“I’m thinking about kick-starting the home server project again.” “Why?” “I was thinking I’d serve up the web site and blog from home again.” “Why?” “Money’s a little tight and it’s another place we could save a little money.” “Why?” “What are you, two years old?” “How much money would we save?” “Somewhere between four and six dollars a month.” “And why did you shut down our server?” “It got to be a pain in the ass.” “And why do we need more pain right now?” I married a smart woman. I really should stop typing right there, but the [...]
Computer
My wallet smells danger
Cheryl’s been making a lot of noise about our Verizon contract, and the ten months* left on it. She’s been making even more noise about the iPhone, and how she’d like one. Damn woman! Can’t you see my fiscal restraint is hanging by a thread? There’s real trouble on the horizon too: we’re about to walk out the door – to go to the International Plaza in Tampa (supposedly to pick up a little reward for Beth at the ‘Build-a-Bear store’)… home of the nearest Apple Store. Danger Will Robinson, DANGER! *From the day when I typed this entry, three [...]
Rites of passage
Remember this post? Tell me friends, where was your intervention when I needed it? You might say the sea of evidence – the little thing we call “common knowledge” – makes a personal warning redundant, but remember who you’re dealing with. During an 18 hour stretch this weekend I: 1. Did a clean installation of Windows. 2. Had it crash. 3. Searched through (way too many) Windows discussion boards. 4. Doubled my personal record for google searches in a day. 5. Spent two and a half hours on the phone with Microsoft tech support. 6. Got a few personal anecdotes [...]
Someone stop me
Here’s something you might not expect me to say: “I’m thinking about picking up a copy of Windows.” I know, it’s crazy talk. Why would I pollute a perfectly good Mac with XP, or (shudder) Vista? Cheryl keeps asking me the same thing, and I don’t have a good answer for any of you. Maybe it’s just because I can. Maybe it’s because I want to experience the magic of a Windows installation myself. I can’t imagine actually using the thing – my Windows jones is more than satisfied at the office. I suppose I might fire it up every [...]
I want to make it fly
There was a moment this evening when I wanted to get down on my hands and knees and beg. I was ready to pay any penalty to get out of our current contract. I was ready to see if I could find any takers on eBay for my mint TAM. I was ready to do anything my wife wanted, for the opportunity to replace my Palm TX with an iPhone. Sure, the iPhone would replace my cell phone and iPod too, but they didn’t cost me three hours of my life this evening (and that’s not counting the wear and [...]
Macbook envy
This little guy (and I do mean little) is the first Mac portable that’s wet my appetite since the 12″ PowerBook. My wife suspects the lack of an optical drive could be a deal-breaker for some, but I rarely use mine. Has Dear Abby ever weighed in on how long you should to wait before you ask your spouse for another computer? The MacBook Air
LOOK AT ME – I’M A BUG!
I saw the funniest alert when I launched an application on my Mac this evening. It was telling me that a new version of the software was available. No, that’s not the part that was funny. It seemed like I’d just clicked the “remind me later” button, when I noticed one of the bug fixes: Fix a bug that caused “remind me later” software updates to appear too frequently. That, my friends, is tres awesome. (The French Canadian influence of my wife’s family is starting to show. That or I’m feeling a little punchy this evening. It’s probably the punchy [...]
WordPress 2.3.2
From wordpress.org: WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures. Yikes! The words “urgent security release” served their purpose, I took them seriously and updated my software. Now that I’ve lost two hours of precious free-time at home, I just hope the good folks at WordPress aren’t prone to [...]
Quiet <> good?
A week or so ago I told you about the iMac we took in. I’d described it as another one of the original Bondi Blue models, to go along with the other two we have already (one that works, and another that’s fried, but we keep for parts). Cheryl brought it home after getting in late that night and we put it on the only horizontal space available: the desk in Adam’s room. Adam woke the next morning with eyes wide enough to drive a small car through. We opened up the blinds in his room and my eyes got [...]
