this city on a daily basis without significantly increasing my blood pressure, getting migraines, and becoming a horrible person in general. The dessert table was fantastic, I had various treats run under the chocolate fountain, and some kind of chocolate cheesecake thing.

Violin update: This Saturday we learned several harmony parts to our week 1 and 2 material - Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Ode to Joy. We also learned "low 2's", which I'm not going to explain. The week before that we learned a really beautiful little piece called New World Symphony. Only two more weeks left, and this Saturday was are learning Canon in D (except for the really hard part that makes you recognize the song - our instructor will be playing that part). There was some discussion of having some kind of recital at the end for family and friends. The thought makes me nervous. I practice, but it will take a long time for me to sound like I can actually play.

Time for bed. Now I can purge all of this information from my head, since it's been written down.

So to recap: Always, always leave glasses of water on the floor or some other lower elevation perch relative to an open, powered up laptop, check your brake fluid reservoir level if the BRAKE light is on in the dashboard panel, and for God's sake, BACK YOUR FUCKING DATA UP (that last one is for me).

Listening: Isis - Oceanic