2002-08-24 - 12:44 a.m.
Through the process of trying to get settled in my new room off-campus, a certain determination to make it happen -- and make it happen right -- has sustained me and kept me through the chaos that has flooded virtually everything this past week.
Posting signs all over campus advertising a meeting at the Ham. Center couches, and only later noticing there aren't any, only one Hamilton Center Love Seat. ("Hamilton Center Love Seat" sounds like the title to a horrible porno movie.)
Anyway, I remember a sleep-deprived conversation with Uzi Baram, in which he told me if I gave him what I have of my ISP then he'll mark it "work all done," no problem. Then today, Friday, I was sitting down at my iMac to print out what I had, only to find it was not responding. I restarted Still nothing. After much restarting, I discovered that it seemed to be a problem with the display--specifically, it was cutting out as soon as it tried to load any extensions in the operating system.
I called Apple technical support, and the operator told me that it sounded like the moment it was cutting out was when it was trying to "mount the hard drive," so it probably was a hard drive problem, not display. Heart skipped a beat. It was either a hardware or software problem. If a hardware problem, it was still covered under my 1-year warranty; if software, I would have to pay $49 for technical support. I asked, and he confirmed, that I should hope to dear God that it was a software problem, because if it was a hardware problem then my data was lost. I gave him my credit card number.
So he took me through some steps that included unplugging the machine and taking the battery out. I reset the P-RAM at the open firmware prompt. Then I rebooted, and was soon greeted by smiling OS 9 one-and-a-half faces. I thanked him profusely (and wrote down these steps that are so simple and solve problems so common that he said some institutions perform them monthly). Hanging up, I wondered if this is the best $50 I spent for ten minutes, or the worst. Not that I've ever spent $50 for ten minutes before.
After assembling two new bookcases in my room and arranging my stuff around them, I settled down at my desk, left by the previous resident. It was so clean because I'd designated a place for everything and could sweep scrap right off. I felt a clould of sanity descend.
Just a couple of hours ago, the previous resident, Lee, came over and informed me that as her room in B-Dorm didn't have a desk, she was going to take hers back. I asked if Housing knew, and she said she'd told them right away but they hadn't given her one and she couldn't wait--she had an ISP to finish. I said I'm in the same boat and offered to buy it, but to no avail.
Even beyond the pale of campus, Housing has still managed to screw me.
