Midnight. It’s been a long day and a rough evening. Finish working around 11 p.m. but don’t feel like going to bed so am cruising the Web, wasting time into the wee hours.
Doesn’t sound very auspicious, does it?
Well. No, it wasn’t. Closing in on one in the morning, I decide to shut down the computer. It’s running slower and slower, and besides, I can’t keep my eyes open much longer. Too many programs are up, so I’m closing Excel and Word and Acrobat Professional (where did that come from?) and Grab and Preview and iPhoto and Firefox… and… all of a sudden the iMac has a Big Mac Attack!
Suddenly the screen is bloated like it ate too many Big Macs, and it squiggles around when I move the mouse. The mouse being tireder than I am, its scroll wheel doesn’t work and for a while I can’t get any response to any clicks.
Finally it starts to function but the fat screen is still bobbing around, waltzing to the rodent’s tune. Shut down. Reboot. No difference.
Shut down. Unplug. Wait for awhile. {it’s getting later and later…} Reboot. No improvement.
Now I’m thinking
a) what is this? The behavior is so weird I don’t even know what it’s called! and
b) godammit, now on top of the two meetings and lunch tomorrow (which is not tomorrow but actually now only a few hours later today) I’m going to have to tote this machine into the Apple store and what is that going to cost me and why do these things invariably happen when i’m broke and the damn pool equipment is broke, too?????
Shut down and figure I’d better go to bed, and then I think uh oh! When did I back all that trash up, anyway?
Boot back up. Time passes. Hours, I’m sure. The machine reboots sloooooowwwwlleeeeeeeee. Finally everything comes back up. Save three vast directories to the external hard drive. More hours pass, or so it seems. Long, very very long minutes, anyway.
As the world turns, I think…there’s gotta be a way. So, google enlarged + screen + moving. Hey. What else do I have to do at two in the morning?
Mirabilis! This delightful site comes up! About two years ago, the Design Watchdog encountered the same problem with her Mac. She being cleverer than I, she managed to figure it out:
The screen gets fat and wobbly when you hold down the Command key and scroll upward with the Mighty Mouse. (Well…I don’t recall even having my hands on the keyboard, much less depressing Command while fooling with the rodent.) The solution, says she, is to hold down Command and scroll down.
Hm. So I try that.
The scroll button on the Apple rodent hasn’t worked properly in years, almost since I bought it. The thing runs sometimes, sometimes not. In the wee hours? Not.
Undaunted, I retrieved a Microsoft Mobile Mouse from another room. Loaded its gadget into a USB port, told the Mac to quit bellyaching, and soon had it running.
And yes: hold down command and scroll downward, and the screen promptly returns to normal!
Was that a relief! Thanks, Trisha!
Well, of course by then I was too keyed up to go back to sleep so explored Watchdog‘s site (check out this Mighty Mouse hack) and then ambled off on roads leading away into the virtual forest from her place. You know how that goes. You arrive at places and have no idea how you got there.
This is amazing. Bizarrely entertaining, is what I’d say: who knew watching some guy enter code (like he spoke it from infancy) to create a web design would be fascinating? Run the video at “Click on how you can design a website with Thesis” (which yes, the guy appears to be selling). It’s a pretty long production, yet strangely interesting.
Moving on, at The Nerdist, don’t even think about stumbling off to bed before checking out this dissertation. And read the comments: in the “Who Knew” department, somewhere there’s a Costco that roasts its own coffee!
And naturally I couldn’t go to sleep without reading this mouthwatering recipe for cowboy beans (more like caballero beans, actually), being on poverty rations for the time being. Glorioski! Suddenly I don’t feel deprived at-tall.
Well, maybe sleep-deprived. After three hours of Z’s, it was out the door for a long and full day. Now it’s 8:20 at night, I just sat down to the keyboard, and neither the dog nor I have eaten.
And so, to dinner.
Image: Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831-1892), Nótt riding Hrímfaxi. Public Domain.
The recipe at this link:
http://www.cooking-mexican-recipes.com/pinto_bean_recipes.html
makes the best & easiest beans we’ve ever had. Beans, water, bay leaf, a head of roasted garlic, tomato, oil & salt. Use the recommended water, perfect beans. Use more water, it’s bean soup; use less, mash, & refry. Their other recipes are good too!