| Saturday,
April 5, 3008 0600: A good night's sleep! I'm awake now, with
mild indigestion and some pulse pounding when I get up and move around, but
by and large I got to sleep at midnight and while I woke twice I was able to
get back to sleep each time quickly. A good night's sleep!
No new subscriptions during the night. Should I worry? There usually have
been...
Maybe I can get some work done today. There is plenty enough to do.
==============
Organizing
I have successfully activated XP and Office 2007 Ultimate on Imogene the
iMac 20 booted up in Boot Camp to be an XP. She's a very crisp XP machine,
and she sees every other machine on the network.
I need to reorganize the way I deal with documents now, but this is all
working very well. There's a story that goes with activation of XP; that
will be in the column. Incidentally, the way to boot in Windows on the Mac
is to restart, hold the Option Key, and choose the Windows partition when
offered a choice. You will then find that your Wireless Keyboard will not
work and have to go fish out your Mac keyboard and plug it in or you will
never log in. Oddly enough the wireless mouse did work. This argues that I
may need a wired Mac Comfort Curve keyboard for Imogene. Are there any such
things? Does Microsoft make a wired Comfort Curve Keyboard for the Mac?
Or not: because once I got XP going all right, the Wireless Laser
Keyboard works just fine, and I have disconnected the Apple Keyboard.
So all that is going well. Now, though, I need some brain work: I need to
organize the way I store documents and current work so that what I am
working on is easily not only backed up but copied to any machine I am
likely to be working on. At the moment I have been using a directory called
Winword that stores 550m MB of documents, just about everything I have ever
worked on, and I use xcopy c:\winword
destination\winword /e/s/d/y to copy the whole schmear to laptops, new
computers, and anything else I am likely to use for work; as well as to copy
that directory to the box of drives that serves as a backup server.
I suppose I could continue this practice. It has the great merit of
keeping just about everything I am doing in one place. It has the
disadvantage of needing cleanup at intervals, and not being recognized by
any other backup scheme except what's in my head. It certainly doesn't take
advantage of the "Documents" fooferaw that some backups schemes make use of.
I need to think; and I don't feel too stupid, so perhaps I can.
What I need is two places to store documents, one for those reasonably
assumed to be DONE, the other for those reasonably assumed to be under
construction and revision. Then, I guess, I move them from one the the other
as indicated: new requirement to work on a document, move that one's folder
to the current document works folder, and when done with it move it back?
But that requires cleanup of all the other places.
My problem is that I use a lot of computers in my work. I carry a laptop
up to the Monk's Cell when I work on fiction. When I work down here, lately
I have been using Imogene the iMac. I create documents on Khaos, the MacBook
Air. I am about to set up the MacBook Pro as my "travelling" MAC machine
(along with Khaos, of course) if I go down to the beach house or elsewhere,
but for safety I will also take the IBM T42p ThinkPad as well. And sometimes
I do a bit of final cleanup of columns on the communications machine
(currently Alexis, but that will change).
It's a complicated mess, and I need to figure out a better structure.
Meanwhile, I can report that an iMac 20" makes a very nice PC running XP,
but I doubt she's very happy about having to do that.
================
1200:
Back from our walk. My eyes don't focus well, and I get some of the pulse
pounding in my right ear. That's a bit scary. I also note that my weight is
up by a couple of pounds this morning, meaning that I have to pay attention
to portion control; I can't just eat all I want (which I sort of had to do
to keep from losing weight during the Zaps). That shouldn't be a problem. My
brain is a bit fogged, but I have more ambition and gumption; certainly more
than yesterday. But almost any random day of my life would have been better
energy-wise than yesterday. Today is far, far better.
It has been suggested by a couple of Platinum subscribers that I think
about starting up the old monthly "A Step Farther Out" column; a general
report on the sciences or some monthly science news, with an annual "State
of the Sciences" essay. I confess I liked doing that. I can likely find a
publisher, although it won't make much money: Exactly the sort of thing
having subscribers will allow me to do if it's worth doing.
And by gollies, I am beginning to think about fiction again. Of course I
am way behind on a lot of other stuff just now, but I'll catch up. For the
first time since the Zaps stopped I am beginning to believe I will get back
to full productivity.
I need to think on the new work schedule. First, though, I really do need
to invent a new document storage structure.
==============
And I have this:
This works for me, might for you...
When I reboot my Mac into Windows my Bluetooth
wireless keybaord (I use the new Apple one) does not work. However, if you
just turn it off and on and then tap any keys until you see your password
"blob" characters appearing, it is working again. (Just delete the rubbish
you typed and type your actual password.) No need for attaching wired
keyboards.
Hope this helps and best wishes,
-Ian Cottam
Which I will try. I did the push the buttons on the keyboard and the
receiver after XP came up; my problem was that I couldn't get the password
into XP and ctl-alt-del did nothing. Sigh. But I will not often boot in XP
anyway.
Turn it off and on? How? There is no switch I know of; the only way to
turn it off is to remove the batteries. Is that what you mean?
==========
Now to do all the updates and get Imogene out of XP and back into Mac OS
X where she belongs...
Hmmm. Microsoft wants to update Office 2007 Ultimate. With SP-1. This
doesn't sound good. I am going to let it do that, but I suspect that it will
break something. Very interesting. We will see what happens...
1240: Windows and Office updated, Microsoft Live One Care installed,
booting in XP again. The Wireless keyboard worked perfectly this time. We
are entering Windows XP. Now to try out Office 2oo7 to be sure they didn't
break it.
It does take a while for things to come up in Windows on a Mac. Slower
than my other comparable systems, I think. But there are things to install,
so perhaps it's not so surprising. And this is a new One Care so that's
taking up time. And it's time for lunch. When I get all this done I can boot
up in Mac OS X.
====================
1710:
Imogene is back up as a Mac, and I am firing up Windows XP under VMware.
It seems to be working fine, both as Mac and as a PC.
I ran out of energy at 1600 and took a nap. Worked, too. Symptoms
abating. Still head full of mush, ears ring, but all told things seem better
than yesterday. Way better than yesterday, when I had so little energy I
didn't want to get up. Today I didn't have enough energy or gumption or both
to assemble Roxilana, the new Quad 6600, even though all the parts are just
sitting there and it's only a matter of some assembly and running the ISO
DVD; but I did get XP running properly on the iMac, and Office Ultimate 2007
now run both under Boot Camp and VMware. This is the way things ought to be.
Next step: get Outlook 2007 running under VMware on the iMac, thus
turning the iMac into a communications machine. Whether or not I'll use
that, or Entourage (The Outlook analog in Word 2008) is yet to be
determined. My usual practice is to have one machine dedicated to
communications, and a second to writing and games and just about everything
else. When I get a dual quad Mac Pro I will in effect have a single machine
capable of all that, and I can reassess the situation.
And I continue to do a lot of silly things so you don't have to. At the
moment the report is that Macs are pretty good stuff even if you're a PC
user...
And now to do the taxes. The goal is to get far enough that we can head
to the beach place (a condo we bought way back when real estate in San Diego
was cheap) and spend a few days vegetating and recuperating. I look forward
to doing nothing but watching cormorants and terns and taking long walks,
and letting the ocean air clear my head out. I'll have to set the Mac Book
Pro up along with the ThinkPad; between them I will have enough computing
power.
=============
2155: We had corned beef and cabbage for dinner and went to a movie where
I ate too much popcorn, but the indigestion isn't too bad. My eyes could
focus on the screen -- Miss Pettigrew, and Amy Adams is wonderful as usual
-- but not on anything closer than a couple of feet. It's hard to work, but
I can drive. And still, it was good to get out, and I don't feel bad at all.
A bit agitated, and frustrated by the ears ringing and head full of mush,
but everything changes every few minutes, so all I have to do is wait a
while. Symptoms will change.
Earlier just before dinner the iMac acted up. The MAIL icon jiggled.
Clicking on it got a mysterious message about a certificate. OK on that
(didn't seem to have anything else I could do) got a demand for my .mac
account password. I gave it the wrong one three times (thinking I was giving
the right one of course) and kept getting bounced. In black anger I used the
power switch, a bad habit. Imogene came back up without any demand for any
stinking passwords of any kind, and MAIL works just fine now. This doesn't
make a very great deal of sense. It does confirm the adage: if someone has
physical access to your machine, it's not really yours any more.
And the pulse pounding in my ear is stronger again. That's the one
symptom that scares me. Since it goes away sometimes I am pretty sure it
will vanish in recuperation. I can hardly wait...
=================
Charlton Heston, RIP.
<http://www.latimes.com/la-me-heston6apr06,0,3675317.story>
- Roland Dobbins
I only met him three times, I think. Once at a dinner with General Graham
in Washington on the anniversary of High Frontier, and once when we were
both at an awards dinner of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and
Horror Films. I forget the other time. An agency party, perhaps.
At the Academy we were both presenting awards and found ourselves at the
head table with no one else around on our end. This was at the Palladium,
years ago when Oscars were given at the Palladium. We were on a high dais
facing the audience. The Chairman was supposed to be on my left, but was off
doing things, and Heston was on my right, with no one beyond him, so we had
only each other to talk to during dinner.
We talked about a lot of things. I asked about his career, and he said it
was largely getting breaks, but then he added, "Of course you have to be
ready to take advantage of breaks."
"Hah," said I. "In the last analysis, luck comes only to the well
prepared."
"Von Moltke," said Heston. "I read military history too."
We got on well after that. One of the actors getting an award was William
Marshall. When the dinner and ceremonies were over, and everyone was
standing up to leave, there appeared Marshall's son, aged about nine, at the
far side of the room, and in a high piping voice he said "Dr. Pournelle, my
daddy said I could get you to sign my favorite book in all this world!" And
across the room he came, carrying, prominently displayed, a paperback copy
of Escape From The Planet Of The Apes. (I wrote the novelization of the
screen play as a work for hire; I needed the money.)
He brought it across the room and handed it up to me. I chatted with him
a bit, inscribed the book and signed it, and handed it back with a smile and
thanks.
Heston looked at me and said "I got an Oscar for no better performance
than that..."
Charlton Heston, RIP
================
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