Center of the World

This Thursday and Friday Pittsburgh is hosting the G20 summit, which means things could get interesting. Several protests, both legal and illegal, are scheduled throughout the week. Downtown will be closed and a lot of bus routes have been altered. Safety has become a concern for the city and several of the area universities will be closed those days, but not Pitt. However, my professors have cancelled on campus classes, but will still post lectures on the University's portal system. That means a long week with no scheduled places for me to go! I plan to go to a Bible study, do some running, and visit a coffee shop or two this week to get me out of my apartment and away from these books!

End of One Life, Beginning of Another

Before I went home for Labor Day, in fact before I even moved to Pittsburgh, I was considering purchasing a new computer. My old laptop, affectionately nicknamed "Grandma," was nearing the 5 year mark and I didn't really trust her to get me through this year. This past weekend, I was pretty sure that this was the weekend that Grandma would be retired. My thoughts were confirmed Friday night.

I was sitting at the kitchen table with mom and doing some school work on my computer. Out of the blue, my cursor would not move where I commanded it to. I could move it around just fine with the touch pad, but when I clicked on the button to signal where I wanted it to be - nothing. In a flurry of concern I did what anyone else would probably do - turn the computer off manually and reboot. Again, the cursor remained in exactly the same place blinking at me. I tried clicking on other windows and applications with no luck.

With concern, I showed the problem to my dad. He started playing around and I noticed that the cursor would move whenever my dad gave it a commanding click. What in the world? I thought. He looked at me and just told me I needed to click the button harder. Oh... right. I returned to the kitchen table and began pounding away with the clicking button. I couldn't just press it harder to make it work, I had to pound the thing. It seemed rather comedic. Had anyone who walked into the room that moment, they would have thought I was very was writing an email in a fit of rage from the loud clicks that filled the air.

Grandma was still operable, but after Friday's incident, I didn't dare to trust her to carry me through eight more months of graduate work. I had been researching computers for a few months already, so I had a good idea as to what I wanted. Sunday afternoon my dad and I walked into the Apple store at the mall and about an hour later I officially became a Mac.