Monthly Archives: August 2008

How come when you restore software — say, because you had your logic board replaced, or a hard drive fail — your registered applications frequently lose their sense that you actually paid for them, but your demo software remembers that … Continue reading →

I’m glad that St.Patrick’s is set to break ground for their rebuilding project in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — and I’m glad, for now, that they haven’t gotten much further. In case Gustav hits harder, and more directly, than … Continue reading →

A recent MacInTouch reader’s comment called attention to Farhad Manjoo’s polemical tract from Slate, directed against printer manufacturers. While Manjoo frames his essay in a way that muddies the case, I share his frustration with the market model for near-commodity … Continue reading →

David pointed to Fantastic Contraption which is obviously a subtle plot by some terrorist organization to bring the productivity of U.S. workers to a grinding halt.   Mine, anyway.   The boys and I used to love The Incredible Machine … Continue reading →

Working without your computer entails predictable inconveniences, but the one that frustrates me most is the Ominous Wall of Email accumulating on servers, waiting for me to download it. I’ve successfully kept my inbox below ten items all year — now … Continue reading →

Susie Schaefer sent me an email message yesterday afternoon; it began, “I’m supposed to be writing articles on summer youth events for our diocesan newspaper. Instead, I’m erasing every other sentence.” This reminded Susie of the olden days back at … Continue reading →

Today was Margaret’s first day at Loyola, which involved her leading a faculty seminar on a recent papal encyclical, and my first day of classes at Duke, which involved an introductory session with my Greek Exegesis of John class. Both … Continue reading →

This morning I brought Margaret to RDU for her first flight to Baltimore as a member of the Loyola faculty. Although her plane was delayed, everything worked out fine, and I got back in plenty of time to take Pippa … Continue reading →

I cloned my two-plus-year-old MacBook Pro’s drive on Thursday, anticipating taking it to the Duke computer repair shop (which does Apple-authorized AppleCare repairs), but it turns out that they charge $90 if you didn’t buy your computer from Duke. I … Continue reading →

xkcd has a cartoon today that characterizes the way Margaret and I spent the days between when we left Princeton (actually, to be precise, “between when our cable service in Princeton was cancelled”) and the day before yesterday when the … Continue reading →

Well, to be exact, they want my two-year-old MacBook Pro, which has been misbehaving more and more egregiously all summer. Since we haven’t had a stable address till recently, we haven’t had a convenient way to get the laptop serviced. … Continue reading →

The installer from Time-Warner finally came today, and after testing and rejecting one defective modem, he set up a modem that works. Now, however, we find out that our Lexmark printer doesn’t agree with being the USB printer from an … Continue reading →