Noöcosm

It is imperative to remember that until you start being properly socialized again, being around other people while you or they are trying to do work is a really bad idea, since you prevent both yourself and the other people from getting work done. (It's not an active desire to prevent, or even an active attempt to do so. It's just that being around people is so novel that "quiet time" doesn't really happen.)

Now I have a ten-page paper to write. If you'll excuse me...

EDIT: How do you write to the editors of the AP Stylebook and tell them they've used a word wrong?

initials Use periods and no space when an individual uses initials instead of a first name: H.L. Mencken.

This format has been adopted to assure that in typesetting the initials are set on the same line.

Bold in the second paragraph is mine, and highlights the incorrect word. Perhaps they should add "assure" to their "ensure/insure" entry.

Also, dear everybody: the singular of "series" is "series", not "serie". Just so you know.

Dear Lazyweb,

Yesterday I upgraded to Firefox 1.5 for the Mac. I am seriously regretting having done so.

I'm sure that there are a lot of fancy features that I'm not using at all (because, well, I don't really do any hardcore web browsing). It's nice to have Bookmark All Tabs as an actual menu option. I do like the ability to tab-select a browser tab and then navigate through the tabs with the arrow keys.

But.

Firefox 1.5 breaks the two browser features that I used most often in 1.0.7: Ctrl-Tab to switch browser tabs, and automatically selecting the full current URL when the address bar receives a left-click. Instead, Ctrl-Tab moves between the document and the address bar (and does not address the browser tabs at all, which is strange given that unmodified Tab does), and clicking in the address bar puts the cursor at the click point instead of selecting the URL. (Strangely, I've discovered that both of these actions produce the results that I expect and desire in Windows Firefox 1.5.

As far as I am concerned, this is a broken browser. I don't care if that's how Safari does it. I don't like Safari for exactly these reasons.

Is there any way for me to fix this - a preference I haven't found, an extension I'm not seeing, what have you - or do I have to uninstall 1.5 and reinstall 1.0.7 to get Firefox to work the way I want it to?

EDIT: Okay, after some prowling, I've figured out how to move between tabs; they've changed it from Ctrl-Tab to Cmd-Option-Right/Left Arrow. Also, Ctrl-Tab - when I'm focused on the document - does select the entire URL in the address bar, so that I can type over rather than typing into.

But, seriously, guys. This is a major change in the way the user interacts with the browser. You could at least mention it in the damn release notes.

EDIT 2: On occasion, open source software is useful. In this case, having followed instructions from another irritated Firefox-Mac user, I've successfully re-enabled Ctrl-Tab tab switching. For those of you playing the home game, here are the instructions:

1) Quit Firefox
2) Go to Macintosh HD:Applications:Firefox.app, right-click, and choose Show Package Contents
3) Go to :Contents:MacOS:chrome
4) Duplicate toolkit.jar (so you have a backup)
5) Rename toolkit.jar to toolkit.zip
6) Right-click toolkit.zip and unpack it (which will create a folder called content)
7) Go to :content:global:bindings
8) Open tabbrowser.xml
9) Replace
this.mTabBox.handleCtrlTab = !/Mac/.test(navigator.platform);
with
this.mTabBox.handleCtrlTab = true;
10) Go back out to :chrome
11) Right-click :content and create an archive
12) Rename it to toolkit.jar
13) You can now use ctrl+tab again

10:25 PM: I think to myself, "I should get to bed soon."

10:30 PM: I start preparing to go to bed.

10:33 PM: My supervisor sends me an email: "There's a problem with the website that needs to be fixed now."

1:00 AM: I finish working out the problem with the website.

The problem, if you're curious: Access is a pansy-ass application that can't handle my webpage asking for more than 255 fields in one query. Either that or it's Microsoft ODBC. I don't run the back-end on this server, so I can't tell.

The solution: break the 255+-field query up into chunks.

The hard part: I have to assign a different name to each query, so everything that was cheerfully looking for getData now has to look for getData or getData2 or getData3 or getData4, depending on what chunk of fields they're looking for. And since this is dynamic - I don't know before the page loads how many fields the user is going to want (it's dependent on date - the later the date, the more fields get pulled, which is why this is only coming up now, three months after I wrote the page in the first place) that means that sometimes things are only going to be looking for getData, and sometimes things are going to be looking for all four queries, and sometimes it's in between.

So, yeah.

I think maybe I'll try and get some sleep, and ignore that my alarm is set for 6:30. I really wish I weren't such a presentee; I could get away with missing classes tomorrow if I absolutely had to, but I would feel awful about it for the rest of the week, so it's probably not worth it.

or, Holy Crap, That's What I Look Like From The Side?

So here's the trouble with goals: I don't know how to set and keep them. I'm not very good with setting internal consequences for not meeting goals. (You may read that as "I don't have very much willpower", if you like.) So I have a problem with getting things done, as long as there are no consequences imposed by external forces.

How is this done? How do you find a good balance between "unmotivating" and "unrealistic"? How do you motivate yourself to do something if the only pressure to do it is yourself?

Thing 1: my $165 phone bill.
Thing 2: the fantastic new hard drive is serial ATA (SATA-1), not ATA, and so I can't use it.

Where's Thing 3?

Just woke up from a restless sleep and dreams of, among other things, accidentally going to the wrong day's classes (i.e., trying to attend Tuesday's classes on Monday), being snubbed by my new friends, robin_d_laws stealing my stereo receiver while I was trying to cover a lawnmower with a tarp to protect it from rain, and still not having finished my History essay.

I hope today gets better from here.

+ I successfully argued myself into an 11/10 on the Poetry quiz from Tuesday. (I honestly didn't mean to. I just wanted to know why "the brown enormous odor he lived by" wasn't synechdoche.)
+ Actually, it's kind of funny: I am less happy that I got my grade bumped than that several other people did too, because they answered the same way!
+ I was told that I "totally rocked Poetry" today.
+ I made it through seven and a half hours of classes without keeling over, despite being more miserably sick than I've been in a long time, and despite having no medication whatsoever except a mug of tea first thing in the morning.
+ I got my paycheck cashed.
+ I got medication for my cold.
+ I got my watch battery replaced.
+ Dinner was pretty good.
+ I managed to run a two-hour game (sorry, guys) online. This was further enhanced by my composing all of the GM poses in iambic pentameter for the hell of it.
+ I reassured a friend that no, I'm not avoiding her, it's just that my timing sucks and I've been distracted.
+ I only have one class tomorrow, and I've already done most of the reading for it, and the reading is The Iliad so I don't think I'll have too much trouble doing the rest.

- Oh my God I'm miserable. (This is due entirely to the Head Cold of Doom.)
- I totally bombed the Latin quiz. (Seriously, if I get any points I'll be surprised.)
- I forgot that herbal tea, while great for colds, has interesting effects on my digestion. Thank God for stashes of Immodium.
- I actually have to do, like, work work this weekend.
- I've been having a lot of moments of crushing despair recently, although they might be side effects of the misery (see above). This afternoon the theme has been "this is all I get. Once I'm done with school, there isn't any more for me. I can't afford grad school. I'm barely managing to deal with school and work now. I'm going to be stuck doing things I don't want to do for the rest of my life."

But the positives outweigh the negatives, so I can go to bed with a happy heart.

The power is out along College Ave. and all through Brick City. It's strange not seeing the streetlights, or any house lights.

Special bonus feature: Richmond Power & Light have apparently decided to take the night off from answering their emergency contact number; nobody's picking up the phone. Earlham Security are starting to get a little pissed off, because when we can't contact RPL, we start calling them - and they have nothing else they can tell us, other than "we'll keep trying, hang tight".


EDIT: Power was restored at 3:40 AM, a little over four hours after it first went out.

I was going to whine here about how the dining hall just makes me lonely, because I see all this social activity and I'm not part of it. I had a great metaphor that involved lenses.

Then I remembered that I'm not supposed to be whiny.

So it's gone now.

(By the way, there is at least one person in the immediate area who reads this journal. Please don't take my complaints about being lonely as being passive-aggressive attempts to get you to hang out - I certainly don't mean them that way. I'm just bitching; I keep forgetting that there are people nearby these days who might not take these posts as just me kvetching about something I don't expect anybody to change.)