Category: Thoughts on Life

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Technology Update

Well, if you read my post earlier today, you know that my iMac is dead and that my iPod was having issues. After reinstalling QuickTime and iTunes, I let the iPod charge completely and also plugged in the iPod dock to one of the FireWire ports on the back of the Dell instead of the port on the front.

Something in that combination fixed my problem and iTunes has now synched up with the iPod and transferred all 2781 songs. So the iPod is once again fully functional. Now if only the iMac would magically start working again…

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On the death of an iMac

It appears my iMac is dead. It was getting a bit long in the tooth, I bought it in February of 2003 as a refurbished unit from Small Dog Electronics and it’s seen a lot of use since then, mainly as a web testing machine and iTunes jukebox. In any case it’s almost always turned on and doing something.

It locked up on me yesterday, it’s been doing that a lot recently. I let it sit for a while and the screen goes to black and I come back later and it won’t wake back up. I usually just turn it off and back on and all is well. Yesterday I did that and it kernel panicked.

I can’t even get the thing to boot off of a CD, making me think it’s a mainboard issue and not a RAM issue. I may try to get it fixed, or at least diagnosed to see if it’s worth it to even try. I found two Apple repair places in Columbia. One, MXN, is way overpriced for what I need. The second, MMCS will give me an estimate for $30. So we’ll probably be taking the iMac to them next week.

In the meantime, I manged to get my iTunes library moved over to the Dell. I tried copying straight from the iPod to the Dell using Xplay, but that didn’t work as planned. So I used MacDrive instead and copied my library over from my iMac backup drive. I lost maybe twenty songs that way, but at least my music is still usable.

Unfortunately, XPlay made my iPod go nuts and stop working. So I reformatted the iPod for Windows and tried to sync it back with the Dell. iTunes has hung up my computer every time I’ve tried this so far. So I uninstalled iTunes and Quicktime, installed Quicktime, upgraded it to Quicktime Pro and then re-downloaded and installed iTunes. Now I’m charging the iPod in the dock via the firewire port. I’m hoping that a fully charged iPod will behave better. I can hope right?

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Snow

I’ve confirmed that Missouri is a Midwestern state and not Southern. One, nobody has a drawl around here (except me sometimes) and two, it’s cold. The temperature has been below freezing for a week and now there’s at least a couple inches of snow on the ground.

I like snow in the mountains were I can look out my window and say, “Yep they got snow in the mountains.” I also like the occasional dusting of snow to make things look wintery. Actual, laying on ground snow is not fun, especially now that I walk with crutches.

East Tennessee is supposed get this storm too, but there it’s 40 degrees instead of 16, so it will be mostly rain there. That I can live with.

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Thoughts on Tennessee, Missouri and the Ph.D

I got an email today that latest edition of the UT SIS Alumni Newsletter was online. It looks like SIS is finally getting some focus and direction thanks to the new director, Ed Cortez. The focus is pretty heavy on information science and technology, but they’ve still got some library focused items in the works too. Still, I’d like to be a fly on the wall at the faculty meetings. The faculty meetings I attended during 2004-2005 were very interesting. It was like nobody wanted to make any major decisions without a permanent director in place.

To be fair, the entire College of Communication and Information was in a bit of an upheaval during my time as a doctoral student and still doesn’t have a permenant dean yet. I picked a bad time to get a Ph.D I guess. My whole time there the Ph.D program was supposedly being revised. Believe me it needs it. The program is 87 hours semester hours, and 27 hours of that was a required core. Of course my primary concentration was information sciences and all of my master’s work counted toward that, so subtract 15 hours and you have 72 hours.

72 hours for Ph.D that was primarily communications stuff that I wasn’t that interested in and I didn’t have to and really couldn’t take that many more information science classes. Plus there was that nice involuntary break I took for a while. So I was looking for greener pastures when the Missouri opportunity appeared (see earlier post).

The SISLT Ph.D program is more library oriented and definately fits my interests better. The program is also shorter, 57 hours, and six of my UT credits will transfer, bringing me down to 51 hours. So I’ll still finish the degree here in about the same time a would have finished the UT degree had I not been forced into the extended vacation. So I haven’t lost that much time.

The program and the degree are good, even if I’m still a bit unsure about what to do with the degree once I have it. I do know that staying in Missouri isn’t an option. I would like mountains, hills and trees and more moderate weather. It’s 29 degrees now and this summer it was regularly over 95 degrees. Not exactly the climate I’m used to.

Stephanie and I really want to go back to Tennessee, or at least back to the area (North Carolina, Virginia etc.) so that may limit my teaching opportunities. And I’m not sure I like the odd and irregular schedule of a professor either. I’d greatly prefer the more regular schedule that working in a library would bring. Only time will tell.

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My car is back

My car is finally back. It took a little more work and a few more parts than expected to remove the electronic shifter box and put my car back to normal. Shifting with the regular shifter is a little awkward right now but nothing practice won’t fix. And it is nice to know that my car will actually shift into drive when you want it to.

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Update on Life

The past week on so has been nuts. It started last Friday, we were taking care of a friend’s cats Friday, named George and Gracie. Taking care of the cats was no problem. Gracie didn’t come out too much but George was friendly. However, the electronic push button shifter box in my car decided it wouldn’t let the car shift out of drive. We got a ride home Friday night and got the car towed Saturday morning.

We also went car shopping for Stephanie Saturday afternoon, she’s started growing and the Kia is getting difficult to drive. We found a car, a hunter green 1999 Toyota Camry LE. We paid for it Monday afternoon and got it Monday night, it had to get inspected and worked on a bit before we got it.

Tuesday we went and checked on my car. I wanted the shifter box taken out of my car. I didn’t really need it anyway and I’d prefer my car not get stuck like that again. But taking it out seems to be easier said than done. Apparently, in addition the shifter box being an expensive piece of junk, the original shifter cable needs a connector replaced so it can get put back to normal. I probably won’t get my car back until next week. But we ordered hand controls and a steering knob for Stephanie’s new car, so if my car is ever out of commission again it least I’ll be able to drive something else.

Yesterday we got Stephanie’s tags transferred to the Toyota. Then we got new tires for it. That made for a long day.

Today we saw Serenity. Good movie and a nice continuation of the Firefly TV series.

After we got back from the movie Stephanie got a call from the doctor. She might have an infection, she goes to get the test rerun tomorrow. Hopefully the test just got messed up, but better safe than sorry.

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New crutches

Got a new set of crutches today. The Surefoot crutches I had been using were bigger, heavier and really starting to get in the way. The new crutches are Walk Easy Model 450. These are the total opposite of of the Surefoots. Smaller, lighter, and much less bulky. Once I get used to them the new crutches should make walking a lot less tiring.

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Walking to class

Wow, 3 days and 3 posts to my blog. I haven’t been this consistent in a while.

Anyway today left the wheel chair in the trunk and I walked to class. And really the wheelchair is no faster than walking with crutches. The only advantages the chair has are that when I get tired I can stop and rest very easily and I can be pushed by someone else if needed. But with the crutches I can take more direct routes than looking for the wheelchair accessible doors, etc.

I finally decided that the wheelchair is a convenience, not a necessity 95% of the time. Sure I get worn out using the crutches. But I got worn out using the chair too. My left knee is very unhappy with me from all the walking, but that’s nothing new. So from now on I with be walking a lot more and wheeling a lot less. Hopefully it will just get easier from here.

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