Knocks

[jere7my]

Now that I pause to look back at it, there was a lot crammed into the last week. The assault and pursuit at my theater, local newshounds, Kendra's invitation to interview at Oberlin, the arrival of my new computer, renewed interest in Kendra from Depauw University, and, last night, a cop knocking at my door with a subpoena.

I'm to testify at Mr. Elrod's preliminary trial this Wednesday at 1PM. This will be in-court testimony for a criminal trial, which should make an interesting contrast with the out-of-court deposition for a civil trial I gave last month. I'm not entirely convinced this isn't a prank; the subpoena came with a photocopied MapQuest map to the courthouse, and "Ann Arbor" had been misspelled and typed over so it looked like "Ann Arboots". But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and show up.

The knock that came on Thursday brought my iMac with it, my present to myself for paying off my student loans and credit cards, and I've been having a very nearly continuous geek orgasm since then. Specs: 17" flat panel screen, 1.25GHz CPU, 1GHz RAM, 160GB hard drive, SuperDrive. This is the first time I've ever used a Mac that exceeded my reach; windows seem to glide across the screen on a layer of thin clear oil. Thursday I was downloading Mozilla, ripping CDs, importing JPEGs to iPhoto, typing in Eudora, experimenting with SoundStudio, and listening to music at the same time without any perceptible slowdown. The screen is as wide as my shoulders. I feel a little unworthy, like I'm too scruffy to sit behind the wheel of the BMW I bought. Her name is Penemue.

No computer setup process can ever be completely pleasant, of course. In this case, the chief frustration came from the UMich dial-in service, which has been intermittently losing PAP verification service: for a while on Thursday, and from 11PM on last night. This meant no logging in, which meant no downloading the ten million bits of software I need, and no ripping CDs (since iTunes needs to contact the CDDB for each CD I insert); I spent most of last night checking every five minutes to see if I could connect yet, and growing more and more frustrated. Also, I discovered I need a new word processor (and a way to translate my WordPerfect files to the new format), my camera's USB card reader isn't being recognized, I can only connect to my old computers by launching the old Chooser within the Classic environment, etc., etc. But I've imported all of my ten thousand photos into iPhoto, configured Eudora and iCab the way I like them, ripped about 10% of my CD collection, copied over and organized most of my old files; it's been pretty smooth, overall.

(The logging-in difficulty explains the dearth of updates the last couple of days, incidentally.)

In news not starting with a lower case "i":

Thursday evening's dance class was a disappointment. We were without melody players again, so I had no opportunities to play. Too bad, since I was having one of those rare nights when my guitar felt like an organic extension of my hands; my fingers knew exactly where to go. I think I should stop changing my strings; whenever I have new strings, nobody else shows up. I had a nice talk with Britta, but I'm beginning to feel like my flirtations are bouncing off a wall: not that she's rejecting them, but that she's not really socially equipped to notice or respond to them. Hmm.

Yesterday I did a little Filemaker work for the Michigan Theater, in the little cluttered office tucked beneath the grand staircase. Someone was practicing on the organ while I worked, so I had a rich, deep backdrop of sound rolling through me. I met Kendra in Borders afterward and we walked home together, exulting in the spring air and (in my case) the reemergence of bare shoulders and tight shirts. On the way, we picked up small-label sodas (a Sprecher's root beer for Kendra, an Iron Horse cream soda for me) to go with the artichoke-bacon-and-feta pizza I made, then watched Wonderfalls together. ("This show is too smart to last," Kendra remarked.) Kendra got a surprise email from Depauw, saying their first round of candidates had fallen through, and they might like to talk to Kendra on April 9th. (On April 8th she visits Oberlin. Good timing.)

Today we investigated the new Trader Joe's, which was being investigated by most of the rest of Ann Arbor when we were there. We went a little overboard; we walked away with three kinds of ravioli (crabmeat, avocado, and gorgonzola), dried mangos, five or six cheeses, frozen pizzas, and (on the advice of kelilah) chocolate-orange sticks, among other things. Should be a delicious week.

I'm currently at work, preparing for the onslaught of Rocky Horror. Hordes of young women in fishnets and lingerie = good; stress and noise and the constant smell of smoke and b.o. = bad. I'm pretty worn out from the week I've had; not the best state to be in when I need to work until 3AM. And my fingers itch to get back to Penemue.

Comments

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

My eyes *popped out of my head* at "at the same time". Truly, the abilities of modern computing, I know them not. My computer nearly crashed just reading the list.

Can you really not rip cds without an internet connection, or just not if you want to have it download information?

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

Yay for Penemue! (I was about to ask where the name came from, but a quick Google suggests that "Penemue was the fallen angel who taught man the forbidden knowledge of writing," so I'm guessing that's it? Like Prometheus for literature. Cool idea, good name.)

One of the many things I like about OS X (or maybe I mean about iTunes) is that it's set up so that playing music is a high priority for the CPU -- you can listen to iTunes while doing just about anything else and you won't get interruptions in the music. (I do get interruptions once in a while, but very rarely.)

[flammifera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was about to ask where Penemue came from, too. I guess when I hear something I don't recognize from a friend (rather than just randomly), my first instinct is to ask them, rather than search.

huh, cool.