l i l e p h y t e


September 17th, 15:08 | A walk on the Mac side?

A couple things to say really. I'm horrified at my lack of time for all my previously almost-instinctive web-related habits. Webcomics? I used to read those almost before I was awake. (Same dealy with checking the weather, although I actually did do that this morning.) These days? No. I spent some time this afternoon catching up on approximately 2.5 weeks of webcomics. Yeesh. Blogs? Yeah, I've got like three that I check regularly, the others are checked about as often as I log into Diaryland. *shame* I'll find a balance soon I'm sure. But before I feel too bad about any of that, I feel I must share my really good (for once!) excuse. So...

Monday night, as I was putting together some posters for Tuesday and Wednesday night (our U has clubs' night those nights) my monitor died. The display had been kind of bopping left and right for a little while that evening, then suddenly, around 1am, everything disappeared into a glowy vertical stripe. I took it as a sign from the gods that I needed sleep. Which I promptly did. The gods, however, were not to be placated by such a display since my monitor was still fried Tuesday morning. Spikey panic then ensued since without a monitor, I pretty much can't talk to pookie, and besides, I had to get those fucking posters done.

NeighbourBoy, who I should really rename, was a real sweetheart and leant me his iMac, however, so thiings were alright. I'm still using the iMac whilst waiting for my parents this weekend. They figure they'll just bring up one of our other monitors, and we'll see if we can get mine fixed. Mehn. So, yes, I've had no machine, and when I did get one, I had to fight with the res networking people for connectivity and all that crap. Along with getting used to the whole "Mac" thing, obviously. Strangely, after about a day of using it, I find that I really like the way it works. It's running OS X (not that I can compare it to any other MacOS) and it's pretty sweet. I mean NeighbourBoy has long been going on about how "lickable" and such it is (and I suppose the icons are all kind of candy-shiny-looking that way) but I just really liek the way everything's presented. Very tidy. Very... dare I say... intuitive? Apart from a little frustration with the text editor until I got pissed off and downloaded BBEdit (finally!!! I can use it now that I'm not runnign Windows!!!) I've had a great time using this machine. It's been a really smooth transition. Once the Boy showed me how to get it to show me stuff all tree-like I stopped feeling lost and even feel like I might possibly understand stuff. Very cool. Oh, also. Apple makes the world's best keyboards. Quiet but still pretty hard, and they look snazzy. With big backspace keys. Perfect. In a semi-conclusion, I'm really kind of glad I got this opportunity to borrow the iMac for a couple days. I'll be happy to give it back, since I feel bad about depriving NeighbourBoy of his machine (with all kinds of kicking tunes on it!) but it's been really fun to be "forced" to try wandering around in a new paradigm. Very fun! I highly recommend it.

Anyway. Ahem. So I'm back, kind of, a little less stressed than I was a couple days ago. I keep missing out on social events, but it works out. I joined the Cooking Club whose events I attended sporadically over past years, because damnit, this is my last chance! I find myself taking that attitude towards a lot of things and I wonder... why? I know that university is the place for people of similar interests to find each other and meet up and stuff, but really? Why is it so hard in the real world? We have The Freaking Internet Thing these days -- it can't be that hard to get people together who are interested, can it? Hmm. Something to think about. I shall definitely miss that about University though. Maybe I should check out if UToronto's got clubs I want to join when I'm back. Or... maybe I'll be in Ottawa? Huh. I really need to get my "future" sorted out. *swamped*

On a completely unrelated note, I've been eating way more candy of late (due to the caf's meal equivalency dealie) than I should. Bad. Very bad. But so yummy! *sounds of aero-snarfing*

The Boy visited last weekend which was fantastic! It was nice to finally get to see him again and hang out, although we didn't do much. (Not entirely true -- he beat me at Scrabble in English, and he got his ass kicked in French, but mostly due to a 50-point word of mine (WOOHOO!). Fun was had by all, and there was much irony and such. You know.) Next time he comes I totally want to try for the flashlight night corn maze. So cool. We'll see though.

Also happy that I finally got to talk to my sister. This week's been bad, but chan, if you're not working late tomorrow night, can I call then? Feeling more in touch with the world, and like I have a better handle on it. Even though I really don't, and am behind in all my reading, and have a Chinese test I'll get lambasted on tomorrow morning. Ah school.

Although I kind of feel like my degree is "cheating" because I have no undergrad thesis or research project, I'm glad I don't. That my degree has just consisted of me learning little pieces all over the place in my random courses. It kind of goes with how I believe that people should go to university for university, not To Get A Job. ...still kinda feels like I'm cheating though. Well, I'll deal with that once I'm graduated.

Other ways I feel like I'm cheating? When I look around in my cs classes. I look around at all the nerds-in-denial -- actually these days, there's almost no nerds; I don't know when cs became "cool" but it kind of takes away from the spirit of what it used to be -- and feel somehow that I'm a fraud. I don't love programming. Not anymore. I'm looking forward to the work in LISP because I haven't done it before and I generally really like the non-procedural programming, but as a general rule, my love of that kind of stuff has disappeared over the years. I'm still interested in the technology and all that stuff, but definitely from a more abstract point of view. I'm interested in how it works on a hardware level and how people see and use it. I don't know what that translates to, but I'm fairly certain that almost anyone in Software Design or CEng or whatever would look down their nose at me and sniff "artsy".

On the other hand, I look around at the same people who decided for whatever reason (*cough*No really it's not the money, we swear*cough*) that cs is a valid degree, and watch their disgust when a prof comments that they'll need to do something on a unix machine. I watch their relief when they're informed that something doesn't work -- yet! -- on the Solaris machines, etc. I don't know where my loyalty to unix came from. It just makes more sense. And I like it. And it's probably just some squeaky little inner nerd of mine expressing itself, but it almost seems like as much as on the surface I don't belong in my classes, my heart is in the right place. These other pseudo-geeks, these people who will code their assignments, and apply to jobs in software companies, they just seem so... unappreciative? I don't know how to express it. They aren't in awe of any of what they're learning. None of it's sparkly and sacred for them. Not that you should worship machinery, or anything, but I think that if you're going to be working so closely with something so abstract, you'd have a better idea of just how fucking cool it is that a bunch of controlled electrical bursts, all thrust through little bits of wire and carefully crafted compounds can mysteriously result in a "lickable" display and programs that can graph the results of NMR spectroscopy and such.

I assume it's just more of my academic purity thign, but I think iIt's important not to lose your sense of wonder for some things. It's why I can look at genetics as more than just a new kind of code-cracking.

Anyway, yeah. Been busy, but good. Healthy, and all that. Still eating my weight in subs, but that deal ends tonight, so we'll see how the caf food is after another little while. I should try making a set time for myself to blog. Although... that wouldn't work, and I know it. Hmm. Guess I've learned that writing is definitely not for me? Heh.


Last book read:


( prev ++ 0 comment/s ++ next )



prev ++ next
(or "today"'s)



Last we checked,
lilephyte was...

...archived
...friendly
...factoidey
...profiled
...into notes



++ "recent" ++
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
January 24th
December 17th
December 16th
November 14th


ResolutionWatch 2007
Photos (200): 130
Kitty Photos (30): 40
Scrapbook (20): 1
Books (just for fun): 16


+DiaryLand+

:)