soapbox

Alright, this one’s for all y’all computer-literate types out there (especially the Mac-savvy among you).

My iBook (G4, running 10.3.9) is having all kinds of shit-fits today about some kind of “shared library error”. This seems to be causing major problems with things like Preview, Internet Explorer (not that I care much on that one), the Shockwave plug-ins on Safari, and third-party applications like the carbonized version of Diablo II I was running just fine yesterday.

Here’s an example of the sorts of error messages it gives:

shared library error:
“B[diablo II (Carbon)][apple;Carbon;Multimedia][cfmpriv_quicktime][]”

Note: I’ve had to replace the greater than/less than symbols with corresponding closed/open brackets on account of the blog not cooperating.

I don’t even really know what the heck that means, but I have figured out where this all-important shared library resides. Of course, I can’t look inside it because, according to the computer, it can’t be opened on accoutn of OS X using the file. Something very similar crops up for Internet Explorer. Preview quits before it ever starts, with no error message to explain why. And, the Shockwave plugin gives an error message of “Unable to load plug-in”, which is fairly mundane I suppose, except that I usually don’t have problems with that Shockwave stuff in particular.

I’m okay with having this thing be crappy for today, although I don’t much like it, since about 90% of the Internet I’d like to access relies on some kind of Flash (for ads or content) that is causing some kind of fatal error in the browser, but if anybody has some time to help me sort this out tomorrow, I’m happy to owe you lunch sometime.

UPDATE: I’ve managed to use one of the other machines here in the office to download Firefox, which I’ve now installed on my machine. I’ve updated/re-downloaded Shockwave, and that seems to be in order. Still having major problems with Flash (try re-installing that as well), due to the same sort of “shared library error”. Tried updating Quicktime, as the error seems tied to something relating to it, but I can’t get the installer to work, since my machine seems to already have the latest version.

The man many of us will always remember as Barney Fife passed away this weekend. He lived a long and full life that touched the hearts of many through his humor; we should all be so fortunate.

You’ll be missed, funny man; thanks for all the laughs.

overheard in the co-op

boy: “i’m having a hard time shopping vegetarian.”
girl: “how long have you been doing that?”
boy: “about two weeks now.”
girl2: “oh, what made you decide to do it?”
boy: “i wanted to be cool.”

i thought there would be a laugh following that. but, no, he was indeed being serious.

Scotland 18 - 12 England. ’nuff said.

Brilliant tackling and defense, quality execution. good stuff.
Prince’s Street is going to be crazy tonight.

In what reminds me of the non-PC depictions of Mardi Gras/Carnival in Bond movies, a group of thieves managed to use the chaos of Carnival to make off with a number of famous paintings, including Pablo Picasso’s The Dance, Salvador Dali’s The Two Balconies, Henri Matisse’s Luxembourg Gardens and Claude Monet’s Marine.

The thieves reportedly brandished a hand grenade to threaten security guards at the Chacara do Ceu museum.

They shut down the security cameras and then slipped away in a crowd of Samba revellers, said museum officials.

why the hell does it always have to suck all day friday until sundown? i don’t want to be out there freezing my ass off for these people. i’m in a really pissy mood tonight as is, so i better not get any of those “well, in MY telescope….what’s the power of this one? I usually get blah with mine” jerk-offs.

i’d so rather be at the hockey game screaming at clarkson. this is why i shouldn’t get up at 7am. so. pissy.

Some of the political comments made by today’s Collooquium speaker got me thinking about a subject I’ve been stewing on ever since it came up during a discussion about diversity during the DCAL mentoring seminar the other week.

Before I further get into this rant-like musing on cultural bias and stereotyping based on region within our country, I’d like to toss out a couple of disclaimers:

1) I’m not trying to lay claim to any sort of “victim” status, but I feel like I’ve got something worthwhile to say on this subject.

2) I feel certain that today’s Colloquium speaker tossed out his first politically-tinged wisecrack about “certain Southern states” with no particular malice, especially since he later followed it with several others targeted at different elements of the right-wing side of the “culture war”. I also suspect that his comments were mostly a reflection of the sort of sour grapes humor that necessarily manifests among the learned who are currently experiencing a serious political disenfranchisement.

3) I’ll be the first to admit that politics in the Deep South is characterized back some really backwards-thinking leadership (we had to call the evolutionary biology course at my high school “Biological Change” to avoid the ire of the fundamentalists in the state house), but, since I was born and raised under them, maybe I’m a better judge of it than a total outsider.

I’ll save the rest of this for after the jump.
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