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5-30-2006: Reappearing Comments
Here's a surprise I got today: I accessed my free HaloScan account and noticed that miraculously, all comments posted on my Web Journal back to February 2005 had become visible again. Previously, HaloScan's service was rigged to automatically hide comments from view after four months unless I paid extra for a "premium" account. (If there was any offsite-hosted, free comment service that was better, I'd use that.)
Whether this change is a fluke or not remains to be seen, but it was nice to see everyone's old comments again and have a chance to copy them to my computer for posterity. :-)
[ Read others' comments and add your own...hopefully permanently ]
5-24-2006: If Trash Could Talk
Yesterday I decided to go off on a stroll through the woods near the Concord University campus. Here is some of what I came across on the ground:
- A piece of an old phonograph record.
- A shopping bag from the defunct Caldor department store chain. There were never any Caldor stores anywhere near here.
- A rusted and empty 50-gallon drum.
- What appeared to be the door from an oven.
- A slightly crumpled "Jacksons Tour 1984" commemorative Pepsi can.
Whew!
[ Read others' comments and add your own ]
5-16-2006: Photo Wallpaper, and Third Eye Blind
This morning, I decided to go through my photos from the last three years; picking out, scanning, cropping, and uploading a fair number of them to my hitherto underutilized DeviantART account as wallpaper. Feel free to take a look if you like!
Another thing I need to admit: I didn't sleep at all last night. Shhh!
Finally, I finally have an opportunity to update my Lost A Whole Year pages at long last, with the arrival of some (seemingly) fresh new news from the band! It'll take more than that to get me to sign up for a My Space account, though. (Actually, I did have a My Space account a short time explicitly so that I could leave a comment on someone's weblog, but I deactivated it a month ago.)
[ Read others' comments and add your own ]
5-15-2006: Website URLs on License Plates: A Link Too Far
Yet another editorial entry long enough to take up its own page. Plus, it crosses over into more than one "subject territory" of my website!
[ Let me put it this way: Read others' comments (or lack thereof) and add your own. ]
5-14-2006: Good News
I finally got my grades back, and to say that I was satisfied is an understatement: Three As and two Bs. It turns out that I passed German 204 with a B+ average, and I was half-expecting to get a C in that. After four semesters, I'm glad to get that over with.
One thing that's occurred to me about the last two semesters is how quickly they seemed to go by. While the last year wasn't free of various crises, my time at WVU was a lot smoother this time around. Not having to cope with a terrible roommate was in itself more than enough to increase my quality of life exponentially. (I hope you're listening, John, Sean, and Adam, if you haven't dropped out by now!)
With a bit of extended effort, I managed to get in contact with my advisor about alleviating the rescheduling domino effect that had taken form in next fall's schedule at the time of my last entry. As a result, it looks like I'll be taking a class called "Humanities of Egypt" next August. Hopefully the class will be as interesting as it sounds to me.
With university-related matters relegated to the back burner at long last, I can now think about other things: Getting a job, or finishing unpacking for that matter.
One thing that I don't think I'll be doing much this summer is fooling around with old computers. Until I tidied up today, there was a partially disassembled 486 on my bedroom floor that probably hadn't changed position since I started college. In contrast to six or seven years ago when nothing got me more excited than finding a new card to try in my IBM PC AT, I simply just don't feel like tinkering with computer hardware anymore.
[ Add a comment. I check them daily; I really do! ]
5-3-2006: Final Finis
This is finals week here at the university. This time around, I was offered a break of sorts: My last exams were on Wednesday instead of Friday or Saturday (when they usually seem to end up), and two of my classes eschewed traditional exams in favor of research papers to be completed on my own time and turned in at the time a final exam would ordinarily take place.
The latter scenario held true for my art curatorial class. I had completed a five-page paper covering the exhibition topic of land transportation themes in nineteenth-century painting and drawing (recycling some of the content I used in a paper for one of my other classes the previous semester). It was due in my professor's office on the other campus at 10:00.
Of course, as luck would have it, the PRT was broken down this morning, so I had to ride my bike the two or so mostly-uphill miles there. Once I was there, I discovered that 1) The room number he had stated on the syllabus as being that of his office was not; 2) My professor was not in his actual office either; 3) My professor was not anywhere in the building. By this point it was 10:05 and I was really nervous, so I stuck it in his departmental mailbox, on top of the research papers of my classmates who had presumably experienced the same thing.
Today was also the day of my German 204 exam. It was hard, I kid you not. At least I didn't have any problems finding the room this time around.
After all that, you might expect that I would feel relieved and relaxed at last, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. I immediately checked my e-mail, and found out that one of my classes for the fall semester had been moved to a different time slot, immediately kicking off a domino effect in my schedule that I'm still not sure how to solve. And I still have to think about how I'm going to pack up all my things tomorrow and bring them home for the summer.
Oh well. As in the Howard Jones song, things can only get better.
4-29-2006: The Most Annoying Fonts
(Previously posted under "Technology Talk:")
I am an art major and have always had an eye for graphic details. As such, I have long had an interest in fonts and other forms of lettering.
Once upon a time, font faces in general were associated strongly with "professional" typesetting and graphics design; hardware in the form of metal type, wooden type, or photographic elements. Nonprofessionals were limited by their handwriting and drawing skills...or the typewriter wheels or balls they had on hand. This all changed with the advent of microcomputers, graphical user interfaces, software-based outline font technology, and better-quality printers in the '80s and '90s. Now, virtually anyone can create anything set in whatever font he or she likes and has on hand, on-screen or off.
With circumstances such as these, it's no surprise that some fonts may be more frequently seen--and more or less palatable in design--than others. As such, here is my (brief) list of the three most annoying fonts in use today.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Arial is a sans-serif font very similar to (but subtly different from) Helvetica, a font that has been popular for decades.
Judging from its ubiquity over the years, it's probably safe to say that Helvetica is a clean and well-proportioned font that looks attractive and modern (if a bit clichéd) no matter what. Arial, on the other hand, is a font that was virtually unheard of fifteen years ago and devised explicitly as a cheaper substitute for Helvetica, with its fundamental design altered in various ways to seemingly disguise that fact. I won't get deeply into the complex situations that necessitated the creation of Arial and other, more faithful, Helvetica clones over the years, although Mark Simonson does a good job of doing so in his excellent "Scourge of Arial" essay.
Arial and Helvetica are virtually identical in proportions and weights, and it can be very easy to mistake one for the other on first glance, especially at small sizes. In fact, I'd be surprised if you could tell the difference between these two samples without eyeballing them for a minute straight:
![[Helvetica and Arial: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.]](tech/helv-arial-1.png "The top sentence is set in Helvetica, while the bottom is in Arial.")
While most characters in Helvetica and Arial are quite similar if not quite identical, some characters are notably different, particularly the capital "R," capital "G," and numeral "1," which in Arial look quite awkward:
![[Helvetica and Arial: R G 1]](tech/helv-arial-2.png)
In addition, while the stroke ends in Helvetica characters are always cut off at a level horizontal or vertical edge, in Arial they are always cut off at a seemingly arbitrary crooked angle. This is most pronounced in heavier weights, and has the effect of making Arial look unbalanced or unfinished in comparison:
![[Helvetica and Arial: C S 3 r t]](tech/helv-arial-3.png)
In spite of its design flaws, Arial was included as a TrueType font with Windows 3.1 in 1992 in lieu of Helvetica--likely due to its lower price--and the rest is history. If there is ANY evidence of Arial being used in practice ANYWHERE before then, I would like to hear about it.
Arial is a subtly ugly font whose presence--if detectable--immediately casts a "low end" stigma to any place it's used. Yet, it's used far more often in print than it ideally should be because of its similarity to Helvetica and the fact that it's been bundled to oblivion over the last decade and a half. The only place it works well is in small sizes pixelized on the computer screen, where the faults in its details aren't as apparent. Which brings me to my next entry...
& 
Verdana and its close cousin Tahoma are fonts even newer than Arial, having been introduced in 1996 by Microsoft for (again) bundling with its software. Unlike most fonts, they were designed explicitly for computer use, perhaps among the first non-bitmapped fonts to be so.
Verdana is often touted as being ideal for on-screen text such as on web pages, due to its wide and atypical proportions and aliasing at small sizes. However...
At typical reading sizes, these very factors make Verdana seem disproportionately large and very hard to read.
To circumvent this, Verdana-loving web page designers typically add a hard-coded attribute such as font-size:70% to their style sheet, kicking off a never-ending cycle of making text smaller than it needs to be for no obvious reason.
If, by chance, a website viewer doesn't have the Verdana font installed on his or her computer, the resulting text will look something like this, making it really hard to read.
The best solution for readability and practicality is to use (gasp) a typically-proportioned font at normal sizes. See, that wasn't so hard after all, was it?
This leaves Verdana as a solution looking for a problem, exacerbated by the fact that improved display rendering technology has made special "on-screen" fonts more and more unnecessary. In addition, did it not occur to the designers that people would inevitably use Verdana or Tahoma as print fonts? Not only does this use make its supposed on-screen advantages completely redundant, but it produces results tainted by the font's "low end" stigma evocative of Windows computers and nothing else.
![[On-screen menu in Tahoma]](tech/tahoma-menu.png "Tahoma")
![[On-screen menu in MS Sans Serif]](tech/sansserif-menu.png "MS Sans Serif")
Tahoma, meanwhile, is essentially a version of Verdana modified to feature different proportions and closer spacing. This makes it difficult to read at any sort of size, except at low on-screen resolutions in instances such as menus and user-interface controls. However, even then, its role is redundant since less-stylized bitmapped fonts such as MS Sans Serif (right) already exist on Windows for this very purpose.
Ah, what can I say? Comic Sans, yet another Microsoft concoction, may well be the most hated font in existence (if the presence of things like this are any indication) and also the only font I intentionally remove from any computer I own. There's no point in unconstructively spitting venom, though, so the problem can be boiled down to this: The design is a bit questionable, and it has been overused and misused to the nth degree.
First, the design: Like Verdana and Tahoma, Comic Sans was designed explicitly as an on-screen font, with its outlines proportioned to alias well at small sizes. However, this also had the effect of making a "script" font that was unrealistic in its improbably even stroke width and proportions, resembling a machine-made facsimile more closely than anything handwritten.
Due again to it being bundled to oblivion, leaving it as the closest thing resembling handwritten text in the font list of many computers, it has surfaced in many places where its presence is inappropriate or unnecessary: From routine handouts and worksheets in class, to food packaging, to the end credits of Sesame Street! When will it end?
4-25-2006: Winds of Change?
This very interesting article was printed on the front page of the student newspaper last Friday. You can read the whole thing here.
MIX to undergo upgrade
Beginning in July, West Virginia University will upgrade the Mountaineer Information Xpress system to allow more flexibility for WVU students and faculty.
"We received a new software product to implement because our old software is out of date," said Cathy Orndorff, director of Web Communications at WVU.
The new upgrade will create more room for announcements and will allow students and faculty to send faster e-mails.
"We also had a lot of students ask for the MIX system to be able to support the Mozilla Firefox Web browser," Orndorff said. "We implemented that feature as well because a lot of our staff uses Mozilla Firefox as their browser." [...]
The MIX system is WVU's glorified web-based e-mail system, implemented in early 2002 and steadfastly unchanged since then. The overparanoid staff who administer it took to actively blocking any browser that did not exist when the software was new, eliminating everything but Netscape 4.79 and 6.2.x and a couple versions of Internet Explorer. And if there's anything I've learned in the last three years, it's that complaining to the OIT about these things has as much effect as talking to a brick wall with the volatility of a dragon.
The "new" system will be based upon something called Luminis III.3.1 from SunGard, while the old creaky version was built upon Campus Pipeline. This news (albeit four years overdue) is certainly a good thing, and I feel proud to have had a small part in influencing this change in attitude on the university's part.
As if the MIX System's belated support for Mozilla Firefox wasn't good enough news, a mass e-mail informing students about the upgrade and ways to ease the transition refers them to this page detailing step-by-step instructions of how to access mail as an IMAP account in Mozilla Thunderbird! These are slightly different from the POP3 settings I had been using the past year in part to avoid the web interface.
From past experience, however, I still have lumps of skepticism lingering in the back of my head. The "supported browser" table on the "Help & Support" website specifies Firefox 1.0.6 although version 1.5 has been out for several months, and has other oddities as well (such as supporting Netscape 7.2 on Windows but 7.1 and not 7.2 on the Mac). Hopefully, this table will be revised when the system goes live this summer. Also, the university should reconsider its policy of actively blocking anything that wasn't explicitly permitted by the vendor at the time the software was made, and at the very least leave any checks "open-ended" so that newer browser versions are permitted. The new system will undoubtedly last for several years just like the old one did, and the OIT would be foolish not to do so.
4-23-2006: What on earth is going on?
There has been very loud music playing outside from a point I have not been able to determine all this evening, almost as if there was a concert a block away. However, this music is obviously prerecorded, and I neither heard nor read anything about any sort of event occurring downtown today.
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4-14-2006: Browsers and Labs
(Previously posted under "Technology Talk:")
WVU has a variety of computer labs scattered throughout campus. The biggest ones, accessible to any student with a proper ID and a little time to spare, are located in the Towers dorm lobby, the basement of the Evansdale Library, and an annex of White Hall downtown, all of which are stocked exclusively with nondescript Dell PCs of more than adequate performance.
In addition, there are dozens of smaller labs scattered throughout campus in specific departments that are often reserved for work relating directly to the subjects at hand. The only one of these I'm familiar with is the Engineering lab I occasionally visited back when I was an Engineering major and needed to debug lines of C code that I couldn't make heads or tails of either way. (For the purpose of this writing, Internet Explorer 6.0 was the only browser available there.)
I only came to WVU in 2003 and didn't start using the labs semi-regularly until shortly after that, so I have no idea how the computers were configured before then. The Towers lab was closed for approximately a year for relocation during 2003-04, so that further skews things a bit. (I would assume from my experience with other colleges and universities that they were using 486-based machines with DOS and Windows 3.1x ten years ago, and "upgraded" several times over since then). The White Hall and Evansdale Library lab PCs all run Windows XP (set to the cringe-inducing "Bozo the clown" theme), while the Towers lab PCs were all running Windows 2000 as of the last time I visited it in early 2005.
Now, for the point of the article: Web browsers have always been a sore spot of the WVU labs. Although Undergraduate Admissions asserts that the "up-to-date" computers run "the latest software," the only web browser installed on the Towers computers in late 2004 other than Internet Explorer 6.0 was Netscape Communicator 4.79: A relic dating from 1997/98 that, although very competitive in its day, became utterly unusable and technologically obsolete by the standards of 2004.
Why did they let Netscape stagnate at such an old version for so long? The university likely avoided Netscape 6.0 when it was current (as did virtually everyone with an ounce of sense), choosing instead to upgrade Netscape 4.x whenever a new maintenance update came out. As a version number, Netscape 4.79 actually came out in 2001. Since Internet Explorer hasn't had a major update since then and most people at WVU use that instead of Netscape/Mozilla browsers (to my dismay), they probably didn't see the need of changing the configuration after that...not even bothering to upgrade to the next bug-fix release, 4.8, when it came out in 2002, and not implementing a more significant and compelling upgrade even though versions and derivatives of Netscape far more stable and up-to-date than 4.x or 6.x such as Netscape 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2 and uncountable releases of Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox have come out since then.
At one time, I provided feedback on this issue, suggesting that the Academic Information Services department consider adding a browser such as Netscape 7.2 or Mozilla 1.7x to the configuration (At the time, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was still a month or two from release). The reaction was fairly responsive, and the next time I visited the lab, I found that Netscape 4.79 had been replaced with Netscape 7.2...though only on the half-dozen or so computers that had scanners attached. All other computers still had the vestigial option of Netscape 4.79 as the only non-IE browser installed...and as far as I know, they may still do today! I haven't lived in Towers since May 2005, so I can only hope that the configuration has changed since then.
My take on the White Hall lab downtown was more positive. When I "discovered" the lab in December 2004, I was surprised and (relatively) delighted when I realized that every PC in the White Hall lab had Netscape 7.1 installed in addition to other software. With this consideration in mind, I started to visit the lab very regularly over the next semester or so. My delight increased even more two months later, when I noticed that they had added Mozilla Firefox 1.0 to the computers as yet another browser option.
Not all was perfect, though: For example, the browser was not configured (it prompted with the "import settings" screen when first run). The presence of both Netscape 7.1 (which was configured as a browser only) and the newer Firefox 1.0 on the computers produced the redundancy of having two browsers on hand that were essentially the same thing. (To better understand the relation between Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox, I recommend looking over my Mozilla Q&A and Visual Browser History.) Additionally, although Netscape and Internet Explorer had prominent icons visible on the desktop, Firefox was available only by digging through several levels in the Start Menu...most people likely had no idea that it was available, and I probably didn't discover it myself until several weeks after the fact.
When I came back to WVU after summer for the fall semester, I was surprised to see that the White Hall computer lab configuration had been changed again: Mozilla Firefox had been removed, and Netscape 7.1 had been replaced with 7.2. This solved the redundancy problem, and the Netscape installation now had all options present (even AOL Instant Messenger) as opposed to just the browser only, but I found this decision very strange: Since Netscape had for all intents and purposes already died by this point and Mozilla Firefox had succeeded it as the most popular non-IE browser, I would have thought it would have been far more logical to replace Netscape 7.x with the newest version of Firefox, with the icon prominently placed and the browser itself properly configured. The lab in the bottom of the Evansdale Library building has a similar configuration as of March 2006, although Netscape 7.2 is configured so that only the browser component itself is installed.
Concluding this editorially-tinged article here probably violates rules of style, but I can't think of anything else to add, at least until any additional news unfolds in the future. Since I live downtown this semester, own a computer of my own, and are seldom on the other campus for extended periods of time, I don't need to use the labs as often now as I did in the past. Netscape 7.2 is an acceptable browser option (and roughly equivalent to Mozilla Firefox 1.0.x), but in terms of future upgrades it's a dead end. I believe Mozilla Firefox 1.5 remains the best and most practical option, although I don't want to seem too pushy about it.
*If it were entirely up to me, the computers would all be running only Firefox 1.5 (without Internet Explorer at all) on something like Windows NT 4.0, but I need to be realistic...
[ Read others' comments and add your own ]
4-11-2006: Computing & Technology Symposium
Today was the big day: Time for the annual Computing & Technology Symposium trade show in the WVU ballroom.
I attempted to resist the temptation to grab as many brochures, pens, and business cards as I could find. I noticed that the Morgantown Linux User Group had a table set up this year, so I chatted with them a bit. I entered a couple prize drawings too (for knick-knacks such as useless USB storage devices and a new computer), although I don't expect to win anything.
As I approached the WVU Web Services booth, I found it interesting that someone else was in the midst of an argument with the representatives about how the so-called "MIX system" worked perfectly in Mozilla Firefox if you spoofed the user agent string but balked otherwise. I've been resolving to write a lengthy rant about the confounded MIX system myself for a while, but have yet to find myself in a brave enough mood to do so.
But never mind. I perhaps most enjoyed the tables for Novell and Sun Microsystems, manned by people eager to demonstrate their companies' technologies and products.
I spent well over an hour wandering around, and stopped only because by 3:40 I had a medical appointment on the other campus in twenty minutes' time. I almost lost my way inside the Health Sciences Center, but eventually reached my destination where the doctors and nurses reassured me that the ugly wounds I had accumulated the week before were probably not infected. I also used the day as an excuse to finally try out the new Burger King franchise in the Mountainlair downtown. My conclusions of that are simple: It's just fast food, and the ridiculous lines up to it will probably get shorter as the novelty wears off.
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4-10-2006: Whew
I'm on the verge of a very hard week. Things will turn out all right in the end...I think.
(And no, it's not your imagination. I have been adding ellipses lately.)
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4-5-2006: Ouch
Question: If you're riding your bike downhill beside a busy street in top gear, and then suddenly see a previously unknown, deeply recessed drainage grate smack dab in the middle of the shoulder five feet in front of you, what do you do?
Apparently, you should do something other than squeeze the brakes in panic, be thrown over the handlebars, and grind your body into the asphalt. That's what happened to me two days ago, and is also why I have really nasty-looking marks (now consisting of scabs embedded into the tissues I used as makeshift bandages when I got home) on my left elbow, left hip, and to a lesser degree on my left knee, right elbow, and down the side of my right hand.
Oddly enough, my clothes, helmet, and bike survived reasonably unscathed. It started raining hard around the moment I wrecked, which did nothing to improve the quality of my day. I think I'll go back to riding the PRT twelve times a week for the time being...
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4-1-2006: No Fooling Around
This morning, I realized that I had run completely out of toothpaste and had thrown away the tube the night before. As such, I found myself an excuse to go on a shopping trip to the mall via K Mart.
K Mart in Morgantown is located on an outlot above the Morgantown Mall ("The new mall" as I call it, even though it's fifteen years old) adjacent to a strip center that has steadily become almost completely vacant over the last three or so years. I bought my toiletries there and ventured out.
The first thing I noticed was that Office Max, the only other remaining 'anchor' in the center, had a "store closing" banner up. Curious, I ventured inside, wondering if I'd find a copy of Windows 2000 on sale for $10.00 or some other bargain. Alas, that was not the case; the store seemed only slightly emptier than it usually was, and there seemed nothing compelling to buy. For a place I visited sporadically, the store nevertheless evokes memories for me: Whether it was the time I found a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 there in a pile of nondescript CD-ROMs, or the time I brought my broken iBook to the DHL delivery dropoff in the back, or the time I accidentally bought an extended warranty for a computer mouse. Oh well, at least that won't happen again!
I wandered down to the main mall, and noticed a few changes from the last time I had been there: Specifically, one of the anchor stores, Proffitt's, had become Belk. The merchandise selection seemed exactly the same as before and the store was arranged in the exact same way, so it was hardly an earth-shattering change.
This day, a "Kid's Fair" with various organizations and health- and safety-oriented entities hosting tables, activities, and exhibitions was being held in the corridors of the mall, which was crowded with shoppers and families. I eventually stumbled across my friend Joe Sallmen, who was helping host the table for Positive Spin, a bicycle recycling organization. They had a cutaway bike frame designed to show how a derailleur worked, and also had a second spare frame rigged up as a petal-driven generator...which, alas, didn't work quite as well as intended since the belt kept slipping off.
Of course, by then it was almost time for me to leave the mall and catch my bus home, though not before finding these inexpensive compact discs:
- Foreigner - 4; Atlantic 16999-2 (259 796).
- Genesis - Genesis; Atlantic 7 80116-2 (814287-2).
- Heart - Heart; Capitol CDP 7 46157 2.
- INXS - Switch; Epic 8-2796-97727-2.
- Linda Ronstadt featuring Aaron Neville - Cry Like a Rainstorm - Howl Like the Wind; Elektra 9 60872-2.
- David Lee Roth - Skyscraper; Warner Bros. 9 25671-2.
Yes, today was pretty eventful for a routine Saturday shopping day.
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3-30-2006: Advising, Scheduling, and Minoring Soap Operas
Yesterday was quite a day. The day before, I gained advising and outlined out my schedule for the fall 2006 semester. Of course, nothing goes as planned, and when I tried to register by computer I discovered:
- That I couldn't register for one of my art classes without approval from the department even though I was a major.
- That I couldn't register for another class, because, according to the STAR system, it "wasn't available" for registering at that time.
- That I couldn't register for one of the English classes I had tentatively picked out because it was available to majors only.
For every problem there is a solution. I was a bit unsure about the English class myself, and fortunately I was able to find a 300-level American Studies English class to take in its place. I visited Admissions and Records, and was informed that one of the other classes I had trouble registering for "had been cancelled" while they refused to sign me up for the other without explicit departmental approval, even though my advisor (whose signature was prominently at the bottom of the page) was the instuctor for the class.
So, yesterday I wandered over to the other campus amidst my classes and talked things over again with my advisor. After a little investigation, it turned out that the registration number I had been given for the "unavailable" class was incorrect, while I gained enough department approval signatures to satisfy anyone for the other. I commuted from campus to campus again and registered, and that's all taken care of now.
This brings me to the other, related thing I wanted to talk about: I'm now (I guess) an English minor, although the process required to become one was not without its complications and amusing circumstances as well. When I first approached them, the English department referred me to my major department, art, for all paperwork, advising, and otger miscellaneous things of that nature; meanwhile, once I had filled them out, the art department gave me copies of minor application forms I was supposed to bring back to the minor college. The English department referred me from one door to another, and then to another, followed by another attempted referral back to my major advisor, before we all reached this conclusion: There were indeed multiple copies of the minor application form that were intended to go to different departments, but there was no need or place for them to take it. Oh well, at least that's taken care of as well!
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3-28-2006: Whew...
Today, I finally pieced together my schedule for next fall. I'm going to minor in English. I attended an interesting lecture by Joe Candillo on the subject of the Pascua Yaqui Indian Tribe in Percival Hall in lieu of my normal Native American Art class. And, I decided to ride my bike from downtown to Evansdale and back through busy streets in the rain today. And that's only some of what happened to me today. That's also why I don't feel like doing much of anything else for the remainder of the evening at the time I type this...
3-16-2006: Periodic Status Update
Happily, it looks like the "iBook Fiasco" that has dogged me for a very long time is coming to an end at last. In spite of all the consequences and setbacks, I managed to remain on speaking (or even friendly) terms with the person. We established communication again, and after another week of unsuccessful meeting attempts (including one comical instance in which we both met in a common location at the same time but didn't notice each other because we were looking different ways) he agreed to send the money order by mail. It arrived three days later, and I was able to deposit it today without incident. As for the "phantom" e-mails that he didn't receive from me (and vice versa), I blame the idiosyncrasies of his crappy Hotmail account. I'm glad to be able to wash my hands of Apple at last.
I almost got a job working in a clerical position for the Office of Information Technology. The interview went over well, but it turned out that the job hours meshed very poorly with my class hours. That was the official explanation (and in fact was brought up as a concern during the interview itself), but I can't resist wondering if the OIT or university as a whole have me blacklisted for my refusal to be assimilated into the leagues of Internet Explorer/Windows 98+ users. ;-)
Finally, I'm thinking of taking up cycling again. I'm on Spring Break right now, and I'll likely bring a mountain bike with me when I go back to Morgantown in a few days. It'll be great being able to go places by a means faster and more enjoyable than is provided by foot, bus, or PRT.
3-3-2006: The iBook Fiasco, Part 2
To make a long story short: For over a year, I had an Apple iBook computer in my possession that was of no use to me and that I wanted to sell. You may wish to read part 1 for information suggesting the context of the issue at hand.
I thought on and off about the best way to sell the machine for several months, and last September after due consideration I decided to exploit the trusty flyer-posting method, doing so around high-traffic areas of the Creative Arts Center and other buildings as well. Most of the flyers disappeared within a few days, except oddly for one that stayed up in its original place for months on end. It's still up there as of yesterday, in fact.
The iBook had cost over $1000 new, and I wanted to recoup at least some of that for my trouble. When posting flyers, I initially stated a slightly ambitious price of $750, which was the approximate eBay value of the computer at the time. No one contacted me, however, and several weeks later I lowered the price to $700 "or best offer."
I did get several inquiries and offers within a couple months, but none of them were satisfactory. One person suggested in person that he'd contact me about his interest in the computer, only to never do so, while another person actually arranged a meeting with me only not to show up, stranding me in the cold. Don Luchini suggested the following reason for why I had such a hard time securing a buyer: "You can still get a good deal [on a new non-Apple PC] for $700."
Oddly enough, while I had trouble finding students interested in what I was selling, I did receive a pair of offers from CAC staff members, although both deals fell through. The first interested party was a short mustachioed man who looked exactly like Magnum, P.I.. He reeked of cigarette smoke and offered less money than he originally implied he would. A second individual I decided against an offer from because of the obnoxious, pushy tone of his e-mail and the fact that his initial offer was hundreds of dollars below what I was asking at the time. Eventually, half out of protest, I changed my price again, this time to "$650 for students and $700 for faculty and staff," since I would personally prefer the computer to fall into the hands of a needy student like myself.
By early February, I had nearly given up on the prospect of selling my iBook, which for several months had served a purpose only as a bedside table through its cardboard box. On February 13, however, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from an interested student offering $600 for my machine.
By now I was desperate to simply get rid of the computer, so after half a dozen more e-mails we arranged a meeting and he offered to pay by check. So far, so good. The person was polite and enthusiastic enough, expressed a genuine interest in and need for the computer, and I felt confident about selling the iBook to the individual.
His $600 check, however, turned out to be a counter check (the sort given out by banks to customers when they first set up a checking account, before their "real" checks with a name and address printed on them arrive), and he had misspelled my name as "Adam Turnbull," crossing out the first name and writing the correct "Andrew" in above. He assured me that this would not be a problem. I let him have the computer (which I valued the absence more than the presence of), and we were both on our way.
My bank discouraged me from depositing the check, however, and when I instructed them to call the person's phone number to make sure the transaction was legit, he wasn't there. The teller recommended that I have him write a replacement check (with my name spelled correctly) and come back. Simple, right?
Not so simple. The person says that the check he gave me was the only check he had in possession. (What??) He offers to write an equivalent money order in exchange for me voiding the check, and suggests that we arrange a meeting for us to do so. All ready to go?
He never follows through, however, and suspends e-mail communication for a whole week, in which I patiently wait for him to respond to my enquiry about a meeting time and check the mailbox daily in case he chooses to send the money order that way. When he finally sends me another e-mail on February 24, he gets apologetic and returns to his suggestion of a money order-related meeting time.
We arrange a meeting on Wednesday, March 1. At the last minute, however, the person calls off the meeting with the claim that he couldn't purchase a money order at a supermarket (Supermarket??! Money orders are sold at post offices) and couldn't stop at his bank either. So, I arrange a meeting the following evening, notifying him by e-mail.
Problem is, on Thursday evening he doesn't show up at all and without notifying me of his inability to come either. By now I was seething with anger and frustration, and sent off a critical e-mail reprimanding him for not coming, stating my intentions to deposit the original check and contact him at the bank by telephone if he will reveal what hours he is available, commenting that I wished to resolve the transaction before the weekend, and recommending that he improve his fiscal and organizational skills.
As if things hadn't gotten bad enough, his prompt e-mail back wrinkled things ten-fold. He denied receiving my prior e-mail (in spite of the fact that I have proof that it was sent...perhaps his Hotmail service is unreliable?), apologized again (as always), and repremanded me for telling him how to live his life. Furthermore, he told me that the CD/DVD-ROM drive in the iBook had broken: It rattled, and was no longer operable, although I had tested it mere days before giving the computer to him and it had functioned perfectly then. He ignored my question of when he would be available on weekdays by phone.
Later that night, I apologized for being rash, reproduced the contents of my previous 'phantom' e-mail, and asked him if he would be available for meeting next afternoon. He ignored my primary question and insisted that a discount for himself was in order. I reluctantly agreed and asked again when he would be available for meeting. As of now, I'm waiting for his reply.
Today I spent all afternoon calling this person up at the half-hour, receiving nothing more than a recorded message each time. I will continue calling until I receive a spoken reply.
