Tag: Mac

stupid .Trashes

Wednesday, 23 April, 2008 at 6:33 pm

I had a horrible fight with a Mac today. Gasp and shock! Yes, I found one instance of complete idiocy in the Mac OS.

At the end of my magazine design lab today, I tried to copy the files I’d worked on to my USB drive but got the message that there wasn’t enough space on the disk. Okay, I thought, just delete the older files I don’t need. Simple enough. But no matter how much stuff I deleted (sent to the Trash), paring my files all the way down to just fonts and one photo I definitely didn’t want to leave in the Trash on a public computer, the drive kept reading as “72.1 megs free” (or however the phrase goes on a Mac).

I started freaking out then. Maybe the one photo I’d left on there was royally screwed up (coming from a PC; I’d believe it) and was really larger than the 71 megs it said. Maybe my drive was royally screwed up and I’d have to run out and buy a new one. Maybe there really was 840 megs of stuff somewhere on my drive and it just had to sit there so I’d have to run out and buy a new drive anyway, possibly a 2 gig or larger one to hold all my files.

I come home, plug my USB drive in my trusty (note the sarcasm) Dell PC, and what do I see? A faint folder (I have hidden files and folders showing, because I’m a control freak like that) called “.Trashes”! Of course! Only Macs have extraneous system files that start with a period! I check the folder and yup, all the files I’d “sent to the Trash” were there!

According to this page, Some Basics for Using USB Drives, I would have to go an extra step and empty the Trash on the Mac hard drive to clear my external drive!

How silly of me! Of course I should have thought of that! Who in their right mind wouldn’t know that “deleted” files don’t really get deleted on a Mac until the Trash is emptied! Too bad this is a public computer for the GrC department and the settings are such that any time the computer restarts, any and all files on the Desktop go into the Trash. I’d hate to inadvertently delete some student’s last copy of a file, so I never empty the Trash. (Unless I really don’t want some snoopy person to see the file that I’d just sent to the Trash. *grin*)

Pardon me for saying this, but I really like Microsoft’s option of holding Shift while deleting (or “Recycling” which turns into “Delete” on the right-click menu) and thus bypassing that step of deleting from the Recycle Bin when I really know I don’t want the file anymore. Does Mac have this option somewhere? Cmd+Option+Shift+3+Return+Enter?

I feel like I should carry around an extra, empty USB drive with me now, just in case the one I normally use doesn’t have enough space for what I want to copy. But the only USB drives I have are two 512 meg Dell freebies (yeah, take a Dell drive to a Mac-dominated department *snerk*), a 12 meg Xerox freebie (what the heck is this good for? Transferring Microsoft Office documents?), and my Iomega external hard drive. The Iomega has 60 gigs, but it’s sort of too big for my bookbag, and besides, I have allll my files backed up on there. I don’t want to accidentally mess up the drive by knocking the USB cable out or something.

Maybe I should go out and buy a newfangled 4 gig USB drive …

(Oh yes. I don’t have the files I worked on in lab. I just have the InDesign Exchange file. Yaaay, re-editing many high res photos, what fun I have to look forward to!)

you’re the spotlight, girl

Monday, 14 May, 2007 at 10:32 pm

Yay! I’m so happy! I got Linotype’s FontExplorer! XD A student in class said it’s like iTunes for fonts, ’cause there’s a store in the program. Cooliz. :D But I got a font management program! Wooooo!

I haven’t installed it yet. >.> Still set in my ways. Turn on fonts to use them? But that’s an extra step … and on this laptop, I’m not sure if I want an extra program opening on startup … but I should definitely install it on my desktop. Getting closer and closer to a Mac … :b

This blog needs a new layout. The tiny text area is bugging me now. I’ve got an idea in mind, but first I have to make a new layout for my Cardigans fanlisting. It’s been wanting one for a while now…. Over the weekend I made a new Mochi fanlisting layout, and validated coding for most of the other fanlistings, still got a few left to go through. Opened the Kouda Mikako fanlisting. :D Yaaay, I’m so happy, I gots the Cardigans fanlisting and the Miwako and Mikako fanlistings. Maybe I’ll open a Miwako & Mikako relationship fanlisting. *laugh* Yeah. Right.

Hm, I should also get around to making that layout for my journal. I had the idea in mind since probably around the time I put this eyemelon layout up. Just never got around to it. :o

browsers

Saturday, 11 November, 2006 at 1:36 pm

I am back! :o I think I’m getting back into blogging too much.

I downloaded Firefox 2.0 the other day. I got an alert through the browser that 1.5.0.8 was available. Since the updater used to take a loooong time to update, I always got the new version through the website myself.

Well this time I could only find the download links for 2.0. I was kind of confused. Didn’t they say I should update to 1.5.0.8? Why didn’t I see it? I thought 2.0 was still in beta, and I don’t download betas (exceptions: middle_man and Firefox 0.8, because AIM and IE were just that annoying). But since that’s all there was I just downloaded it.

Yesterday, I think it was, I was “forced” by Windows Update to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7. I’d seen links on Yahoo before (“Yahoo! recommends you upgrade to IE7” Well I recommend that Yahoo! mind its own business.) but I didn’t bother to get it, since I’d fixed my settings to practically not let IE 6 do anything but show me text and images. XD; But since Windows Update was doing it for me, why not? I was too lazy to custom install and disallow IE7. Besides, Windows Update claims I can switch back if I prefer.

(This is on my desktop by the way, I think Norton Antivirus disabled Windows Security Center on my laptop and I’m not sure if it’s getting the Windows Updates itself. Maybe I should force it turned on anyway.) (… Dude! I can’t view windowsupdate.microsoft.com! What the heck?! Now how do I check if Antivirus is keeping me up to date? edit: I found update.microsoft.com and apparently the only update I need is IE7. Despite my last update being from October 14. How ironic is it that for the Microsoft Update page I had to practically allow all ActiveX options in order to use the site? I have things set to prompt, but apparently the site didn’t like just that, it wanted more…)

I’m probably biased, but I definitely prefer the Firefox update to the IE update. The only thing I really dislike about FF 2.0 (other than the default theme; I downloaded the old 1.5 theme XD;;) is that the Xs to close each tab is now on each tab. I suppose I have to just get used to it, but for every other program I know of (except graphics programs) the X to close documents(/tabs/whatever) is always in one specific spot. I suppose maybe this is more helpful for not-so-savvy computer users, more clear which tab you’d be closing. But I’m always afraid I’m going to hit the X instead of just switch to the tab. ._. Again, I guess I just have to get used to it.

The second thing I have to get used to in FF 2.0 is links opening in new tabs instead of new windows. I know there’s an option to switch it (I have it set back to new windows on my desktop), I’m just not used to it. When links open in new windows, there’s this very visual hint that it’s a new window (it’s kind of as if the whole browser has done a refresh, and reloads and redisplays the bars at the top) and that I won’t be able to use the back button and I’ll have to close the window eventually. But if it’s a new tab, I don’t notice that there’s a new tab on top until I go to hit the back button and notice it’s greyed out.

Also, sometimes I prefer more than one browser window open, because each window is a different task. For example, I could have e-mails open in one window, my websites open in another, and … I usually don’t have more than two windows open unless links open new ones.

Then on my Livejournal friends page, I have links open in new windows (because I have so many comics images on the page; I suppose images would reload from my cache, but just in case, I don’t want to keep using up people’s bandwidth [and my precious hundredths of seconds having to reload the page *snerk*]; also I assume that people don’t look at my friends page), and I’m just not used to having so many tabs open in one window (maybe half a dozen), or using Ctrl+Tab so often. Alt+Tab is just more comfortable. (Thumb & middle finger vs. pinky & middle finger.) But I shouldn’t really complain I guess.

All those complaints, and I like FF 2.0 over IE7? Yeah. *grin*

First complaint: I see no option to not display tabs if only one is open. I find the tab function very handy, but I also think it’s not attractive. Especially on IE with this over the top gradient design. X_x Another complaint about the way the tabs bar looks is that little box. I know it opens a new tab (I always wished Firefox had something like that. Maybe something on the bookmarks toolbar? If I don’t display the single tab I have then there’s no way to right-click on the bar and click “New Tab” and if I’m feeling lazy and not using the keyboard, I don’t like going all the way up to the File menu to get a new tab.). I guess it just goes with the I think the tabs bar is ugly thing. It’s something else on that ugly thing adding more ugly.

Hm, since this is the first time I’ve had more than one tab open in IE, I just noticed that you can close tabs only if it’s the active tab. I guess that would fix my problem in Firefox of accidentally closing a tab, but I think it just hampers me in IE. How hard am I to please?! *laughs*

Second complaint: Where’s the Menu Bar?! *hyperventilates* Oh, I can choose to display it through the Tools menu (menu? what do I call that thing?) What?! It shows up below the navigation bar (? is that what it’s called?). How totally against my expectations of any basic program do you want to go? Plus it’s in the way! I have to move the cursor that much farther up to use the nav bar! And it goes against my expectations of programs and is ugly and is in the way!

Third complaint: How do I customize all the bars?! I don’t want to use my browser this way! Give me flexibility, dangit! I want to move the buttons around differently from the way you want me to see them! I want the Links folder to display on the bottom right of the toolbars again! I don’t want those buttons in the bottom right! I’d rather use the Menu Bar like I do with practically any other program! I might not want to display the search bar because I don’t use IE so why would I ever search through it!

(Haha! That Quicktabs thing is such a ripoff of that option in Macs to display all windows that are open! [Sorry, I don’t remember the command to call that option.] But much less cool.)

Fourth complaint: I notice that the Refresh and Stop buttons are moved to the right of the url box, whatever it’s called. Um, way to go against people’s expectactions of a browser? Or even if people didn’t have that expectation of back/forward/refresh/stop buttons being all together to the left of the url box, at least let me switch to what I prefer!

Fifth complaint: This ClearType thing just makes the text blurry, in my opinion (in my eyes? XD; ). I’m using an LCD monitor, but it just looks blurry to me, and gives me a bit of a headache. (I’m somewhat sensitive to monitors even in the best of circumstances; they have to be a certain distance from my eyes, be a certain size, on and on, otherwise I get sick.) That’s one thing I don’t like about Safari on Macs. It’s not as noticeable for me on the Safari though, for some reason. Maybe because of the high definition, high resolution, large dimension monitors that Macs have (and which I drool over XD), as opposed to the regular monitors that PCs have.

(Sidetracking, I was thinking of buying a bigger Dell monitor for my desktop so I can see when I work in Illustrator or InDesign [I’ve mostly used those programs lately on Macs with their beautiful, big monitors, so I’m spoiled] but the lady I asked at the Dell kiosk said they don’t sell high def monitors. boo. So I don’t really see the point of spending $600+ for something subpar, and I’ll just save up for a Mac. :D)

Despite all my complaints about this ClearType, I’m sure that lots of people would like it so I don’t consider the ClearType itself to be a bad thing. No, what I’m complaining about is the fact that I can’t find anywhere in the Options to turn it off! What the heck? I knew I wasn’t blind when I looked over the whole advanced options menu three or four times. … Now what am I supposed to do? Not use IE. XD I just use it for a separate set of cookies anyway. (Yahoo I have old accounts that I check, and Livejournal I have two extra accounts, and don’t feel like signing out of my main account on Firefox.) Also to check out how layouts look in IE. But then again I use my laptop to code my websites, so I guess I really don’t have a problem there. (I haven’t been “forced” to install IE7 here yet, and I don’t want to bother to install it myself.)

Last complaint: There’s only one um, arrow for the back/forward buttons. Does that thing have a name? O_o This isn’t much of a complaint, I just think it’s kind of weird. I’d have to adjust myself to looking for the bolded/checked/highlighted page to orient myself as to where I am. Then again, I am just using it on the desktop, not the laptop, so with the laptop (i.e. the touchpad) I might be more annoyed than with the desktop (i.e. the mouse). *snicker*

Overall, I think that IE (or, you know, Microsoft, whoever makes IE) is just trying to be completely new and innovative and junk to make up for letting the last version get so outdated. Try to bring back their lost-to-other-browsers userbase. But they just end up overstepping the boundaries of what a browser should be like and should do. Whereas Firefox just updated the browser and added things that their users have asked for! omigosh, imagine that! :o

One new thing I like about Firefox 2.0. When you close a tab, you go back to the last tab you had active, not just the tab previous to the one you’ve closed. That’s new, right? I always thought the old way was a bit aggravating. :D

Ah! XD I just went to Customize Toolbars in Firefox and I found a button for new tabs. Omigosh, imagine all the stuff you get when you actually look for it! har har.

And that ends my somewhat ranty post. haha, such a long entry. *shifty eyes* Took me an hour and forty minutes to type.

slooooow laptop

Friday, 15 October, 2004 at 7:07 pm

Things that slow down system bootup

My laptop took an hour and a half to start up today. *waves tiny flag*

You have 850 fonts installed. If you can survive without all those fonts, try removing 600-700 of them to see if that makes a difference.

Gee. What am I supposed to do? (I have 300-something.) It’s not like my life depends on them, but it’d be like trying to take some car products from Mickey, or a fast computer prcessor from Hidek. (Oh wait, Hidek doesn’t have that. :b)

Your network drivers (LAN, Dial-up Networking) take too long to load—try disabling them to see if it makes a difference.

“Aw hell no!” :( Without my internet connection my laptop is pointless. (Yet any other connection, without my files, is pointless as well. :b)

Too many programs are being loaded at startup—check your Startup folder and eliminate any unneeded shortcuts.

Boo. All those programs are needed. (Last night I tried to trim the startup list on the study comp, but all those files were required. o.O;;;;) There aren’t any new ones from before this slow startup time anyway.

I had a thought today, though. Maybe I turned off something that was required. O.o But there’s no way to turn it back on, because it’s not listed. Er. I’m not into editting registries either. I don’t even know how to find out what program I turned off that’s needed.

Grr. Grr. Stupid computers. Maybe I really will get a Mac. My Intro to Graphics on a Mac prof was saying to another student that Mac used to be more graphically advanced than PCs, but that now PCs have closed the gap lately. But I heard somewhere else … I forget where … that Macs show colors more true to what is printed than PCs. Hm. I dunno. My cousin uses a Mac at work. But she has a PC at home. Which she rarely uses. :b

… *no good way to end entry* … *braindead*

I’ve become tongue-tied

Sunday, 19 October, 2003 at 12:13 pm

SM00: how come you havent updated your blog lately?
me: what is there to say?
SM00: i don’t know
SM00: tlak about adam?
me: okay

Lessee … Adam ish smart … Adam ish cute … Adam is crushed on by SM00. XP

But anyway … I don’t really know what to talk about anymore. ^_^;; I suppose this is a loggy kind of journal. You know, like “Wednesday [date]: Went to school. Ate lunch. Came home. Thursday [date]: Went to school. Ate Lunch. Came home. Friday [date]: Went to school. Saw dead cat. Poked at it with a stick. Ate lunch. Came home.” :b Got that from Leave It to Beaver. XD So … Wednesday, went to class. Took notes. Came home (2). Thursday, went to class. Realized how much I screwed up on my class schedule cover. :x Took notes. Came home (2). Friday, went to class. Watched a documentary on Geronimo. Came home (2). Packed up. Drove home. Ooh, ooh. It took us a mucho long time to get home, for some reason. I forget why. No accidents. It was just slow after the Sepulveda Pass. x.x Or actually, slooow after the Sepulveda Pass. Yeah.

Then I spent practically two hours trying to burn this CD (I hope that’s the right link), with absolutely no success. x.< I ruined two CD-Rs trying to get it working. -_- First time (a few weeks ago), a song wouldn’t burn, and I had to quit ’cause I ran out of time, so yesterday I tried to continue, but it didn’t work. Maybe because the power went out upstairs for a second so things turned off. Including the CD burner. ¬_¬ Then I grabbed another CD to try that, and the whole thing completed, but for some reason it just won’t read as music … so I thought of using Daddy’s CD burner, ’cause Hidek told me it’s working now, but then I found out there are absolutely no network connections in this house. O_O! So I gave up on the CD.

When Daddy came home, though, he brought a 64 mb memory stick from work that they got free with a notebook from Dell. XD That thing is so cool. I want one. ;.; Except that USB ports are behind the computers, so I’m crawling under and around things … blegh. The Macs on campus have USB ports on the keyboards. ^^; That’s handy. Anyway. I gots mah CD now. :D After almost 2 months … ^_^; after listening to the songs so much on Winamp that I got tired of them … ^_^;; oh well.

Today was a boring, yet productive, yet relaxing day. No studying or driving or reading or note-taking or test-taking or … thinking. XP (Actually, I did drive today, but more later). All I really did was chores (laundry and dishes, both manual dishwashing and loading the dishwasher), switch my Lisa Loeb fanlisting over to PHPFanBase, and read Sorceress. Much fun was had. After dinner Mommy, Hidek, and I went to Santa Monica Place. o_O

I’ve never really entered the freeway with the meter on before. ^_^;; I just always hit the gas all the way up. Then there were so many cars … but I didn’t have to move over three lanes to get on the 101. Just one lane to get to the 10. That was grand. But then the two lanes to the interchange were all slow. Yuck. But after the two lanes split up (north and south) it cleared up. Woohoo. I think it’s fairly simple remembering how to get to Santa Monica Place. ^^ For some reason I can’t remember how to get to Westside Pavilion. Well, there are two ways to get there, that may be one reason why.

Anyway. Yeah. Santa Monica Place has changed. o_o As Mommy said, “It’s more consumerism. Less touristy.” The Warner Bros. store closed. Wow. There’s a Forever 21 in its place. ^.^ I can’t say I’m disappointed.

So anyway. First went to Hot Topic to see boots. I no like Hot Topic. It’s all small and squishy and dark and loud. I couldn’t get out of this one girl’s way in the aisle. x_x But anyway. Boots were too high for me. ^^;;; And they only had red. Wahh. Didn’t hang around to look at anything else. Passed by Robinsons-May and went in to look at their boots. Niice boots. But too expensive. Even on sale for like $70. :( And the heel’s too high. I don’t want to put stress on my back. Mommy said 2 inch heels at the most, but ideally 1.5 inches.

Met back up with Hidek at Sam Goody and went to Pac Sun. Woo. I still say I like the Westside Pavilion one best. Even though I don’t really like Pac Sun. Hidek got two pairs of shorts. Then … Anchor Blue: nothing. Oh yeah. Got two hair clips (buy one get one half off) at Claire’s. Or. A store with a different name, a bit classier, less funky stuff, but run by Claire’s. Yeah. Forever 21: pair of pants and three shirts. Yay! ^-^ I was so tired standing in line with Mommy. ^^;; Kept staring off into space. I think I stared at the guy cashier too long. >_>;;; *coughs*

Then I saw the Kimono-ya was across the way, so I walked in while Mommy kept a lookout for Hidek. Woooo, so prettyful! They didn’t have a wedding kimono all special on display. And I didn’t wanna be tacky and look at the tags on the racks. ^^;;; But there wasn’t anything jaw dropping in there. Pooh. Just all around nice stuff. They had a rack of haori (I think they were haori) on sale, “$15 and up.” I saw a nice one I’d want. ^^;; But I have one. And I don’t wear it. They also had this book, encyclopedia of Japanese family crests, and … it made no sense to me. I couldn’t find the crest for my family. There were soooooo many shown in that book. o_o Amazing.

So, in conclusion, my hunt for boots continues. Oh. I found out on the EGL community that Hot Topic gets clothes specially made for them a bit cheaper from other clothing lines. Yeah. It was in the post about Hot Topic selling “Lola Goth” t-shirts. O_o Would those shirts even be understood, I wonder? Anyway. So I went looking for websites of the clothes I liked (Lip Service and Morbid Threads) and found Lip Service has an online store but Morbid Threads doesn’t. *sigh* Ah well. Look. [Removed link.] ^^ Kinda like the other shirt. Kinda. Don’t know what it’s made with, though. :/ For $90 it better be good!

Hm. The realization I had tonight: if I want my own style, the one that I want, and not the one that I can find off the rack in stores, I really really really need more confidence. Boo. It all comes back to that again.