Bounded-Error Log

Hardware:

The laptop I’m typing this on is over two years old. This is not a lot by some measures, but weird spontaneous glitches are starting to accumulate to the point where they’re getting on my nerves. The internet card still needs an extra reset to start working half the time, and occasionally warrants a full reboot, which costs five minutes. The USB ports are loopy, some windows just show up black when they feel like it, and there’s a steadily climbing whir in the background. I’m kind of anticipating the moment the whole thing just drops dead.

Well, I’m not about to run out of computers to use (there’s a noisy XP desktop that also barely works despite handling all our print jobs, but also one spanking new eight-core CPU laptop, which Dad considered a valuable enough investment (?)) but such a loss is still not something to be dismissed lightly. And the externalized cost is far more important and chilling. Who knows how many kids in the Congo had to mine coltan, or how much conflict has occurred over the crude oil, or what awful conditions those sweatshop-assembly workers are going through? Annie Leonard’s words still resonate with me from when we were first shown the video a year ago. Which is more recent than this laptop, so that doesn’t mean that much. I think a couple months ago I would have absolutely no second thoughts about getting a new one, though. Yup, I’m in a quandary (ha ha vocabulary) on the balance between desensitization and compulsive hoarding of stuff.

So, as triggered by my confrontation with the Chinese book report (remember? whatever the answer is, it’s okay): a reflection on my incompetence at dealing with two languages, and why this matters, or not.

I can think in both languages. It’s a natural product of our school environment. The two languages often have to complement each other; most of the nerdy terms or globally relevant allusions are English-exclusive (I couldn’t talk coherently about SOPA in any language other than English!), but a lot of cultural and geographical staples around here are Chinese only. And sometimes there are unexpected holes where an innocuous-looking phrase simply has a few too many connotations to translate perfectly (the example I always get stuck on, and have yet to solve satisfactorily with anything short of a full sentence recasting, is “appreciate”.)

I only just managed to make a 10x10 that’s not broken.

janko.at applet

#ifdef BORING_SELF_DEPRECATION

So obviously this isn’t a good parody and the song is ancient (under some “pop” definition, which is probably not a very discriminative label), at over four years. Just randomness that finds its way onto my iPod. And the words are not very creative, and there are even two lines that survive unscathed because they fit reasonably and I can’t think of anything better (and I don’t even know if this is supposed to be bad, I just want to ensure nobody expects otherwise).

#endif

Whatever, this has been sitting in my draft box for at least one month.