Skip navigation

Monthly Archives: February 2012

Voiding Warranties

Why yes, I do have this shirt.

Monday morning was an interesting morning.  It was a voiding warranties kind of morning.  You see, I had broken a hinge on my work laptop, maer tupointo, over the weekend when I was working.  It happened right as I was about to leave, so I decided to just leave it until I got in today.  But…I had forgotten by Monday.  So when I got in that morning, maer was sitting there all forlorn with a broken right hip.

This wouldn’t really be a big deal if maer just sat on my desk all day.  LeeEv, my main machine at home, has had a broken left hip for years now.  Since he mostly sits at home, especially after Codename Roodee became my runner machine, his broken hip hasn’t really been much of a hindrance to doing stuff.  But, maer doesn’t just sit on my desk.  Maer goes everywhere with me.  Maer needs to put up with a lot of abuse.  I cannot work if maer has a broken right hip.  Now what?

Lucky for me, level boss (who may now also be my stage boss) realized that it would be a big deal if maer blew up or something.  So he cloned maer onto my old laptop, Roanmaer.

An aside about Roanmaer: Roanmaer, after leaving my service because of a faulty serial port, was relegated to the final boss to use when he was traveling.  That’s right.  The final boss got a hand-me-down from ME, a lowly engineer.  But anyway, he then decided that it was too difficult for him to work with Roanmaer because of the small screen.  I have the smallest laptop of all the guys here…probably because I’m the youngest engineer and I enjoy the good eyesight of youth.  So anyway, stage boss decided to clone maer onto Roanmaer and give Roanmaer back to me for safe keeping and for use as a backup.  End aside.

Since Roanmaer is my backup, I could have tried just using Roanmaer for most of maer’s current duties.  But the problem is, I had all my code stored on maer’s hard drive and not on the network where I could easily access it with Roanmaer.  Also, because Roanmaer is a clone of maer, there’s all kind of licensing issues with the all the different proprietary programming software I have to use.  I can work around stuff like that temporarily, but it’s a big pain and we’re under huge time constraints.  And…maer has a nicer screen resolution than Roanmaer.  So…I ended up stealing a hinge from Roanmaer to put into maer.  It took about an hour because I couldn’t really decide if I wanted to do the transplant.  But I did it and I also accidentally snapped a peg off of Roanmaer that keeps the hinge in place.  And now Roanmaer is bundled and wrapped and sitting securely by herself awaiting a new hip.  Maer is back up and running and putting up with abuse with the transplanted hip.

Incidentally, maer’s hinges were never really up to par with Roanmaer’s hinges.  Roanmaer’s hinges always operated smoothly without all the crackling and creaking maer’s hinges would emit.  Roanmaer is probably two years older than maer too.  They do not make laptops like they used to.

Also, having replaced one of the hinges on maer (and a new set is being ordered for me so both Roanmaer and maer will have working hinges), I’ve finally ordered parts for LeeEv.  UPS tells me that they’ll be here Monday.  LeeEv will finally get to undergo a hip transplant.  And…also the front bezel and back cover.  LeeEv’s hip didn’t just break, it shattered.  Poor LeeEv.

Lettermo Day #12

Dublin Castle

Grafton Street

A few handmade postcards!

These postcards are going to various places across the country via swap-bot, particularly for this swap.  This one was another one of those themed swaps.  In this case, we’re swapping postcards featuring buildings.

I decided to make these postcards using some photos I took when I visited Dublin, Ireland a few winters back.  The first one is of Dublin Castle.  It is the most colorful castle I’ve ever seen.  But only parts of it.  Some parts are not “restored” and look much like you imagine a castle should look.  And then you have these splashes of color.  It’s really interesting.  The other postcard is of Grafton Street, which is the place where everyone does their shopping.  I thought it was one of those tourist trap shopping areas at first, but I was told that everyone really does do their shopping there.  Since I was there over the holidays, it was decorated with lights and the like.  Some of the kids I was visiting had made it a tradition to see the lights late at night, when the street is more or less deserted.  They kindly took me along with them.

No stamp watch.

Did you know we’re approximately halfway through the challenge?