Dentists, drillbits and mobile amnesia
16 May 2004Don’t worry, those three aren’t significantly connected. I mean, the former two are slowly ruining my life, although they are yet to conspire together to form some monstrous plot… the latter of those two continues to frustrate in the same way as I’ve previously whinged about, whilst the first is completely separate and a new issue altogether (and the third, well, it’s been around for a few days, but I haven’t had a chance to compain about it yet).
See, unlike certain people (no offense to anyone ;), I only keep *one* diary and calendar (admittedly, they are separate physical objects, but I make a habit of checking BOTH before scheduling anything), with the theoretical goal of not having to be in two places at once too often. And then there were parents. Well, specifically, a mother, with her OWN calendar, and her OWN agenda when it came to scheduling meetings with certain dental workers. Insert a pun about going “mental” here… haha. Or not.
My mobile is another source of angst. Apologies to everyone who’s sent me an SMS recently and hasn’t got a reply – this is a case of PEBPAWIBM (Problem Exists Between Phone And Whatever Is Behind Me) in conjunction with an ingenious feature that will cancel any message left too long half-written. No, really, thanks Samsung. Geez, it’s so useful returning me to the main menu of the phone – if I were to leave a phone in my pocket with a message half typed, that is far more dangerous than an unlocked phone at a dial screen, of course. And it would be, of course, completely irrational to dump me from my message, forget it, and then *actually lock the phone so something doesn’t happen by accident* – no, I was using the phone, you couldn’t possibly lock it. Dumping me to a menu is greatly appreciated, though.
Samsung deserve an award for usability. I propose the award be supplied in an un-openable box, as an example of how accessible products should be in recognition of their most excellent achievements in this field.
On a completely unrelated note to any of the above, thanks Ben for lending me your 40GB harddrive… I now have room to breathe in my home directory again (although I have somehow managed to ALREADY fill 20GB of that 40… go figure), at least for the next few months.
It’s kind of funny, that. Six months ago, I would have said that at my current rate of consumption, it’d probably take me about three years to fill 40GB. Nowdays, I go through about 1GB a week (much of which is simply deleted or burnt to CD, but still) of storage space on various mediums… admittedly, this is largely due to my storage of the raw audio captures from Platform Seven for streaming and archival purposes, but a lot of it is from other stuff as well… Platform Seven accounts for less than half of that 1GB/week usage.
So yes, I now have my music back!! Yep, I had it before, but my CD’s are in the next room – technically, we’re not allowed to convert copyrighted material between mediums here in Australia, but MP3′s (and, in the near future, OGG files) are just so much more convenient for me that I am past caring. I’ve never heard a complaint from anyone about this usage, anyway, even from various record associations – of course, the issue of “fair use” has never been a prominent one, since everyone ASSUMES that Australia has identical copyright laws to the US. Just for the record (haha, get it?), this is not so, and if you’re in a position to do something about getting our laws changed, or know what to do about it, let me know/do something.