Update...

[meanfreepath]

The last few days have been somewhat hectic and crazy; I'll summarize.

Thursday was basically occupied by the project of assembling the storage bed I had bought in New Jersey. The instructions were long, but fortunately very clear. I also assembled a swivel chair whose instructions were not so clear, and managed to do some unpacking.

Friday was comparatively unproductive; I spent some time cleaning out the kitchen, and doing a little more unpacking.

Yesterday was relatively eventful. metaplasmus and I went shopping for furniture. We looked for a futon for the den at Bedworks in Central Square. We also went out to Allston to College Furniture and Rug, which sells extremely cheap furniture. There, we bought a much-needed round table for the kitchen as well as a kitchen stand. Alas, when we tried to assemble the stand, it turned that one board had pilot holes drilled in the wrong place. Fortunately, David Van Stone was kind enough to lend me a power drill, and conveniently enough, he lives minutes from our place.

The Harvard frosh arrived with their parents yesterday; I ran into hordes of people towing luggage and lugging boxes as I walked down Oxford Street, the route I'll be commuting, for the first time. Today there was some kind of speaker who came in accompanied by a heavily armed motorcade, with SUV's with black-suited guards brandishing assault rifles out the windows; I was nearly struck down by a Cambridge police motorcycle when an officer prematurely signalled me to cross the street.

I also went to Mass at St. Paul's Church near Harvard Square this morning. This deserves a longer post soon.

The reason why I'm not writing about church now is that my computer has been flaky recently. On Friday night, after my iBook had been on for a few hours, it started making a low, deep, humming noise not unlike a power saw in the distance. I ignored it at first, but soon everything started to run slowly. I had to forcibly turn off the computer, and when I tried to turn it back on, it would not start up. Saturday morning, it was fine. Saturday night, again after some time, the computer started making noise again, and I immediately shut it down. It was fine again this morning and is working as I type. I suspect the problem is a hard drive; when I took it to the Apple Store in Cambridgeport today, they recommended I purchase an external hard drive for backup. They also suggested another place to bring the computer to, which will be able to replace the internal hard drive more quickly and more cheaply than they would be able to. So now it seems that I will be faced with a rather large sum I'll have to spend to get this computer healthy. I'll do the backup tonight and try to get it over to that place in the morning.

Comments

computer

[jedibl.livejournal.com]

Sorry I didn't call you back. I was out of town this weekend, and didn't have my cell phone charger with me, so I couldn't get in touch. What's happening with your computer does sound remarkably like what happened with my computer. One thing I noticed was that by holding the computer at an angle, it would speed back up again/start working again. Knowing this was particularly useful for when I was trying to back up the harddrive -- I had to wedge it in place at the appropriate angle in order for the data transfer to happen at an acceptible pace.

Good luck.

[gallian.livejournal.com]

that sounds like when the boy's hard drive died (the first time). yes, back up what you can ASAP and get the drive replaced. he lost the entire drive.

tangentally, assuming you can get this. will you be around wed afternoon/evening? i'm going to be in your neck of the woods, at least briefly as i need to stop at the athol brose after work/before dance, and perhaps we could do dinner or something... let me know. email is good, cell phone is better. lj-comment works.

gallian.

[obcordate.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was actually kind of wrong that it should be easy to replace the HDD yourself. Best with everything and let me know if you need anything from me, particularly concerning a cheap external HDD.

[ibisinashes.livejournal.com]

You need to redefine your definition of "cheap", unless online prices are not representative of showroom prices.

[meanfreepath.livejournal.com]

I think that places' prices vary. We were looking for a badly needed small kitchen table, and we got one that's the perfect size -- a round table with drop-down leaves. Admittedly, a Wal-Mart might have been cheaper, but this place had the advantage of being T-accessible and also had delivery.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

It looks like it's at least a little cheaper than the used furniture store in my town, but the used furniture store in my town is way overpriced--they charge more than half the price to buy things new, even if there are dents.

To get cheaper than that you'd have to go to garage sales, and then you'd have the problem of 1) finding garage sales selling furniture, and 2) transporting the furniture. Of course, at garage sales, you can get stuff for 1/10 the normal price, but there's only so much good it can do you if you can't get it home.