I bought my laptop for use when I go on the road. When my desktop broke down in November I embarked on a crash course in learning how to do everything I was accustomed to doing there on a laptop and making it work on a Vista Platform. With the pressure of the Christmas season I haven’t gotten around to taking the desktop console in for repairs so bit by bit I’ve been connecting my laptop up to peripherals. It’s said to be important to run a laptop battery down to failure at least once a month so I suppose this will be this month’s calibration. The power cord is one obvious connection. Next, the printer and the Ethernet cord. Tiring of the landscape view after 7 years with a pivoting screen I figured out that I could run my external screen from my laptop. It works, but Windows ability to remember the settings after it comes off sleep mode are unpredictable. Tiring of the sound quality from the internal speakers I decided to put up with a cable sticking out of the front of the case and hooked up my 6-channel system. I feel fortunate that the built in Bluetooth capability allows me to operate my wireless mouse without any additional plug-ins.
A laptop with a 17-inch screen isn’t all that light for resting on one’s legs in bed; and to prevent overheating it rests on a piece of heavy cardboard. Upon unplugging the power cord the most immediate discernable change is the drop in screen brightness. Next is the almost immediate drop in the battery power icon’s remaining power gauge; one can almost see it descend. The battery capacity is supposedly 2 hours; I haven’t actually tested that out but if I do the computer automatically goes into hibernation to save one’s work. I’m testing my reader’s patience here; those who don’t have laptops are busy yawning at this point and those who do are already initiated. I enjoy the art of putting my thoughts into digital print but if I actually have readers out there in cyberspace I’d appreciate the occasional comment just to let me know that I’m not writing on a desert island and throwing messages in a bottle—so to speak.
At the moment there’s no lack of power in my background music as Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand, his Eighth, is playing on my theatre system. Disk one has just finished and I’ll get up now to put in the second one and while I’m at it I believe I may have overdone the level on my sub-bass woofer. The second disk begins with piccolos and light strings so it will be a while until I find out if I’ve reset things properly. Mahler is the master of dynamics understanding that for a crescendo to have impact it must be proceeded by a quieter passage and for a tutti to shock quiet must precede—something most modern rock bands don’t seem to understand. In this symphony Mahler blows his entire wad at the outset by beginning the piece with a 150 piece orchestra, a pipe organ, and 600 to 700 voices playing and singing as loud as possible. He also understands, though, that whispered notes are equally as dramatic and engages in dramatic mood swings from periods of almost silence to rapid increases in volume and tempo. His crowning achievement for me though is the last movement of his Second, Resurrection Symphony which is, in essence, a 40 minute crescendo. Anyone who has seen 2001: A Space Odyssey has heard the initial moments of Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra with its thundering timpani but if you drop the entire tone poem into a CD Player you’ll find that it too has periods of light pizzicato and woodland murmurings.
This evening I can say that my E-mail in boxes are totally empty. I’ve arrived at Friday night in past weeks with an overload of over 100 messages but for the moment I’m on top of it. I’m slowly migrating my various online subscriptions to web mail in preparation for my travels.
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At that point my battery power gave out before the laptop did Friday night. I had to finish draining my battery to exhaustion Saturday morning. As anyone with a laptop would know, it takes a long time to recharge a laptop battery when it’s in use.
Not much happened this week. The usual customer complaints, miss-placed parcels, creative addressing, mindless E-mails from upper management, system break-downs, and employee concerns. I made up for an entire week of eating in the previous week by going out to eat three times this week—Chicken at Swiss Chalet, Fish and Chips at the local pub, and Chicken Cacciatore at East Side Mario’s last night. I just had to kid them about whether Haggis was on the menu—apparently it’s not an Italian dish!
Having my property in
A look out my window shows that dawn has reached our realm and the day is overcast. A look at the weather report reveals that few people would be sunbathing even if the sun were out. It would seem to be a good weekend to spend reading and catching up on some more TV. I’ve started watching CBC’s Geologic Journey; these guys make science and geography look sexy, where were they when I was studying these subjects in school. As I probably learning that it was impossible for man to ever reach the moon and that the earth was about 5000 years old. Since then estimates of the earth’s age have increased to
Next week I get to get up early and go to work to babysit a bunch of company PDT’s which are getting an online update and wash out the office refrigerator. The latter an entirely thankless task as although those remains may be moldering away in there woe betide the one who turfs them. As long as nothing attacks. I can look forward to a future of long hours of data entry updating our office letter carrier route files—apparently no one else has the patience for the task. Things could be worse; at least I’m to get a computer dedicated to that task alone.
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