Back from the edge

Anyone who follows me on Twitter or is a friend on Facebook may have seen my technology woes this past week or so. While getting a cute little red laptop is fun and simple because I don't have any old Windows software or compatibility issues, replacing my old Mac mini (who decided that the red laptop was too much of an insult to go on with life) was anything but fun, simple or enjoyable. Erg.

Techie people, go ahead and read the following. Otherwise, I suggest going immediately to the pretty pictures of yarn down below.

First, you should know that I hate to upgrade and unless I absolutely must do it, I don't do it. This is because nothing is ever simple, but it's always time-consuming. When you've been collecting Mac software and fonts since the early 90s, upgrading to a new OS and a new processor is painful at best. Here's my latest adventure; and this one came after many more.

I've been using a "legacy Mac" (beige G3) to run some old Adobe software, as well as my old Mac mini, one of the last ones with a PPC processor. When I bought a new mini, none of the graphics programs I had been running on those two macs would run in Snow Leopard. So off I went to upgrade (ouch!!!). But the fun didn't stop there. Seems that Snow Leopard had a big fat font problem. Luckily for me, the fix came out Monday - 10.6.3 - and I downloaded it. It didn't work though. None of my hundreds of type 1 fonts were being seen by the new system. Panic ensued. I spent lots of time Googling and talking to Apple tech support. The Googling helped more than the tech support, but I finally did get a supervisor on the phone who would at least own the problem. Unfortunately, he was not a font expert, so he escalated it and I was waiting for the call back in a few days. Not one to give up so easily, I went Googling again and found a couple of interesting facts. 1) There was a problem in 10.6.2 with fonts becoming corrupted and registering a file size of zero k, and 2) apparently, Windows servers cannot store older Mac fonts, including type 1, because there's a resource fork that Windows doesn't support. Hmmmmmmmm.

Since Snow Leopard did away with AppleTalk, I had been connecting to my G3 via the server connection (yes - the freakin' PCs in the house can all see my older Mac on the network, but the new Mac cannot - grrrrr) and this started me wondering if maybe those fonts that I had been storing on the G3, and had copied through the server connection to the new Mac, had lost their data in the transfer. So off I went to resurrect my old dying, but not quite dead, mini. I transferred all of the fonts over to the old mini via the AppleTalk network and then put the old mini in target disk mode to transfer the fonts over to the new mini. Lo and behold...they came over intact!!! And even better, the system sees them. And all it took was a week and a half or so.

So now that you've read that, you deserve some pretty pictures of yarn, dontcha think? These are a few other skeins I got at Stitches West - this is the purple color range. :) I so love all the amazing colors of sock yarn out there. And I've determined not to let my dislike of actual sock knitting keep me from fondling and using all of that loveliness!

First is Aubergine from Knitting Notions. This is the most incredible color!

Next up we have Freesia from Wolf Creek Wools. Yummmmmm!

And then Orchid from Royale Hare. It's my favorite high twist sock yarn.

And Brandywine from Wabi Sabi yarns! It's funny that I should have been so drawn to that colorway, eh? I didn't realize the name until I had made it mine, mine mine!

Well, all the technology woes have made me way behind on everything. Then I had to rip out half of my secret project (the other two having already gone to their new homes). And now I am left just hoping for a 36 hour day. Do you think? Maybe if I bend the space-time continuum? Hmmmm. Gotta work on that.

:sigh:

This week I bought a mini laptop for travel (including swim meets!) and I think my Mac mini was upset. It must have been the way I went on about how cute the new computer is, and the color (red), and the mini mouse I got for it. I shouldn't have purchased a Toshiba using my Mac, because my Mac had the last word. The problem I had before came back. Ack!

So instead of the new printer I had been saving for, I ended up replacing my mini, because I just couldn't be down for as long as I was last time.

Ouch.

I ask you: is this not the cutest computer ever? (It's safe to say that now since I'm not using my Mac to post this).

And it's difficult to tell, but this mouse is dinky and completely adorable.

Unfortunately, my laptop is not here. I have my mouse and my external dvd, but Toshiba hasn't even shipped the computer yet. So for now, I am computer-less and depending on my husband's largesse.

In other and better news, the wonderful Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden created a little video to show the bind off for my Brandywine Shawl!



Thank you, Roxanne!

And the latest total, you ask? Thanks to all of you, I have been able to send $8,000 to Doctors without Borders from Brandywine sales! I'm still working on $50,000 (10,000 patterns sold), and I'm just going to keep donating until I reach my goal! Many many thanks to all of you who have mentioned Brandywine on your blogs and in podcasts: Steph, anne, Wendy, Kat, David, Jasmin, Beth, Helen, and many others. You've helped so much to get the word out! Please don't stop now. I still need all the help I can get! :)