Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

I have been using a Logitech Trackman Mouse for over four years, and I L-O-V-E. it. It’s ergonomically perfect for my small hand, especially when used in conjunction with an Imak Ergobeads Wrist Cushion, and I love that I don’t ever have to pick it up and move it around like a regular mouse. Though a thumb-controlled trackball may not seem intuitive to standard mouse users, you should give this model a try. (Unless you need a left-handed model, which they sadly don’t offer.)

Anyway, the reason I am once again gushing about my personal love for this Trackman mouse (and don’t forget my 5-star review of the Imak Ergobeads) is because… hold on, I’m getting verklempt… it developed a problem. It wasn’t anything personal, I know. But one day, a couple weeks ago, the scroll wheel stopped working.

You don’t know how much you depend something until it’s gone, of course.

I followed the natural problem-solving course for this type of thing: curse, restart the computer; test a different USB port, curse when that doesn’t make a difference, but ultimately be thankful for not having a USB port problem; uninstall/reinstall the Logitech software driver thingy, curse some more. Then, moving on: deny that there is a actually a problem; wake up angry the next morning, curse; bargain with the devil (which only leads to developing a terrible cold, btw); get depressed and actually think to onseself there’s nothing on the internet today; and, eventually… accept the loss of a functioning scroll wheel. And mutter one final curse before looking up the warranty information—you know, just in case.

Five year warranty, the internet said. I did the math and decided that I was cutting it pretty close—but I filled out the form on Logitech’s website anyway. Logitech’s return email, received within one day, was this: Read more…

I upgraded to a new version of WordPress today (for which I’m still working out the kinks) and embarrassingly lost my most recent blog entry for a while. It was terrifying, because it was a long overdue post filled with phrasing I doubt I could recreate if it had been lost due to my own stupidity. (I exported all of my entries to an xml file first thing this morning, then decided to blog before upgrading. And then I forgot to export again. And then I overwrote my database. A really, really dumb mistake.)

After trying to access various caches, I handed my database over to Ben to see if he could perform any forensics tricks. After a short while, he gave me the bad news that it was gone. I subsequently had a minor emotional breakdown, twittered desperately seeking someone else’s cache, and starting calling people. It’s possible that I sounded like I was drunk dialing, but I assure you I was not.

Meanwhile, Ben kept calmly poking around my database searching for I-don’t-know-what but that’s what he does with computers: he gives you the bad news but doesn’t give up. Bless his intensely dedicated computer geek soul.  And then Isis projectile vomited in the other room, and I was about ready to just delete my whole blog, because really, what’s the point? And then—wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles—Ben found the lost entry.

If you ever lose your most recent entry after upgrading wordpress and you have access to your database, check to see if MySQL created an automatic backup of the last version before you overwrote it. Not the automatic once-a-day backup, but another secret hidden one that was created just before you realized the dumb thing you did. Because I’m probably not the first person to have done that.

I’d ask Ben for specifics on where he found that entry in my database, but he’s currently engrossed in Grand Theft Auto III and he deserves not to be disturbed. Especially because he cleaned up the cat vomit in addition to solving my idiot problem. Benjamin, YOU ARE THE MAN.

Given that this is typically the kind of email I receive,

HI I WANT TO BE THE GREAT GEEK OF WORLD ,WILL YOU HELP ME OUT ?

–
ASHISH KUMAR RANJAN
IT,NIT PATNA

I really appreciate the people who take the time to email me with praise, constructive criticism, their personal geek stories and geek test suggestions, and serious questions about a range of topics. I recently received an email with questions regarding the making of one’s own Christmas lights and don’t really know what resources to suggest. If there’s anyone out there who can help out Celia, please leave a comment. I’d appreciate it!

Yvette,

Your web site is delightful; a bright beacon of geeky goodwill.

I just spent way too much time cruising Craig’s List looking for a local electronics shop and/or resources.  What I found instead was some surprisingly mean-spirited bickering (reminiscent of some of the troglodyte emails you posted on your web site – your responses were hilarious, by the way).  I feel the need to embrace more of my inner geekiness through playing with LEDs (I’m not, however, ready to enlist in the Navy to study electronics, as suggested by several helpful individuals on Craig’s List).  I want to learn how to safely make my own christmas lights, basically.  Can you suggest any links or other resources?  I’ve got “Electronics for Dummies” but I’m not ready to build a robot, just make some cool bling for my living room.  I couldn’t find a links page on your web site (was I imagining that there used to be one a few months ago?)

Thank you for offering such playful, welcoming energy to the countless geeks out there who may not realize how desperately they need it (myself included)!

Celia

I consulted my husband on this matter while he was busy playing with wires and electricity and power tools upstairs. He said there’s a booklet series he’s seen at Radio Shack called “Electronics Handbook” that looked as though they were written on graph paper and featured small circuits that might be useful if you’re looking for timing circuits or driving LEDs. So that might be a place to start.

If you want to purchase LEDs in bulk, there are lots of websites out there like Mouser Electronics where you can find those. However, if you just want to create strands of LEDs like the ones that you can find at the store… it will be much cheaper and easier to purchase them at the store.

Hope that helps, and if any other readers have comments I hope you’ll post them here for Celia to see. Thanks!

I’m starting to feel more comfortable with my shiny new MacBook Pro, though there are still plenty of awkward moments as I transition my programs and data and occasionally realize that I have to adjust my rote expectations of how a computer works.

Here are some of the things that I’m noticing and find different/wonderful/frustrating, etc.

• I miss the standard PC laptop touch-click… I can press down anywhere on this new trackpad, which is nice, but it’s a little more resistant than I’d like. Maybe it will loosen up a little with time?
• The keyboard feels wonderful. The only thing I don’t like about it so far is that the space bar seems really loud, especially in comparison to the rest of the keys.
• I miss some of the keys that come on a standard PC keyboard, such as having both Backspace and Delete. The Mac has a Delete button that functions in the backspace manner… though Stephanie left a comment with the helpful info that if you press fn+delete on a Mac, it will delete the letters in front of the cursor. Hooray! It will take some time before it becomes an automatic keystroke for me, though.
• The muscle memory that I developed for PC shortcuts to copy, paste, undo, etc., is very strong. Though the letters are (mostly) the same for the shortcuts, I find it awkward to use the Mac’s “command” key instead of Ctrl. Ctrl is always the bottom left key on a PC keyboard and is in the perfect position for my pinky finger. The two command keys are located on either side of the space bar… maybe in time it will feel right to use my right thumb. But it’s really awkward right now. (Using the left thumb is out. It goes against my personal standard of ergonomics.)
• Still figuring out when to use the Command key, Option key, and Control key with each hotkey I’m used to or new to. In my WordPress window where I’m composing this entry, I press ctrl+i for italics. But in OpenOffice, I need to press command+i.
• I don’t like that special characters, as seen on the incredibly awesome reference Blambot chart of International Characters, seem require a lot more conscious effort to create with hotkeys. On my PC, I just hold down the alt key and type the corresponding 4-digit number. I have a crapload of them memorized. Comparatively, the combinations required on a Mac are akin to the British monetary system before decimalization. Again, with time, I’m sure that I’ll memorize the hotkeys I use most.
• I visited a long web page and was bemoaning the lack of Page Up and Page Down buttons on my keyboard here. Then I remembered that I can use a 2-fingered swipe on my trackpad to scroll quickly. That works much smoother than paging up or down ever did!
• I’m adjusting to the way that files are downloaded and installed. It’s pretty streamlined so far, but there’s still a small learning curve to that streamlined method.
• The internet is moving at lightning speed—wirelessly.
• I’m mad at every little spot of fingerprint grease that sticks to the keys or pretty glossy screen.
• I’ve been using a keyboard with a number pad on the right. I use it a lot, so unless I want to get one of those USB number pad attachments, it looks like I’ll just have to get used to the standard numbers.
• The battery life on this thing is stupendous. There’s a little indicaor at the top that estimates the amount of time I have left… on a full charge it’s well over 4 hours. The old Dell laptop I have requires A/C power if I intend to use it for more than a half hour.
• I miss my fonts. Sure, I only used a tiny percentage of what I’d collected over the years, but all those Windows .ttf files are dead to me now. I had a few .otf files that made the transition, but not many. I’m sure I’ll build up my collection again over time.
• OS X Graphics. YUM.

Have you made a PC to Mac transition lately? What have been your biggest headaches?

Experienced Mac users: When you’re forced to use Windows, what is your biggest headache?

My late birthday present and early Christmas present arrived a day early today! It was supposed to arrive tomorrow, and I almost didn’t get it today because I wasn’t home when UPS attempted delivery. Shortly after I returned home, though, I received a personal phone call from my UPS driver. (We’re on a first name basis because, well, I generally hate shopping in-person. It was a little weird to get a personal phone call, but whatever.) He suggested that I go to the local UPS store at 5:30, his scheduled stop, and sign for it there–which is exactly what happened.

Ben and I got home about the same time and celebrated together. I affixed a permasmile on my face and he celebrated by taking photos, laughing at my excitement, and making tacos while I oooohed and aaaaaahed and started to set things up. I somehow managed to tear myself away long enough to eat dinner. 

And now, after all the updates have been installed and the battery is fully charged, I’m still setting things up and getting used to the new OS. Some things are beautiful and wonderful, but some things are still very awkward. (I already miss the Delete button that erases letters in front of the cursor–didn’t realize how much I toggle between the PC’s Backspace and Delete.)

I’m connected to our home server, so I have delightfully convenient access to all of our MP3s and photos and other shared files on our database. I’m going to take my time transferring files from my PC so that they’re in a more streamlined organization here on my MacBook.

My MacBook. Hee hee!

Of course I still had to do the crude partial desaturation of that photo with Photoshop on my PC… the teensy bit I’ve played with iPhoto made it crystal clear that I need/want Photoshop or at least GIMP. 

…and I’m hoping to roll a natural 20.

It’s taken me several months to decide what to do about my computer situation. I determined a while back that a laptop will suit me better than an upgraded desktop, but that raised another difficult question: Mac or PC?

In addition to making a choice based on technical specs and price, I was having a Mac/PC Identity Crisis while trying to resist making an emotional decision as a result of the proselytizing marketing efforts of either side.

I made my near-final choice over the weekend, and have spent the last couple days mulling it over and deciding exactly which model to buy. Ben was a champ as I (naturally) dragged him along my path of indecisiveness with me. Thankfully, as of today, that decision has been made. The topic of conversation will now turn to which flavor of Ramen noodles we’ll have for dinner tonight rather than which laptop to buy.

I purchased a MacBook Pro from Amazon. It will arrive on Thursday.

STOKED!

Will I take the red pill or blue pill?

When the line of salt is poured on the hangar deck, will I be on the right side?

Am I a Mac or a PC?

Among the important decisions one can make in life, the Mac vs. PC choice has drawn a hard line since its inception, and there’s little wishy-washiness permitted from either side. The new Mac ads and Microsoft’s response ads reinforce this notion of Identity via Platform. You either ARE or ARE NOT.

So what is one to do with a mixed background? I know that there’s a small percentage of people out there like me, who were not raised with hard-lined indoctrination.

My family’s first computer was a Macintosh 512K in 1985, but in school I was exposed to the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe. Friends had IBMs with fancy color screens and floppy disks that were actually floppy. My family graduated to a color-screened Macintosh Quadra 610 at about the same time my high school put new 486 PCs in all the classrooms.*

In 1995, I helped my mom computerize her dental office with PCs that ran Windows 95, and subsequently inherited one of those PCs during college. Ben has built all of my computers from scratch since then, and I’ve watched him play around in Linux environments. In my last job, I worked closely with the art team (who of course used high-end Macs) and learned lots of Adobe tricks and developed a minor case of Mac Envy.

So that brings me to my current dilemma: My computer needs a serious overhaul, which under normal circumstances would mean that Ben would buy some new parts and reuse what he could to build me a new desktop. However, I’ve determined that a laptop will suit my needs better than a desktop right now. And Ben doesn’t have the manufacturing facilities available to build one for me.

For the first time in my adult life, I will have to choose a Mac or a PC.

I know the arguments. I’m familiar with the “Mac tax” and of the issues that come with the various PC laptops out there. I’ve recently touched and played with more laptops in-store than should be legal, and I’m trying to keep my biases at bay. I’m trying to be practical. I’m trying not to let the shiny, clever Get a Mac ads affect my choice (which is hard, considering that I am in their target demographic and they nailed it, man).

What it really comes down to is that I feel like my future identity will be shaped by the laptop I choose. Mac people want me on their side. PC people want me on their side. Open source purists chide me for not being geek enough to even consider Linux.**

There are four choices, as I see it:

1. Pick a side. Accept the identity of Mac or Windows PC.
2. Go underground and choose Linux or some other obscure OS.
3. Accept a dual life and learn how to be both a Mac and a PC.
4. Choose nothing and become a Luddite.

“Be grateful you even have a choice,” I hear my ancestors whisper from Beyond The Great Divide, because  they didn’t have the luxury of choices like these, and they probably also had to climb up a hill both ways in the snow to get the the outhouse, which wasn’t even an outhouse but just a deep pit in the ground that was surrounded by angry bears just waiting to come after them the minute they dropped their pants.

Dear readers, if you’ve been lucky enough to make The Choice, which probably means that a bear never caught you with your pants down, what choice did you make? Did you struggle like me? Has your identity been shaped by your choice? Do you really wish you’d been attacked by a bear just so that you would have been spared reading this whole blog post all the way to the end?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

* Ben was actually a student and an IT employee at our high school who helped install and maintain the school district’s network. I have a cute photo of us together in the high school server/computer repair room. Didn’t know back then that I would marry him and that we’d always have at least one room in our house buried under tangles of cables and scattered computer bits!

** Unfortunately, sometimes majority rules and this is what happens to open source purists who dare suggest that one has to be like them to be a real geek. Comic yoinked from Dueling Analogs.

Ben just pointed me in the direction of a politically relevant and super gametastically fantastic little flash game called “Super Obama World.”

If you haven’t played it yet, try it out! I haven’t gotten very far, so I’m not sure how it plays out… but the fact that the worlds are on a map that looks a lot like Alaska leads me to believe that Sarah Palin may be a boss along the way! Ooooo, fun! Let me know if you make it that far.

On a side note, it’s weird to realize that Nintendo’s amazing technology of the 80s can be recreated in a simple flash game played over the internet.

In 2005, the National Retail Federation decided to call the Monday after Thanksgiving “Cyber Monday.” It’s supposed to symbolize a busy day for online retailers and be their promotional equivalent to the brick-and-mortar stores’ Black Friday.

However. The name? Would not have been my first choice.

Didn’t anyone tell the NRF that “cyber” as a verb means “to have cybersex?”

Or did they hire the same marketing consultants who originally gave Procter & Gamble’s “Dreft” detergent the name “Dreck” without realizing that it was a Yiddish word for garbage?

To be fair, “cyber-” has been used as a prefix for computer-related terms (cyberspace, cyberpunk, cybernetics, etc.) in the same way that the far more popular “e-” and “i-” have been used. It’s not exactly a new word, and hasn’t always been associated with cybersex.

There was also an enemy race of cyborgs on Doctor Who in 1966 called Cybermen. In 1968, DC Comics introduced Doctor Cyber, a female supervillain who fought Wonder Woman. In 1991, Marvel introduced a supervillain of the male variety by the name of Cyber.

But whether it’s used as a verb, adjective, supervillain, or flavor additive, I can’t be the only one who remembers the dirty “wanna cyber?” question of the 90s. I’m sure the power of One More Annual Marketing Tactic for retailers will supercede my association of the word with something dirty.

Next year, though, I hope you’ll join me in snickering at every Cyber Monday sale you see on our Grate Interwebz. And maybe, as the tryptophan coma sets in on Thursday, you’ll turn to your loved ones and ask, “Wanna Cyber Monday?”

About a year ago, I installed the Dvorak keyboard layout on my system so that I could start learning it. I started, then quit, but I want to keep the keyboard layout installed because I might decide at any point that I want to start learning again.

To toggle between QWERTY and Dvorak on a PC, you press Ctrl+Shift at the same time. As one might expect, I have accidentally toggled between them many times. Once I figured out what was happening, it was an easy fix and actually a nice occasional reminder that I still want to learn Dvorak.

BUT. I’m working in Adobe InDesign (CS1 on my PC) right now, and in order to resize an image while keeping the ratio the same, I have to hold down Ctrl+Shift while moving the cursor. So I’ve inadvertantly switched between QWERTY and Dvorak and hundred million times. Not a huge deal, just annoying… until I tried to cut some text using Ctrl+X which, under the Dvorak keyboard, is actually Ctrl+Q.

Which quits the program.

A confirmation box appeared and, before I could read it, my muscle memory clicked “No” as my brain was realizing that the box was asking if I wanted to save changes before quitting. Whaaaaa? SHIT!

My internal organs stopped working for a moment as I watched InDesign close itself and I tried to remember the last time I saved my file. DON’T REMEMBER was the answer, which was not a good sign. I bit my lip and reopened the program… and it appeared as though I’d saved my file about an hour before I shut it down.

So I lost an hour’s worth of work. And I can’t blame anyone but myself. I should probably uninstall the Dvorak keyboard while working in InDesign, huh? And just reinstall it when I’m good and ready to learn it.

There’s a little bit of irony involved in this whole thing, too. When I first started playing around with Dvorak, I was dismayed by the fact that it would seriously screw up my reliance upon left hand hotkeys (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+F, Ctrl+T [Firefox, Baby], Ctrl+A, Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z [omg what would I do without Ctrl+Z]). But I NEVER intentionally use Ctrl+Q.