Eileen Maksym's Blog, page 31

And we’re back! After two weeks of suck.

I am typing this from Tuscaloosa’s Starbucks, on my laptop, courtesy a new hard drive, Ubuntu, and a very technologically savvy, patient, and persistent husband.  It’s been a frustrating experience but has taught me a few things.

1) Smart phones are great, but relying on one as the sole source of internet sucks.

2) When relying on a smart phone for internet, you burn through your “complimentary data” really damn fast.  I love you, T-Mobile, but you suck.

3) Typing on a screen for more than the occasional text message or email sucks.  I always suspected this, which is why I maintain that a laptop will always be superior to a tablet when any amount of typing is required (sure, you can get a keyboard for a tablet, but that strikes me as unnecessarily fiddly).

4) As a continuation of 2), it is possible to get a repetitive stress injury in the index finger of your right hand.  This sucks.

5) Using Linux as an OS is free monetarily, but boy do you pay for it in time.  My husband Pete spent a truly silly amount of time installing Ubuntu, then trying to get it to play nice with my WiFi, then installing a series of updates to get the internet working at an acceptable speed.  It works great now, but that whole process sucks.

6) Programs like AIM and Amazon Cloud Music Player are made for Windows or Mac, and now I have neither.  There are work arounds out there, really ingenious ones, but finding them, installing them, getting them to play ball with what you need?  Yep, you guessed it: it sucks.

So yes, basically the whole process has been a pile of suck, BUT!  My computer is up and running and I can get back to work, which is wonderful, and what ultimately counts.  Now I need to think of something really, really nice to do for my husband in gratitude for him wading through that pile of suck.

 

Monkey Wrench

I apologize for being sparse this week. My hard drive decided to give up the ghost this past Sunday.  My husband was able to save all my files (thank god) and juryrig a temporary solution. My computer is currently running Ubuntu off one flashdrive and saving data on another. It’s allowed me to keep working on my projects, but I can’t bring the computer out with me, and I’m still using my phone for all things internet (like this post!)

I have ordered a new hard drive, which should arrive next week. I promise to return to blogging then!

My daughter the artist

This is a picture my daughter drew.  She’s seven now, but I’m pretty sure this picture is a couple years old.  For one thing, it has another drawing on the back of Pteranodons sitting on eggs, which anyone who watches PBS Kids will recognize as a Dinosaur Train reference, yet she hasn’t watched (or been obsessed with) Dinosaur Train in some time.  It’s also drawn on old school feeder printer paper, the kind that has tear-off strips with holes on the sides, which she doubtlessly got from my parents.  I’d say this is 2012ish.

I adore how evocative this is.  One of my daughter’s particular artistic talents is an incredible ability to portray emotion.  If I were to put words in those mouths, the first person is saying “Look out!”  The second is saying “Holy cow, look at that!”  And the creature (what IS that thing?) is saying “Aw yeah, outta my way, losers!”

Clearly my daughter and I need to collaborate on a picture book.

Things that freak me out

I’ve been reading about sinkholes lately.  How terrifying are they?!  The ground suddenly and unexpectedly opening up to swallow houses, cars, people, whole.  It got me thinking about other things that I find terrifying.  Things that give me the shivers just thinking about them, yet fascinate me.

Submarines.  The idea of being in a situation where there is no escape if something goes terribly wrong terrifies me.  The possibility of being helpless in the face of certain doom, and being aware of it?  Totally freaky.  Space travel freaks me out for the same reason.

Mount Everest. Reaching the peak of Mount Everest is an amazing achievement.  It is also horrifying.  Not only are you at the mercy of the elements, in danger of losing your mind or your life to altitude sickness and oxygen deprivation, but if you collapse and cannot go on, chances are they will leave you to die and your body will not be recovered. It’s hard enough to drag your own body to the top of the mountain and back down; using that limited energy to try to rescue someone else may well result in two corpses instead of one, and retrieving a body is right out.  Because of this, there are about 150 bodies of failed climbers up there right now, their bodies out in the open for people heading for the summit to see as they walk past.  Some bodies are even used as landmarks!

Cave diving.  Caves in general are a little creepy, but underwater caves are off the charts freaky, because there are so many things that can go wrong and result in catastrophe.  Go too deep?  You die.  Misjudge how much oxygen you have left? You die.  Get separated from your companions and lost?  You die.  Lose the line that will lead you back out?  You die.  I get that the people who do these sorts of things probably are attracted to it in part because of the adrenaline rush of flirting with death.  But thinking of getting lost in the dark and drowning or suffocating to death creeps me out something terrible.

Plane crashes.  What gets me about these is that in cases where there are no survivors, there’s often no way to know exactly what went on.  What caused the crash, what the last moments were like.  There’s just a large number of people dead, in pieces along with the fragments of the plane, and, if we’re lucky, a recording of the last moments of the pilots.  A mystery where a solution can be arrived at but never be quite adequate in the face of the carnage.

How about you, dear reader?  What freaks you out, and why?