So yesterday, after getting very down and frustrated I finally sat down and spent the afternoon fixing laptops. The G3/Wallstreet now has a 6Gig Hdd, and the G3/Clamshell now sports an 80 gig drive *and* a fixed power connector (the soldered joint had broken). I thought the wallstreet was a pig to take apart, but the clamshell is whole new levels of pigness.
What really left me in a rotten mood though was that having finally got it all back together I couldn’t find the powersupply. Something which I, thankfully, found today.
I had hoped that I would be spending the day doing animation, but I’ve been struggling somewhat with the interface of the software in question. In fact, nothing works the way I expect it to, and after a full morning of working (well, playing) with the software I can safely say that I can do no more than I could ten minutes in.
I think I need to sit and read some destructions.
I also want to get the second screen up and running, because at the moment it’s far too hard flicking back and forth between the interface I barely follow and the instructions. I can’t get any kind of flow going. It is, unsurprisingly, frustrating. I’ve been a user of Photoshop for a while now, and can kind of do what I want with it. I’m certainly no genius with it, but I can get about. But this is just, well, hard. 30 day trials are all very well, but I’ll never get it finished in 30 days.
Either that or buy it, which ain’t cheap.
Although it’s not quite so unreasonable if I end up doing some course at work and thus being a student again.
Instead of animating my afternoon away, I’ve spent the ‘noon doing work on the laptops. I’ve got absolutely no-where. It turns out my 10.0 CD went walkies about the same time that the dinosaurs disappeared. The 10.1 CD won’t install without the 10.0 CD.
The 10.4 CD won’t install because it’s evil, and both the laptops predate firewire. I need to locate a 10.2CD, I’ve feelers out. All this just to get them prepped so I can sell them. Having fixed the Clamshell and sorted the PowerBook (it’ll be sold with it’s upgrades, even if I can’t make them work) I just want to get an OS on each so I can make sure they’re both actually working properly, and then they can go on e-bay with my mum’s trike. Once that’s done I’ll stick the Dell on there, cleaned up and running Win2k or somesuch, and then we’ll see what we can afford. I’m thinking 2 postage stamps and a bag of crisps.
They seem to vary from about 10 quid to 100. The latter would, obviously, be more handy.
I must admit to currently having a strong desire to clear out all the computer stuff, more or less, and land up with a shiny laptop. A new Apple intel laptop seems like a better solution to me, than the current state of affairs. It’d not really be fair though, ‘cos Nikki gave me the G5 (on which I’m typing this), and while I organised getting it fixed and sticking drives in I’ve always had a bit of guilt about the fact it was still under warranty.
I suspect the status-quo will remain, at least for the time being. The G5 for serious work and some shonky laptop from e-bay to replace the Dell.
In general I’m having a ‘clear out’ urge. Which is always interesting. Especially since I’ve got rid of a lot of the stuff I didn’t need. I don’t know what I want to clear out. But stuff needs clearing out from somewhere in my head.
