2018-01-20

In "First World problems" news, it seems my PlayStation 3 no longer wants to boot up. Sounds like internal dust might be the problem, so I suppose I'll have to open it up and try cleaning it; if that doesn't work, though, I doubt I'll be replacing it anytime soon, having just dropped several hundred bucks on a 2TB SSD for the MacBook Pro. (I did say "first world problems...")

That solid-state drive was well worth the money, though. It's double the capacity of the laptop's original hard disk, it's faster, and it's quiet. I've got the room to drag all the files that have been relegated to CD-ROMs and external FireWire disks over the years back to my computer, so everything's in one place again, and I've still got enough capacity to give the operating system partition plenty of space to grow as I add applications and upgrade the macOS. Which I took the opportunity and did, so now I'm on High Sierra, and I'm pleased to say that every app I use on a regular basis is working fine in the new OS, even the old version of VueScan that I need to connect my even older (ancient by tech standards) UMAX Astra 6450 FireWire scanner to the MBP.

As of Sierra, though, my slightly-less-ancient M-Audio Ozonic MIDI keyboard controller / audio interface is useless. Specifically, there isn't an available driver anymore to make it play nice with the modern OSes, which sucks, because there don't really seem to be any new devices out there that check off both boxes (MIDI controller and audio interface). Well, this iRig Pro Duo from IK Multimedia looks like it would probably allow me to run the MIDI output from the keyboard to my laptop, while also functioning as its own audio interface, so that's probably the route I'll go (no need or desire to replace the keyboard itself), but again, I'm not planning on spending any more money on tech in the near future. I still have a bootable drive with Yosemite (or is it El Capitan?) if I find myself needing MIDI in the meantime. "MIDI in the Meantime" might make a nice title for an electronic song...

2018-01-05

Guess I won't be getting a new MacBook Pro anytime soon, at least not until there's a model with a Meltdown-free and Spectre-free processor in it. Heh. I'm actually still quite happy with my Mid 2012 MBP. The SD card slot doesn't let me write to cards anymore, though it will still read from them; I've got an external card hub for the rare occasions when I do need to write to one. The built-in AirPort card seems to have quit for good several months back, but again, I've got a USB WiFi adapter for when I need it.

I just decided a few days ago to finally spring for an internal SSD. I'll be replacing the 1 TB hard disk with a 2 TB SSD, which will both give me plenty of breathing space and make the computer peppy again. (While I'm in there making the swap, maybe I'll take a look at that AirPort card, too.) The laptop itself is still fine, with a 2.7 GHz Core i7 and 16 GB of RAM. The newer MacBook Pros' better display and Touch Bar aren't really enough to convince me to make a purchase; frankly, it'd be a downgrade as far as the ports go. And it's nice to still have an optical drive, even if I don't use it too very often.

Yes, with any luck, the SSD will keep Minerva humming along until a MBP comes along with a truly next-generation microprocessor in it, one without Intel's ancient flaw baked into it. As for my iPhone 7 Plus, well, not in any rush to replace that, either. Sorry, Apple.

So Much to Say...!

A wedding engagement, a new MacBook Pro and UP band, a Comic Con...  I haven't put up a new 'blog post since December, so yeah, I'm way overdue.  This one'll more than make up for it, I'm sure.  Let's start with the biggest news...

I'm engaged!  :-)  I asked Laura to marry me on St. Patrick's Day, after a delicious sushi lunch at Sushi Momoya in Bloomfield, and she said yes.  I got down on one knee, Elvis' "I Can't Help Falling in Love" was playing ("It's now or never," I thought.  "My love won't wait.")... it was just right.  The date was doubly fitting, in my opinion, because my love is half-Irish and because March 17th marked one and a half years since we began dating.  We haven't gotten too far with planning yet, but we're shooting for a low-key fall wedding before the year is out.

The combination of diamond, owls, and white gold seems to have gone over incredibly well with my fiancée and everyone who's seen the ring.  I'm generally better at buying tech than buying jewelry, but it seems that I done good.  And I'm glad.  I love her so much, and she makes me feel like the greatest American hero (no, not the permed guy from the '80s TV show; well, OK, maybe a little).

I do love tech gadgets.  Maybe too much.  I recently ran into technical problems with two of mine, and these blossomed into long-running customer service problems which were fortunately resolved to my satisfaction, considering I'd been previously effusive in my praise for both companies.

I've written in several prior 'blog posts about my trials and tribulations with the UP by Jawbone band that Laura bought me for Christmas 2011.  While the product was certainly faulty, the company stood by it and sent me several replacements as each band died, sooner rather than later, until one I received in the summer lasted for several months.  That band, too, eventually came to an untimely end, but when I contacted Jawbone to see about having it replaced this January, I received an initial response telling me that I was eligible for one more replacement and that I'd soon be sent an address to which to send my existing band... and then nothing, for weeks.  This was in marked contrast to the excellent customer service I'd received all last year from them, and as E-mail after E-mail got nothing but an automated reply, I began to worry that the technological singularity had come, and had started at Jawbone.

In the meantime, the LCD screen of my MacBook Pro had begun to come loose from the hinge, and the display was giving me the same problems I'd experienced in 2011.  I wasn't eager to spend a few hundred dollars to have it replaced again, but it still seemed more sensible than shelling out a few thousand for a new laptop, so Laura and I headed to the Apple Store to drop it off for repair work.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this was now a known defect, and as a result, the screen would be replaced for me at no charge!  However, after waiting several days beyond the three to five I was told it would take for me to hear back from someone, I called the store and was told that they'd found that the battery and the AirPort card would need to be replaced as well, at my expense.

I was more upset about not being contacted than I was about the additional delays and costs, but I gave the go-ahead.  A few more days went by, and I still didn't hear anything from the Apple Store.  I called them again, and eventually got word that it would be ready for pickup that night; I pressed for 6 PM and was told that the tech working on it would try.  Laura and I went back to the store around 6:15 PM... and now heard that the logic board was going to need to be replaced, too.  I wouldn't have to pay for that, at least, but they couldn't tell me how much longer I'd be without a laptop.  Unhappy but with no real options, I left the store with my love, grumbling about the customer service at both Apple and Jawbone that I'd loved so much before.

Well, I finally got good news from Apple on February 9th, and from Jawbone on the 12th.  The MacBook Pro and the UP band were both replaced with newer models, and all I needed to spend was a few bucks to ship my old UP back to Jawbone.  I've got a shiny new laptop with Mountain Lion, a faster processor, and double the hard drive capacity of my old one, and a new wristband to monitor my sleep and movement, and while I was irritated with both companies initially for the seemingly interminable delays in communications, in the end both came through.  Both the MacBook Pro and the UP by Jawbone wristband are holding up well so far.  Whew!  I've finally gotten around to revamping the AndersenSilva.com and JoyInTheNew.com Web sites, too.  Some of the content still needs to be reformatted and put back up, but both sites are functional and laid out better than they had been.

CISPA?  Again?!?  Perhaps Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) thinks we've forgotten what CISPA is, but along with the ACLU, the EFF, Mozilla, Reddit, former Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul, the White House (for now, at least), and others, I'm still putting my foot down.  I've got some issues with piracy, and we need to be vigilant against true cyberterrorism, but the law is just too broad in its scope and in its immunity for businesses; the potential for abuse on both a corporate and a government level is alarming.  I'm against it whether you call it CISPA, SOPA, PIPA, DUPA, or anything else.

Slime is going to the Boston Comic Con!  Laura and I talked last year about the possibility of attending a comic book/science fiction convention at some point; neither of us has ever been to one, and now that we've got our own comic (a Webcomic, but still a comic), we've got even more reason to go.  We're not "exhibiting" or renting a table, but we'll be walking around the Comic Con at the Hynes Convention Center on Saturday, April 19th in our Slime T-shirts.  Let us know if you're going, too, and perhaps we can say hi!  There'll be buttons...  We'll actually head up to Massachusetts the day before, so my honey can visit WEBS, a serious yarn store, and we can spend a little time in and around Beantown, one of my favorite cities.

Another thing my fiancée and I are going to do together is tackle a 5K, in June.  She ran one the day before St. Paddy's, in Clinton, and is going to run another at the Bronx Zoo next month, but the Run 2 Glow 5K at Belmont Park is an untimed event, which makes it ideal for a non-runner like me.  It takes place at night, and there's glow gear and music and a party afterwards, and it just seemed like a fun time for us both.

The glow run is just over a week after Make Music New York, which is on a Friday this year.  Registration just opened up, so there aren't many venues listed yet, but hopefully I can pick one soon.  I may also find myself in a band later this year; my old friend (and occasional Not An Exit collaborator) Jon asked me last week if I'd be interested in joining a group of guys that have gotten together to do the music thing, and I think that perhaps I am, as long as the logistics sort themselves out.  Of course, I need to get back to my own music, too... but working on tunes with them will probably spur me to crank out more of my own.

So this is the kind of thing I mean when I say "Better that your life be a blur than a blurb."  This newly-sprung spring, while not especially warm just yet, will be busy, but it's a good busy.  Most importantly, I'm healthy and I'm happy and I'm in love.  How's things your way?

Stuff to Do

January's been a busy month, and it's just about over!  There's always a lot of cleaning up and catching up to do after the holidays, of course, and work tends to be busy this time of year as well.  Laura and I saw my parents last weekend for my mom's birthday, and finally caught up with Laura's mom this past Friday night, too.  There are still some Christmas gift exchanges to be made, though...

Why, yes, I have been losing weight; thanks for noticing.  Laura and I have both shed some pounds since starting on the South Beach diet at the beginning of the year, and I'm now at 141.6 lbs. as of this morning, which frankly seems to be on the low end of where I should be as a 5'9" 41-year old male.  While I'm glad to be able to fit into an old pair of jeans again (woo-hoo!), my goal was never to drop ten or twenty pounds, but to eat and feel healthier.  Now that I'm doing that, and planning on mostly sticking to phase three of the diet, I've decided that I want my weight to hover around 145.

Of course, the fact that my beloved Up by Jawbone band finally died on me has put a minor cramp in my style.  It was nice to be able to easily monitor how much sleep I was getting (and how deep a sleep it was), how much walking I did, and what I was eating and how it made me feel every day.  I'm not alone in having problems with my Up, but I believe in the product enough to have opted for a replacement rather than a credit or refund.  Hopefully, Jawbone will get the kinks worked out soon, because I still feel the band has great potential.

In other technology news, I finally got around to upgrading my beast of a MacBook Pro, Athena, to OS X 10.7.2 (Lion) today.  I'm also going to start utilizing the Time Capsule I got from Microwize Technology at Christmas to run automated backups wirelessly.  I've been better with backups lately than I used to be, but it's nice to have a solution that doesn't require me to plug in an external hard drive before it'll run.  I took the opportunity to jailbreak my iPhone 4S as well.  Maybe I'm not quite on the bleeding edge of technology these days, but the cutting edge is still shiny.

My andersensilva.com and joyinthenew.com Web sites both got 'blacked out' for the anti-SOPA/PIPA protests on January 18th, and while I'm sure that had much less impact than Wikipedia's and Google's and Reddit's (and others') blackouts, I still felt the need to do it.  Both bills have been temporarily thwarted, but neither is dead yet, and ACTA is at least as scary as SOPA and PIPA, and international to boot.  People need to be aware and pay attention to more important things than the Kardashians and "Jersey Shore."

Speaking of Web sites... I'm maintaining a new one!  Starting this Thursday, Laura and I are publishing our original Web comic, Slime, at slimethecomic.com.  There's nothing really going on at the site just yet; I'm waiting for Thursday to put everything up, and then a new strip will be published every Thursday.  We've been having a lot of fun putting it together (Laura does the art, we come up with story ideas together which I write, and I'll keep the Web site chugging along) and we hope you'll have just as much fun reading about our friends in the Field!  I even put together a short theme song for Slime.  I will be promoting the frak out of the Web comic.  Just wait and see...

So Much Happy

Laura and I had occasionally discussed the possibility of her moving in, probably not before the holidays, but neither of us wanted to rush it.  At first.  As the weeks went by, we started joking; "Well, Columbus Day is a holiday... we never really specified which holidays..."  While my business trip to Orlando this month was a bit rough on both of us, it also seemed to paradoxically bring us closer together, and this past Thursday, when the subject came up again, I remarked that, as far as I was concerned, she could really move in whenever she wanted...

...and so, this surprisingly snowy weekend at the tail end of October, Laura and I brought over half her stuff up the stairs to my apartment.  No, she's not completely moved in yet, and she's not living here until her two-week notice at work is up, but it's a done deal at this point, and we're both excited and happy about it.  I knew I held on to this three-bedroom apartment for a reason...  Heh!  "You know it's gonna make it that much better / when we can say 'good night' and stay together..."

We hadn't expected to see the year's first snowfall together before Halloween, but of course that's just what happened, and I couldn't help but sing "It's snowing, it's snowing! / God, I hate this weather..." from They Might Be Giants' "New York City" to her as we sloshed our way back from breakfast through the snow yesterday morning.  Luckily, I only seem to have lost power very briefly, while we were out at dinner, and the snow didn't wreak too much havoc around me, though there are numerous tree limbs and branches down in the area.

I'm lovin' my new iPhone 4S (though there are a few apps and tweaks I'll miss until there's a jailbreak for it) and getting a kick from playing with Siri a bit.  So far, she's understood everything I've said to her, and she's already aware that Laura is my girlfriend. ;-)  She's also apparently aware of where her towel is:

I also got Athena, my beast of a MacBook Pro, repaired (well, the display, as well as an issue on the logic board), and while I could've done without the added expense, it's wonderful to have her working at full capacity again.  Which reminds me, I'm overdue for a backup.  Talk to you later... <#

41 Today...

It's my birthday again. Seems to happen around this time every year... but I'm not tired of it. Not yet.

In fact, aside from the annoyance of being on-site in midtown east Manhattan for a frakked SQL database, rather than in my new office in Paramus, I'm feeling pretty good about this birthday. After having been diagnosed with a rare lymphocyte cancer in June, my dad is looking and feeling so much better, and his recent sixth chemotherapy session may turn out to be the last. I completed moving into a bigger office, with my own window to the outside, yesterday, though I need some art and photos to make it a bit homier. I finally dropped the MacBook Pro off at the Apple Store yesterday, and while it will be rough to be without it for a few days, it will be nice to again have a laptop that is completely operational, with all its circuits functioning perfectly.

Pam and I are together no longer, and the distance between us played a part in that. I have since found my world turned upside-down by a young woman named Laura from Staten Island, however, and we are dating quite happily. I'm even planning on putting a bit of her artwork and a photo or two of us into my new office (you can see said photos in the Gallery... of Death!), and we're celebrating my birthday tonight with some sushi. She likes to see and hear me play and is supportive of my music, and is inspiring me to create more. Laura makes me feel happier than I have in years, and that's just one of the reasons I love her.

So, while my birth certificate (which says that I was born in Paterson, NJ, and not Brazil or Kenya or anything like that) might show that I'm 41 today, inside I'm still much the giddy, goofy, and geeky 18-year old I've been for much of my life. Much as I did ten years ago, I rode the 32 bus into Manhattan today (though I got on in Lyndhurst today, not Nutley, and Alex, my Bus Buddy, no longer rides the DeCamp bus regularly, either), but my world is quite different than it was then. For my birthday, be happy for me. I am.