cellio | interlude: non-class stuff

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interlude: non-class stuff

First, thanks to "Mr. Fixer", as he is known on LJ, for calling and talking me through my emacs issues (on the Mac). It turns out that there are three ways to launch emacs (different emacses) on this machine; one I didn't know about and the other two were clashing over the .emacs file. For my own future reference: running emacs from an xterm works, and so does running from the Mac shell if I use the "-q" option to surpress the .emacs file. (Since the .emacs file is for a different version, with settings for fonts and colors that don't matter when running in a shell, that's fine.)

I discovered tonight (when trying to install a mouse driver hakamadare clued me in about) that I don't know the root password for my machine. Err, oops. I wonder how I can fix that. (Maybe I'm lucky and the person I got the machine from remembers.)

Wednesday night I joined Andrew and his family (sorry Andrew; I can never get the user name right on the first try), mabfan, and gnomi for dinner, conversation, and ice cream. I had a good time. How can you not, when in a single evening you can geek about halacha, science fiction, comics (that was mostly mabfan, TV, and music? :-) Mabfan or Andrew, please remind me of the name of that TV show you were so excited about getting on DVD?

Much time was spent trying to find a way, within halacha, for someone (I won't out you here) to read the new Harry Potter book on Shabbat. (Some of my suggestions were rejected because they would involve waiting until morning; apparently solutions that don't involve starting by quarter past midnight aren't interesting.) I hope you find a solution, but if not, I suspect a 22-hour delay isn't fatal... :-)

Erik (one of my cats) is staying with a friend while I'm here, and apparently he's very comfortable in her house. She can offer him avian theatre (we don't get many birds visible from cat-accessible windows), and he quickly established his place in the household. Good, as he'll be going back for Pennsic in a couple weeks. :-) I miss the cats, but knowing they're in good hands helps.

Never mind the academic stuff: I'm beginning to wonder if I would have the physical stamina to attend this school if I lived in this city. That's one steep hill! I'm staying in a dorm at the top of the hill for this program (so no biggie), but the houses up here are all in the multi-million-dollar range, so ordinary people don't live here. (Actually, I wonder about the people who live in some of the humongous houses up here. Are they insanely rich, or large families or other groups? Some of these places look like they'd easily be 10,000 square feet.)

There appear to be no vending machines on Hebrew College's campus. How odd.

I've had a few instances of an odd style of encounter here, and I wonder if it's a Boston thing or if I'm just unlucky. I have asked people on the street (or in the T) what should be simple questions (e.g. "which of these intersecting streets is Center?" when there's no sign), and people who seem to be from around here don't know. In the example I just gave, it was a group of students who'd just gotten off a city bus. On the T, I asked someone who seemed to be a regular T rider (based on overheard conversation) "does this train go to Government Center" (a big stop), she said she didn't know, and then she got on my train (after I got the answer elsewhere) and rode it past that stop. There have been a couple other cases, too. Is this a "don't wanna talk to strangers" thing, or what?

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It was a pleasure to see you.

The TV show in question was Voyagers! (and yes, it's spelled with the exclamation point).

And as to the question of Harry Potter and shabbat, perhaps because you've been so busy you missed this:

http://mabfan.livejournal.com/329301.html

Well,

mabfan already beat me to saying Voyagers! but I'll add about my lj handle that nmHz is the way most NPLers nicknom me.

And I figured out the last bit on the HP problem --- a Jewish bookseller who's closed on Shabbat; you pre-order and do a formal kinyan so that halachically the book is yours; you then lend the book to the nice fellow who happens to be a bookseller. Before Shabbat begins the person to whom you've loaned the book brings the sealed carton of books to the local shul, so there'll be no marit ayin, unseals the carton (which may technically violate the Scholastic rules, I'll admit) but places the unsealed carton in a locked box (so the spirit of the Scholastic rules is maintained). The shul has an oneg. Shortly after midnight, the person who has borrowed all these books unlocks the box in which they've been stored and returns them to their rightful owners.

Now, having solved the problem (I believe) from the standpoint of the halachic technicalities, I have come to the conclusion that this craving to read the book at 12:01 is not really that different than the craving to eat Chicken Cordon Bleu or the desire to someday compete at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. It's one of those desires that one realizes must go unfulfilled when one accepts the ol hamitzvot.

I don’t know the root password for my machine

a stock installation of OS X has no root password; this is because the root account is disabled by default. your user account has full administrative privileges; i suspect you can use your own credentials for whatever it is iScroll2 wants you to do.

if you really need the root user, here’s a doc (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1549.html) explaining how to do it. :)

-steve

Does she have your old machine or mine? 'Cause I know the only password I used for my old machine ...

she has mine, but i rebuilt it before handing it over, so nothing was preserved.

-steve

Thanks! (Also thanks to everyone else who answered.)

From my perspective;
If the book arrives, and if the reading of it is not proscribed in general
If the book would bring happiness and keep one in the general "spirit of the Sabbath",
and if the rules lawyering could go either way;

Enjoy the book.

If you would feel guilty about it;

Wait the day, it won't cost you anything. Plan Saturday to be delightful in other ways.

Erik is at M's house? Why can't Dani take care of him?

Erik has some extra medical issues and Mary is more attuned to them (i.e. is more likely to notice a problem early in its development). She also volunteered rather enthusiastically and is good at giving medicines. Dani is taking care of the other two (including pushing medicine into Embla), and I figured that's enough of a load for him.

Root passwd -- if you know your account passwd, you can set the root passwd via sudo at the terminal. As someone else noted, mac's don't ship w/ a root passwd enabled. The admin account can use sudo to get to it, which is the box that asks you enter your passwd, while you're logged in, anyways... (well, an interface to sudo.)

It was wonderful to see you last night!

The conversational gyrations you observed last night are typical fare when

introverte,

530nm330hz,

mabfan, and I get together. We've been doing this for *years* and have it down to something of an artform. :-) And you fit in so wonderfully.

As previously mentioned: don't use su, use sudo -s and enter your own password (while logged in to the administrator account).

As for knowing answers to random directions questions: I do that a lot, seems I only know the places I go regularly and the rest is "bwuh?"

On "does this train go to Government Center"
Not all the trains on that line do. So even if you're on the right line, you might be on a car that is only going as far as Park, or all the way through past Govt Center to Lechmere. Of course, she could've just been one of those rude Bostonians you hear about, but perhaps she didn't know.

On street signs:
It's common practice around here to put up signs for the cross streets and not for the major ones. Go figure. Sometimes, I swear, it's as though marking the streets would be giving information to the enemy (sort of like using one's turn signals).

Trains: ah, didn't realize that. Thanks.

Signs: yeah, sometimes I do feel like the enemy when trying to get around. :-)

I've had a few instances of an odd style of encounter here, and I wonder if it's a Boston thing or if I'm just unlucky.

It could be a combination. I think a lot of people get used to riding the T in such a way as that they know where they are, they know how to get to where they're going, but they don't know much about the in-between.

The Green Line is particularly troublesome, as noted above. Outbound to the west, you've got four different lines that go to four different places, and the first branches off while you're still in the heart of the city. Outbound to the east, some go to the end and some don't.

My guess is that your mystery rider knows where she gets on, knows where she gets off, but doesn't think a bit about what stops are between the two.

The one piece of good news to you about the Green Line going to Government Center is this: the trains either go there and stop, or they go beyond it, but so far as I know none of them stop short of Government Center.

But then, adding to all that...no, from my experience New Englanders aren't the warmest people on earth. They don't exactly go out of their way to help, and the lack of streetsigns is pretty much a point of pride with an attitude of "Hey, if you don't know where you are, you shouldn't be out traveling anyway." The best explanation I've heard for this is that the lack of street signs stems back to the Revolution, when Patriots pulled down street signs in order to confuse the Redcoats.

Going back to the mystery rider on the T, if it had been me and I wasn't sure I would have said "I'm not sure...let's check the map..." and gotten an answer for you.

But then, I'm originally from New Jersey, so what do I know about local traditions and helping strangers?

about the Green Line going to Government Center is this: the trains either go there and stop, or they go beyond it, but so far as I know none of them stop short of Government Center.
Unless it's pulled out of service at Park Street...
In any case, that end of the Green Line is a single line, so you can always take any train in that direction, and if it doesn't go all the way to your destination, likely one of the next ones along after that will. (I still have no clue which ones go all the way to Lechmere and which ones don't, and I've been T commuting for years...)

About the huge houses up there: I'm not familiar with that part of Newton, but given that it's Newton, it could be insanely rich people, or the houses could have been subdivided into apartments. I check out the front doorbell(s) and/or mailbox(es) to try to figure out which. (Also driveway options, out there; that's not so useful in the city when there's no affiliated parking.)

people who seem to be from around here don't know.

They really don't know. Boston is nearly impossible to figure out -- subway, driving, you name it.

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interlude: non-class stuff

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