I feel as though I've taken on too much responsibility this week. I bought renter's insurance, Alstom is shipping me off to Moscow, CCCP for the week of April 13, I made a claim using said renter's insurance, and bought a nice suit at Macy's.

The events concerning the insurance and the toilet reference in the title of this post boggle my mind. I signed for a policy Sunday evening, which I did not previously have, and this morning the toilet backed up, flooded the bathroom, and leaked into the unit downstairs. For serious. Having the foresight to get the policy is just as much an act of God as my crapper rejecting its breakfast. Consider also, that the affected neighbor downstairs enjoys listening to Christian rock in the early morning and late evening, praying out loud, and crying while he does so. He also talks very loudly on the phone for hours about how much he loves God and how his passion makes him a better person than folks like me, who aren't Jesus freaks. Act of God, indeed.

I am excited about going to Moscow. This adventure will include a lot of firsts for me:

• I've never visited a non-English speaking or non-Spanish speaking country.
• I've never flown for more than about four hours.
• I've never been so far from home.

To clarify that last statement, I've never traveled farther north than Toronto, farther south than Belize, farther east than Puerto Rico, or farther west than Las Vegas. That said, I can only imagine visiting Moscow for work related reasons because it really isn't relevant to me. I certainly respect and appreciate the city's history, but it's a history to which I don't belong. Furthermore, Moscow seems closer to nowhere than I'd travel to for the sake of traveling. I'm also nervous about the trip because it seems like the folks at Alstom's Russian branch are counting on my expertise on piping analysis. I'm told that I am supposed to answer their questions. I wonder if they have any idea what they are in for.

I hope to take plenty of photos with my new Holga in Moscow. In fact, I hope to take one of a Volga. I will consider the trip wasted if I do not achieve this goal.

Labels: adventure, god, holga, insurance, Lofts at the Mills, miscellaneous, moscow, religion, russia, toilet, volga

Continued from Steve Jobs Chums His Bathtup with Whale Meat to Feed His Ego: Part 2.

On Monday, Kat's computer stopped working again. I never really expected my fix to be permanent, but it did last a good while. I will probably be able to get the computer running again, for my own purposes, but Kat needs a reliable system to do her work on. So, last night we went to the UConn Co-op to get her a new 15.4" MacBook Pro.

Anyway, Kat wanted CCP4 installed on her new system. Unfortunately, it was pain in the ass. I'm pretty sure that most of the problem has to do with the software, but we were unaware that the system didn't come with Leopard already installed. This meant that it was a while before we realized that X11 wasn't already installed. However, after upgrading to Leopard and confirming that X11 was now installed, nothing about the CCP4 installation changed for the better.

I believe that the problem is that the CCP4 binary sucks. So we decided to use fink to install the program according to the instructions on this wiki and CCP4 works now! I can't remember if I followed the instructions for installing fink exactly but I think it was a matter of installing Xcode3, downloading the source for fink, which automatically decompressed, and compiled it by first navigating to its folder in the terminal and typing:

./bootstrap.sh

Then I followed the rest of the previously mentioned instructions. They are pretty clear except for telling you how to start CCP4. The instructions for doing so are here. I don't expect that anyone looking for clarification about getting CCP4 running will ever look to this post for help, so I intend to update the wiki a little bit. Hopefully we'll also have success in installing Coot.

I am going to drop the Steve Jobs Chums His... title after this post. I'm afraid that Treehouses might slip into the dark abyss of Apple hating, which isn't my style. While I am usually impressed by their products and culture, I am only sometimes perplexed and offended. Such is the case with Kat's new 'puter. The case is really nice to look at, the screen is great, and Leopard seems to be nice to work with. However, we've noticed some really troubling behavior. For example, when switching between text fields in different windows, such as from Terminal to TextEdit, it takes a few seconds before keystrokes start registering. It's not as though I start typing and then several seconds later everything I typed appears. Rather, there is some sort of waiting period before keyboard input is allowed. Kat hasn't experienced it at work when the computer runs off of the wall outlet, but we definitely noticed it on the second evening of battery power, but not the first. Anyone with information on what is going on and how to fix it should let me know. This problem is really frustrating.

In other news, my Holga came in from China yesterday. I can't wait to start taking photos!

Labels: Apple, ccp4, coot, fink, holga, laptop, Leopard, projects, x11, xcode3