HomeDecember 10, 1997
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Monday: MacTCP's tricksWhat kind of an error message is "MacTCP is up to its old tricks again"? Making error messages "user-friendly" is one thing, but making them colloquial but empty of information is another thing. No e-mail, no journal reading or posting, no nuthin'. Different error message every time though. The others were more obscure and less cute. No time to deal with it anyway. I spent the rest of the day cleaning house because my cleaning lady didn't show up on Thursday and the place was a mess. Can't have that with Joan-west visiting. So I cleaned and bought groceries and whatever all else one does to allay the anxiety of having a house-guest when you're convinced your house is totally inadequate. When I finally got the house spiffy and the fridge stocked with organic new age groceries and Tibetan Root Beer, I set to the task of finding the MacOS 8 CD to reinstall MacTCP. Oh, did I mention that simply restoring the settings using the script provided by my ISP succeeded only in changing the error message, not fixing the problem? So I reinstalled it. Different error message. Reinstalled again. Success. Also bedtime. Thus endeth Monday. Tuesday: Italian grammar and Thai noodlesTuesdayJoan-west arrived in Boston Monday night and stayed with another friend. She called Tuesday morning just as I was about to get into the shower. We agreed to meet after my therapy appointment. Over coffee after therapy, Joan-west mentions she wants an Italian grammar book and an Italian-English dictionary - oh, I think I forgot to mention the reason for this visit is she's moving to Italy in January for a 7 year masters program in Buddhist Studies and wants to visit with friends east and west before she leaves. Since I hadn't made any particular plan for what to do on Tuesday afternoon I suggested maybe we could go to Schoenhoff's Foreign Books in Harvard Square. This evolved into a lunch and shopping expedition. noodlesFirst lunch. Ma-Soba Pan Asian noodle joint. Pad Thai and a huge steaming bowl of miso/tofu/bean paste soup. Soup too salty. Pad Thai good. Joan-west also thought the soup was too salty. She had Singapore noodles. Also good. Big bottles of Sriracha sauce on the tables. A good sign in a Pan Asian restaurant. Italian grammarNext foreign books. While Joan browsed the Italian section, I looked at the Icelandic section. Much smaller. I'm always on the lookout for a bilingual edition of Icelandic or Norwegian poetry for Nancy so I browsed languages I am clueless about - not that I'm clueful about any language anymore - including English - but it's fun to browse. I noticed some computer terminology dictionaries in various languages, so I browsed for a Croatian one for Rita (she translates English-Croatian/Croatian English in addition to Latvian - sometimes she does work for the same company my brother works for in Bosnia and she's been wanting a technical dictionary for some time) but didn't find one. Suddenly I don't feel well at all. No rest room. I dash back across the street to Ma-Soba and use theirs. After a long time in the rest room, I return to the bookstore, but still don't feel tip-top. Joan found a good Italian grammar and a nice dictionary so she paid for those and we left. Tea at Tealuxe seemed to help so I was revitalized for browsing at Wordsworth and checking out some galleries. I bought a copy of Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine, which I've been wanting to read since I heard her on NPR. I voted for a quiet dinner at home instead of trying any new restaurants, and I drove, so only my vote counts... :-) no snowAll day yesterday the weather forecasters predicted snow starting at dawn. Then starting this afternoon. It was going to be a light dusting. It was going to be a northeaster. Everybody's making plans for snow. Joan made plans to spend the night with a friend in Boston instead of coming back here. The idea was I'd drop her off at the train station on my way to the cat shelter and then pick her up tomorrow. I got up early and laid out a nice breakfast - making the Cheerios festive for company with a few dried cranberries and cashews. It's not snowing. In fact the sky is clear and there's not even a hint of snow in the air. We were ready to leave in plenty of time for me to get to the shelter at 9:00. Except, Joan can't find her wallet. I practically took the car apart searching, while Joan took my office/guest room apart. After a fruitless hour or so searching for the wallet and reconstructing every step since leaving Harvard Square, we declare the wallet to be lost. By this time Joan has called her friend in Boston and I've called the shelter letting everyone know we're late. The good thing about getting to the shelter late is that all the dishes were already removed from the cages and waiting for me in the sink. So much more efficient than waiting for small batches as the cages get cleaned. And instead of exchanging every litter box in the place, the one volunteer on cages today simply scooped most of them and only exchanged the really dirty ones, so I had fewer to wash. As I was folding some laundry, Maui walked by dragging her butt on the floor. I looked at her to see what was wrong. She rolled over and tried to clean herself. Ick! She's covered with poop. Dawna and Eileen had to cut off some of her long hair and give her a bath in the sink - I'd already finished the dishes so this is not as gross as it sounds. But Eileen and I often fantasize about the ideal shelter where we have two sinks. Anyway, getting Maui all cleaned up was a big production. Jaguar was in a terrible mood, picking fights with any and all comers, feline or human. He even snarled and swiped at Dawna. This is more like the old Jaguar of two years ago, not the new improved mellow Jaguar. Is it the approaching snowstorm bothering him? Who knows? Lots of snarling and hissing and fighting today. The cats are uptight. Roberta is not here so Slinky is in a bad mood. It's almost 1:00 when I leave. There's still laundry to do, but the dishes and litterboxes are washed, dried, and put away. It's not snowing yet. I was supposed to have lunch at Rita's but I just stopped by and had coffee because I have so much stuff to do. I felt rushed - like having coffee with Rita was one more thing to check off my to do list, not the pleasure it usually is. radioNow the weathermen are predicting the snow will start at midnight and it will be 1 to 3 inches. I drive over to Petco for Feline Maintenance Light. Back home I hunt around for the wallet just in case. No luck. Joan calls to ask if I've found the wallet. Nope. I look for the picture I promised Paul Marion. Can't find that either. Now that can't have vanished. I look at the Mac Connection catalog to price a new scanner. I haven't dared to plug my scanner in since it wouldn't shut off the other day and smelled like it was burning. I don't really know if it's broken, but I thought I ought to get a nice flat bed scanner with slide attachment if I'm going to do "serious" photo work. I write the above portions of the entry for today and decide to browse the web first for some info about a show called Northern Lights that I heard on WBUR in the middle of the night. I am interested because they played parts of Glenn Gould's radio documentary The Idea of North.. WBUR's home page hangs my Mac. In fact, pushing the reset button doesn't even work. Norton Crashguard doesn't activate. I end up turning off the power strip to every thing on this side of the room. That fixes it. When I reboot, my work is all nicely saved, so the Now Utilities did their job. Nancy calls to ask if it's snowing here. It's not. It's snowing in Rhode Island though. We talk for awhile then watch Ellen then talk again. I forget about posting today's entry. I'm still awake at midnight. It's still not snowing. |
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