Bad Apples and other gripes
Still at the old computer but I got a new, tiny mouse and that feels almost like a whole new machine 🙂
Although after the third crash of AbiWord this morning, I am re-considering my options. I am in love with the new Macs and while the desktops are ridiculously well designed and lightening fast, the little iBook has caught my eye. I could have owned one by now, but I hesitated. Labtops are toys and 700 quid is a lot of money for a toy. We do not have room for a new desktop either. All we really need is a cheap base unit.
I thought about it some more and felt myself weaken, but then I read something about Apple that I do not like. This poor writer was typing away when his hard drive ran out of space (don’t ask me how!) and crashed, taking his files with it—including 40 000 words of his new novel. That would be OK, files are recoverable and Unix dances to my tune, but at very least there should have been adequate warning and preferably a safeguard (on Red Hat 7.2 I can’t do such a thing as a mere user no matter how hard I try). What is more alarming: his back-ups on Apple’s web service had disappeared because he had not renewed his membership which was only free for a year and he did not know. Apparently, Apple was unhelpful enough for the guy to consider dusting off his old typewriter. In the meantime he is retyping the entire novel from memory.
This looks distinctly like Microshit practice to me. Do I really want to buy a labtop (which is prone to techical problems, fragile things that they are) from such cynical bastards? I think not. Maybe I stick with this thing a little while longer. I can always recover from a crash.
Thinking of apples: we are wallowing in seasonal produce—just not in Tadley. Over the last three days we have enjoyed the last of the British Asparagus (and it was good!), fresh runner beans with no strings, tiny new courgettes and gooseberries. Now I have to get fresh supplies, but not from the supermarket. All this bounty came from the farmer’s market and there isn’t another one for two weeks. Where do the farmers sell all their stuff in the meantime? There have to be some amazing greengrocers somewhere, but Tadley doesn’t have one. And believe me, this is dire. Around the beginning of June I checked out the strawberries at Sainsbury’s and they were £13.75 a kilo. Local, seasonal strawberries. True they were special ‘Taste the Difference’ packs but a) that was all they had and b) I expect to ‘taste the difference’ of local produce at the peak of the season. If any supermarket had tried to sell seasonal strawberries for 17 Euros a kilo in Germany, it would have made the national press and the ensuing scandal might have closed down the offending supermarket chain.
Buying strawberries would then be an excuse to go to Reading and swing by the computer store. But it is such a long haul that it takes at least half a day and even though I get strawberries for 50p a kilo at the street market, the bus fare costs 3.20 one way and the fruit is so ripe that it starts to go off before I can get it home. It seems like too much effort in the sweltering heat. It is nearly 25°—how will I ever survive in Bangkok?
Yes, the sun has finally come out and today is midsummer day in our three-day-old summer. If we were young and wild and John would spend some time with me instead of working all hours we might have driven to Stonehenge to watch the sun rise on the longest day of the year, but when I think about it, standing around in a circle surrounded by coppers doesn’t really appeal so much. It sounds like something I can do closer to home 😉
Tags: computers and gadgets, Tag Index
Denni