Losing weight, saving data

Today was my last day on Atkins Induction. Starting tomorrow, I can start adding more foods into my diet. I picked up some cottage cheese and strawberries at the supermarket. If you’d told me two years ago that I’d be looking forward to having cottage cheese, I’d have said you were nuts. (Nuts! I can have those, too!)

I haven’t been losing as much this time as I did last time, but I have been losing. I don’t think I was following the diet as closely this time; I’ve been eating a lot of ham, while last time it was mostly hamburgers and chicken.

In tech news, I’m migrating back to my old Palm IIIx (expanded to 8 megs of RAM). My Handspring Visor’s battery is dying; I get around two minutes of use before it tosses up battery warnings. I could buy something new, but don’t feel like spending the money. The cheapest model with enough RAM for my needs is the Zire 21, which costs $100, and has only two app buttons — not acceptable. The Zire 71 looks good, but costs $200 (and that’s with a rebate). The Tungsten E is also $200, and doesn’t have the camera. My old Palm IIIx is free, especially since I found the old serial-to-USB connector I bought a few years back, and found the configuration instructions online.

I spent the evening trying to figure out how to get all my software from the Visor to the IIIx. Not just the basic app data, memos and datebook entries and the like, the desktop software takes care of that. I mean all the other stuff I’ve installed over the years. The desktop backup conduit is famously half-assed about this sort of thing.

First try: Sync Buddy (formerly Palm Buddy), Mac desktop software that gives you direct access to your Palm’s storage. Isn’t MacOS X native. I hate having to launch Classic, so I saved this as an option of last resort.

Second try: Pilot-Link, Unix software for linking to your Palm. I couldn’t get it to build from source.

Third try: I couldn’t get Fink to install Pilot-Link either.

Fourth try: Backup Bitster, a shareware Palm app that lets you toggle the backup bits on the Palm itself! Simple, direct, effective. I’m restoring the massive backup to the IIIx as I write this (and have been for over an hour).

Worst marketing ever

Grrrr. Within a few minutes of starting to use it, my old Palm IIIx went into a circular-reboot crash, with the only way out being to wipe all the data. All the data that I’d spent two hours loading in last night. At least it happened while I was still at home, and hadn’t started actually keeping anything irreplaceable on it. Back to the dying Visor. The good news is that I may be able to afford a new Palm this month after all. And the Zire 71 is slightly smaller than the IIIx in all three dimensions, so I’ll probably be able to use my old Covertec Cobra PDA holder with it. (Covertec doesn’t make the Cobra anymore, and I can‘t tell if their new models have the same belt clip system that made the Cobra so great. Their new, annoying website mentions a “Fully movable ‘Wips’ System belt clip built into each case”, but doesn’t tell me what the fuck that means, or provide any pictures of it.) (OK, it looks like it’s something similar. Why the fuck did I have to go to another website to find a photo of Covertec’s main distinguishing feature?)

In other shopping difficulty news, I was unable to find any Jim’s Big Ego albums locally. Tried the Virgin Megastores at both Union and Times Squares, and a bunch of small shops on St Marks Place. Virgin’s got this new thing where you go to a kiosk and thump your finger on a “Search” button a bunch of times and no search screen appears; it’ll probably be all the rage among large, faceless retail establishments.

"Oh my God, it’s a mote."

Paul Ford’s got the blooper reel for The Passion of the Christ. And a new cat.