Quarter Life Crisis

Give & Take¶

573 words

It’s all just a game of give and take…

• My stereo returned and is back up to kick-ass noisemaking!
• … even better, it seems that the dealer was right when saying that the warranty extension I got by sending in that registration postcard was an extension by three years to a total of five, rather than to a total of three years, so I didn’t even have to pay – which would have been a total bummer.
• I still don’t know what the actual problem with the stereo was. Nothing major definitely, as all the crucial parts like amplification still worked. It was more of a ‘software problem’ with the display not displaying things correctly and commands from the buttons and the remote being ignored or delayed.
• New people moved in downstairs, they’ve been busy doing the garden. And they gave us some nice plums.
• The painters were in our department, making everything look pretty. And smell rather unpleasantly.
• So I decided to go to the central library, which actually was very pleasant. Nice and spacy. Very concentrated atmosphere with less distractions than in the office. And at least some sane people around there as well.
• While sitting there I also became painfully aware of the problem my brother already told me about. All the inane computer users in a library (a) have computers which (a) don’t have a sleep mode and (b) are too lazy to turn off that annoying Windows startup sound. 
• And while I will blame Microsoft for putting the sound there turned on by default, I am also inclined to blame the users as well, as even I managed to figure out how to turn it off in less than a minute.
• That said, I really find that the MacBook’s habit of ‘ejecting’ its empty CD drive when waking from sleep is quite annoying and embarrassing in a quiet environment.
• Talking about the MacBook – I find that the brightness of the screen’s backlight jitters. I really hate that (and it reminds me of the feeping noise I had on the TiBook). It’s exactly the kind of problem that drives me nuts but which isn’t blatant enough to be obvious to any repair person. The fact that it doesn’t happen all the time makes this even harder. So I suspect it won’t make sense to go through the telephone hell and send the machine in. But we have this Mac shop in town now who are authorised to do repair stuff, perhaps they can have a look at it and help me with that.
• Uh, and I used that new ‘anti-mooing’ firmware update by Apple. While it seems to solve the mooing problem, I also find that it makes the fan come on more quickly and at a louder level and then make it run for longer. My current impression is that this update isn’t necessarily for good but could just be Apple trying to cover their ass by playing it safe.
• Grrrr. While the firmware updater is quite elegant, it doesn’t look like I could undo that update. I should have thought this through and perhaps given the moo fix a try before going for the update…
• Next I want a tool which lets me run the processor at just 1GHz or at no more than 30% load to prevent the fan from going on… come on, all that Unixy goodness in the machine should let me do that!

August 19, 2006, 0:54