![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Nov. 1st, 2007
Morning: Put together travel grant application so that maybe I can get half of what I spent to go to AoIR reimbursed. I'm not kidding - UMass offers grad students reimbursement up to $400 for international conferences. Apparently they haven't looked at the cost of plane tickets lately! If I get the grad school grant I might be able to get the remainder covered by my department; if I don't get the grad school grant I turn around and apply to the department instead. It should be noted that in doing so I had to PRINT OUT what was supposed to be a pdf form, fill it out BY HAND and then RE-SCAN IT TO PDF because the editable form is all borked.
11:45 am: Oh crud, I have a noon appointment at the Genius Bar! Slam computer shut, toss in bag, run to Apple Store. Genius #1 witnesses odd shutdown behavior of the computer (basically, I was getting an hour and a half of battery time max and then an ungraceful shut down with no warning, but the physical battery still showed itself having 3 lights out of five of charge). Genius #2 (the bar was SWAMPED) takes over for Genius #1 and pokes around a bit. Says he doesn't see anything physically wrong with the battery, nor do any of the diagnostics show any problems, but his intuition is that the battery is bad and qualifies for replacement (this behavior is well-documented and Apple themselves say that certain batteries are wonky and qualify for free replacement). My intuition agrees. We hope - because if it's not the battery, it's something that will be far more expensive to fix, and I didn't extend my AppleCare. The new battery just finished charging and I unplugged it so we'll see how it does. This time I will be sure to practice good battery hygeine and discharge the battery completely before plugging it back in. (Update: am now down to 79% charge, an hour and a half remaining (haven't been doing anything to conserve battery life), and no dramatic shutdowns yet.)
While at the mall, I wandered around a bit - JC Penney's was having a huge sale and I found several pairs of pants that I liked but then when I put my jeans back on and noticed how they were fitting, I decided it wasn't worth dropping a decent chunk of change (not a lot, but probably in the neighborhood of fifty bucks) on pants that might or might not be too big by the end of the year. There will be other sales. Ditto for Old Navy - the had some blazers on sale that were very cute & reasonably priced. Tried on an M, it was WAY too tight in the shoulders. The L fit me like a sack, though. :^/
Then home again to finish writing lecture for tomorrow, which I have now done, and to answer the following e-mail which arrived unsigned and with no subject line:
And now it's just about time to go collect The Kid and The Husband from The Train.
11:45 am: Oh crud, I have a noon appointment at the Genius Bar! Slam computer shut, toss in bag, run to Apple Store. Genius #1 witnesses odd shutdown behavior of the computer (basically, I was getting an hour and a half of battery time max and then an ungraceful shut down with no warning, but the physical battery still showed itself having 3 lights out of five of charge). Genius #2 (the bar was SWAMPED) takes over for Genius #1 and pokes around a bit. Says he doesn't see anything physically wrong with the battery, nor do any of the diagnostics show any problems, but his intuition is that the battery is bad and qualifies for replacement (this behavior is well-documented and Apple themselves say that certain batteries are wonky and qualify for free replacement). My intuition agrees. We hope - because if it's not the battery, it's something that will be far more expensive to fix, and I didn't extend my AppleCare. The new battery just finished charging and I unplugged it so we'll see how it does. This time I will be sure to practice good battery hygeine and discharge the battery completely before plugging it back in. (Update: am now down to 79% charge, an hour and a half remaining (haven't been doing anything to conserve battery life), and no dramatic shutdowns yet.)
While at the mall, I wandered around a bit - JC Penney's was having a huge sale and I found several pairs of pants that I liked but then when I put my jeans back on and noticed how they were fitting, I decided it wasn't worth dropping a decent chunk of change (not a lot, but probably in the neighborhood of fifty bucks) on pants that might or might not be too big by the end of the year. There will be other sales. Ditto for Old Navy - the had some blazers on sale that were very cute & reasonably priced. Tried on an M, it was WAY too tight in the shoulders. The L fit me like a sack, though. :^/
Then home again to finish writing lecture for tomorrow, which I have now done, and to answer the following e-mail which arrived unsigned and with no subject line:
do you have any extra credit that i can do to help me passAfter I dug around and figured out who the hell it was FROM, I opened up my spreadsheet and fired off an e-mail to the kid in question telling him what he needs to do to improve his grade (funny how I'm doing a lot of that in the couple of days after returning the midterm).
your class
And now it's just about time to go collect The Kid and The Husband from The Train.