footpad, posts by tag: geek - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

Windows 7	[Jul. 3rd, 2009|08:51 am]Footpad
[Tags**|geek, scraps, windows, windows 7] [Current Mood**	neutral]As thewerewolf pointed out a while ago, Microsoft is offering discounts on pre-orders of Windows 7. As thewerewolf's post shows, the price for the upgrade I want is 99intheUS,€109incontinentalEurope,and£99intheUK.That′s99 in the US, €109 in continental Europe, and £99 in the UK. That's 99intheUS,€109incontinentalEurope,and£99intheUK.That′s99, 152or152 or 152or162 depending on where you are.Microsoft has the nerve to say that we European clients won't pay for the European Union judgement against the company for their anti-competitive practices. Damn right we won't. At these markup rates, we must have already paid for it many times over.Anyway, in the best serf tradition, I'm going to complain about their practices and then give them more of my money. So, um, ( will any American order a copy and send it to me?Collapse )
Link	11 comments|Leave a comment

Form and substance	[Jan. 8th, 2009|04:25 am]Footpad
[Tags**|geek, house, job, late night, music] [Current Mood**	cosmic] [Current Music	Faithless, God is a DJ, followed by _Insomnia_]I'm messing around with imposition software. I'm a bit caffeine-buzzed, since a friend of mine dosed me up on "mild coffee", which turned out to have "reduced caffeine" in the way that airport duty-free shops have "reduced prices". I've got a beer by one elbow and a chocolate pasty (don't ask) at the other. Today I took long walks with Mischa in the snow, and then I spent all afternoon teaching Mischa's girlfriend's owner how to use her computer.My day has been full and I'm deep in creative endeavour. I'm flying so high right now, I feel like the whole universe is open to me in all its range and potential.This is my church, my place of the mind.÷I really, really enjoyed teaching Angelika computer basics. It's really starting from scratch; she can sort of use a mouse and keyboard, so she does things incredibly laboriously and slowly. But that doesn't matter. I have all the time in the world. It's like a kind of meditation, an exercise in creative empathy, keeping an intuitive and sympathetic track of what the student knows. Where she's getting stuck, what she wants to do, how she's trying to do it. When to step in handle something she doesn't need to know (like fixing a DNS problem). When to drop in a suggestion, a tip, a reassurance (my favourite is, "Try it!"). And, finally, when to sit back and watch her figure it out, since that's often the most instructive tactic of all.It's kind of strange: the teacher has to be not only one step ahead of the student, but one step outward. The student focuses on the task at hand; the teacher focuses on the implicit, general understanding that that task will bring, but which the student doesn't yet perceive. You can't teach someone to use a computer. You can only show them specific tasks—which individually are no use at all—and let them osmotically acquire the conventions, language and praxis of computing. It's like becoming someone else's intuition.I've never thought of myself as a people person, but I realise now that I could quite easily envisage becoming an teacher—at least of people who want to learn.÷House-hunting goes on. akeela had found a place we liked near Cologne, but then the landlords have been so serially disorganised that we can't wait for them, and we aren't sure we'd want to rent from them if we could. So Aki's gone on searching and, as so often happens, ill-luck breeds good: he's found a place that looks so wonderful that we're begging the Fates to make it as good as it seems. It's a fairly solitary house in a hamlet in a sizeable nature reserve; it looks well-appointed with lots of space for Mischa; the price is right; and the landlady seems nice. The only catch is that there are twelve other interested parties, so we're going to be trying like hell to make a good impression when we visit on Sunday. Aki will be his usual affable and competent self; I will muster the best of my charm, see to my grammar and perhaps play up my English accent; and—best of all—they've asked to meet Mischa as well, to make sure he won't kill and eat their children. Instead he'll be our secret weapon in the charm offensive.The house is in a place called Wolf-stall, with a nearby village whose German name can only be translated as Under Male Dogs Over. We believe the Fates are trying to tell us something.÷The job in Zurich is looking very probable indeed. I had an e-mail from the bank today, asking, "When can you start?" An informant tells me that the IT middle-managers are discussing my hiring as a done deal, and the Human Resources people generally listen to them. So I give it a 90% chance that I'll be in Zurich within two months. It only remains to negotiate the salary. I'm angling for a little more than I got when I left. Between you and me, I'd take less (still not a salary to be sniffed at), but I'm damned if I'll tell the HR people that. *wag*
Link	14 comments|Leave a comment

PowerMac	[Mar. 28th, 2008|01:37 am]Footpad
[Tags**|computers, geek, macintosh, serendipity] [Current Mood**	almost somnolent]akeela brought home a Mac today. Someone was throwing it away, so he grabbed it. It's a perfectly functional 466-MHz G4 PowerMac, which will do well as a small and reasonably efficient house server. Quite unlike my dearlittleiBook, it's even solidly and sensibly engineered. It's a perfectly good computer.Once in a while I find it in my heart to forgive Aki for his acquisitive streak.
Link	16 comments|Leave a comment