Moses Santiago of Amsterdam, FKO, Folbotforum, Facebook, and 360.yahoo.com has uploaded one of his songs to YouTube. As soon as the song began to play on the computer here, little Seventy-Six smiled and began to dance (while leaning on something for support). I will say that my own heart when I followed it, like that of Hoffmann, led me more than once badly astray. Here is the song, sung from within a green canal boat in the watery heart of Amsterdam:
Monthly Archives: February 2009
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D Problems
Compared to what I’d been using, the subject-line referenced optical drive is amazingly fast, but balked at burning photo CDs and DVDs. Toast versions 7 & 9 returned error codes, as did OS X.4.11’s folder burn function.
Playtime
Perhaps the most personally distressing drive glitch was it’s failure to play through Jaques Tati’s masterpiece film, Playtime – which snagged at one of the scenes inside the soulless commercial emporium, and again during the early scenes in the five star restaurant. On the merits of the restaurant scenes alone I recommended my friends at the Flatiron Cafe rent, buy, or somehow acquire and watch the movie.
The thing about cinematographs is they are expected to tell a story using moving pictures and, at this point in the development of the art, sound synced with those moving pictures. But if you mute the volume on whatever device you’re using to watch one of these moving picture stories, you will notice if you are observant that much of the action consists of shots of the actor’s mouths moving. And that is what passes for acting in too many instances – an actor repeating a writer’s output with inflection, cadence, sometimes pronunciation added. Thus a story told booklike using the written word, as opposed to an oral tradition using information acquired aurally.
Tati’s films, on the other hand, present stories told in moving pictures and sound with dialogue incidental to the action. Like a good silent film with sound, color, some dialogue. Subtitles are not really necessary to enjoy his work.
All of Tati’s atmosphere people are noteworthy for some physical characteristic that may include body language and gait. In the restaurant scene he makes one fashion plate glide, but that is a trick that must have been accomplished by pulling her through the scene on a hidden dolly.
Solving the Problem
I searched for a solution to the Toast “sense-code” problems, as well as for information about problems with this model optical drive. I checked in at Brock Kyle’s excellent resource, EveryMac.Com and posted a query to the forum there. I contacted by telephone a customer service rep at MacOfAllTrades.Com, and followed up by sending screenshots of a couple of the frequent sense codes in Toast 7 and 9, as well as the steps I’d taken to correct the problem.
Toast 7 Error Code
Toast 9 Error Code
What finally worked was running a several years old Maxell lens cleaning disc in the drive for about sixty seconds. The continuous high pitched tone produced thereby attracted the attention of little Seventy-Six, but apparently caused him no distress.
My email exchange with Cathi Davis at Mac of All Trades resulted in her stating she would send me out a replacement drive, even though I’d informed her the lens cleaner had apparently resolved the problem. That’s pretty good customer service.
Csattanuga Csu Csu
Here is the touching, funny, poignant cinematographic work that started it all…
Also leaving the station at Facebook.
Just Monkeying Around
Stayed Up Late
A blessed event - not a new baby, new boat, or paid day off, but still noteworthy, and good
I had some time to flex-off, to use the jargon of the office, yesterday morning, so I drove to the UPS hub and picked up the new Power Mac G5. One of those deliveries that required signature, and who knew when the truck would arrive at our house with the new machine. I didn’t want to have to wait until next week sometime to get started using it. MacOfAllTrades sent it in packaging that made me hope they’d made some sort of error and sent me an even better machine than the one I’d ordered, but they’re just opportunistic packagers. It was all I could do to defer gratification and go on in to work after.
Christov's Laboratory - Using Apple's settings transfer utility after booting the old machine in Target Disk Mode
Last night, messing around with the new computer, applying four or five rounds of SoftwareUpdate, I didn’t get to bed until around eleven. Late for me. I’m thinking through how to get the information from a second hard drive into the new machine – Target Disk only acquires the boot drive of the connected machine.
Probably will network the two machines via ethernet after connecting the MDD to the Windows sandbox’s monitor, then drag and drop about 30 gb from the Media Warehouse hard drive. All my games are on that drive, too.
New Power Mac in the Family
Innards? Innerds? What is the correct spelling?
Monday I bought a new computer to replace our current Dual 1.0Ghz Mirror Drive Door Power Mac. Burning DVDs slowly on Sunday convinced me it was time to upgrade to a more recent slightly obsolete Macintosh. I found a good deal over at Mac of All Trades on a scratch-and-dent Power Mac G5 – 2Gb ram, dual 2.3 Ghz processors, 250Gb hard drive. Oddly enough, this machine has fewer expansion bays than our current machine that, at its peak, was operating with four hard drives (then one dropped dead).
Christov's New Mac Will Look Like This
RUF Hymnbook
Many thanks to Daryl Luna for sending around this link:
Stolen Images
Here’re a couple of images I swiped from a Facebook event page. Pretty funny. I thought they were funny. Deadpool’s like a Spiderman gone horribly, but comedically, wrong. Godzilla and the plastic monsters are plastic monsters with a plan.
Funny Guy
Plastic Monsters with a Plan
Christov Thinks Cortisone Injections Hurt Like The Dickens
My Eyes
Yesterday, I drove to Franklin in the morning for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of my painful shoulder, hoping the diagnosis would be something other than rotator cuff tear-through. But first, the technician wanted to X-Ray my eyes. Chin up, to the target, stand still, hold breath, done. No metal shavings or bits of shrapnel found.
The MRI wasn’t bad. I’m not claustrophobic anyway, and the machine used was one of the “open” variety. The tech made me comfortable and immobile with foam bits, rolled cloths, sandbags. Pretty easy to relax thus supported, and since I used to find the diesel clatter of my long lost ’79 Volkswagen diesel Rabbit comforting, I was easily lulled into semi-sleep trancelike state by the machine in which I lay still.
Time to kill between finishing the MRI and consulting with the doctor; two and half to three hours. Helpful techs told me how to find Main Street, and I made my way to Binks outdoor store off the square. 400 block of Main St. Parallel parked with ease to the apparent astonishment of staring lunchtime patrons sitting torpid outside a sham Irish pub. One great skill acquired in my misspent Southern California youth.
No paddling gear whatsoever in this store
Binks has all of their sleeping bags and tents marked down 40%, which would’ve been great if they weren’t so high to begin with. Absolutely NO paddling gear in the store. Disappointed, I looked around for awhile eating some snacks I’d brought from home, and bought nothing. Still hungry, I walked toward the square in search of something quick and light. Stopped into one of those groovy, gritty bar/cafes catering to low-level, younger salesmen in ill-fitting suits who wish to see themselves as edgy. Sol or Sol’s, I think it was called. Mexican or Southwest theme. Supertall blonde barmaid or waitress gave me a lunch menu. I ordered a “broth-based, Mexican” soup with pork. Not bad, it had a little too much thickener, which detracted from the otherwise palatable seasoning.
I sat at a table from which I could look out the front window at the Ben & Jerry’s Ice-Cream store or bar or whatever it is you call a place where the public buys and consumes ice-cream. The store was closed. Struck me as odd. Sunny Thursday early afternoon people walking about, and the ice-cream store is closed. I noticed a nondescript female enter and leave the building by the front door, locking it after her each time with a key she held at waist-level and close to her body.
I read part of a day-old Tennessean, mouthpiece of the local Democrat party, and particularly of the incumbent Democrat governor. “Governer Bredesen Fires Back at Critics,” blah, blah, blah.
Time to go. The agency that employs me has a facility in Franklin, and I drove over there to say hello to a colleague, but everyone there was out to lunch, so I stuck a note of greeting on the door and headed back to the doctor’s office.
I needn’t have been in such a hurry. My appointment was at 2:00 pm, and I didn’t get taken back to an exam room until about 3:45. Another 20 minutes or so before the doctor came back, and we were able to discuss the MRI.
Here’s an exchange from my Facebook profile – I’d changed my status to this blog-post’s title:
My younger brother said,
Dude . . . I had one in my elbow and thought I was going to come unglued.
My friend Cathie said,
Poor babies…try childbirth
My mom said,
Did you get one in your shoulder?
I replied, after awakening around 12:30 am with 7 out of 10 pain in my cortisone injected shoulder and wishing for Lortab or some other highly addictive pain-killer,
Yeah, my shoulder. Dr. F said he thought there might be, but wasn’t sure, full thickness tear in the r-cuff. Said if the cortisone didn’t completely clear it up to schedule surgery.
The doctor distracted me by asking questions about the slim but weighty volume I had with me – Englesma’s Common Grace Revisited. The acts of organizing and articulating my thoughts helped a lot.
Let me tell you, the pain of the injection is NOTHING compared to the pain that awakened me two hours ago and has kept me awake since. This pain eats Ibuprofen like a seven year-old eats Halloween candy.
With my right hand, I had to lift my left hand to the keyboard to write.
I was able to drive home from Williamson Co. with no difficulty or pain, but couldn’t stay awake past 8:30 pm. Woke up as noted above.
I rejoice to say childbirth is one pain I will never experience.
My friend K v K said (bee-sting? lucky guy)
I had a cortisone shot for my sciatica. It felt like a bee sting, but didn’t do a thing for the sciatica! Ugh!
Like Zoolander’s Half-Witted Friends
Wake me up before you go go
Christov_Tenn 