Our tech guy walks into my office and asks, “Is that your PC?” He was pointing at my mint 20th Anniversary Mac.
“No,” I answered, “that’s my Mac.”
Category: Apple
They do call me the expert for nothing
I’ve been toying with Firefox lately, but for all the wrong reasons. If you know enough about computers and the internet to be looking at this page, you probably know what Firefox is; but just in case you somehow slipped through the net… Firefox is another kind of web browser. That’s right kids, all you folks looking at the web through the Micro$oft window-shade (better known as Internet Explorer) have another option.
Listen to me, putting down the Windows folks when this entry is really about my failings. I’m fast becoming a psychologist’s dream (patient).
There was one reason I was using Firefox: it corrects your spelling as you type text in web forms. There are several reasons why this is handy. For one thing, word processors recognize text that some web based applications do not. I can type up an entry in Word, run a spell check, then cut and paste the entry to a web form; but some of the text from Word won’t play nice (like “educated” quotes). With Firefox I can bypass the word processor altogether and type directly on the web form, and not have to worry about text that won’t translate between the two applications – and still have decent spelling, via the Firefox spell check option.
The only problem here is that I rather like Safari (the Apple web browser). Well it turns out the Firefox affair was all for not… Safari is capable of spell checking on the fly too (as are any other applications that take advantage of the built-in dictionary on Mac OS X). It’s not even particularly well hidden… it’s right there in the Edit menu, where it appears in almost every other application.
It’s bad enough I’ve coughed up everything but my colon these last two weeks (the cold may be common, but it’s a yearly scourge on the head of this household). Did I have to find this out now, while my reserves are down?
The big move
As it happens, a rev B iMac and a six and a half year old laptop tend to bog down a bit when they’re bombarded with thousands of server requests from the internet. The problem has not been the traffic, but staying useful as a family room computer. Rest assured, you have not missed out on a quantum leap in popularity of this site. A large majority of the hits (say 998 of the 1000 or so a day) were fishing expeditions for vulnerabilities.
Anyway, the great home server initiative has come to an end… for now. I’m still ironing out the apparent kinks in my URL redirection strategy, but the old URLs should work for the foreseeable future.
I know it’s a load off your mind.
On the other hand, I may be completely alone.
Following a bit of whimsy, I was pricing used G3 iMacs yesterday afternoon. For the 99.99999999999% of you who have insufficient background information on the G3 family of iMacs to sufficiently appreciate this entry… the G3 family of iMacs were fazed out by Apple in 2001, and were the original form factor for the iMac that was introduced in 1998. Anyhoo, I thought a used computer that sold for $799 new in mid-2001 might be pretty cheap these days… some six years later.
I couldn’t find one cheaper than $400.
Just in case you were wondering, that does not qualify as “pretty cheap.”
No restraint
I’m not afraid to admit it; I’m in love with my PowerBook. I’m stuck in court with a Dell that does double duty as a piece of masonry and I can’t help but yearn for my magnificent Mac. Perhaps I was hasty comparing it to a rock… there’s enough plastic here to cause a spike in oil prices. The thing creaks more than my knees… to the point where I’m afraid to pick it up anymore. And did I mention that it’s two years old, but has only seen a year of duty… and part-time duty at that?
Caveat emptor: (like this is for sale, or you’ve paid me for anything before) I am extremely prejudiced against the Dark Knight of personal computing.
Channel your inner geek
The more elements of the unknown a given project contains, the more your brain is begging for a bruising. I have a passing acquaintance with the Movable Type publishing platform – whose software powers this blog. I have less experience with MySQL, an open source database environment. I have even less experience with Perl, the programming language utilized by the Movable Type publishing platform. DBD and DBI, which are necessary modules for Perl (and the Movable Type publishing platform) to interface with a MySQL database, might as well be written in an early Incan dialect. Of those things I mentioned above, only Perl comes as a standard install on Mac OS X, and it requires a special install from the Developer’s Tools CD in order to get add-on modules to properly install (with the particular flavor of OS X installed on my makeshift, home server). All of the above requires tinkering with a text editor and the command line (don’t get me started on UNIX).
Why do I mention any of this? I thought it would be a good idea to convert my blog database to MySQL.
How many of you have a burning desire to dive into some UNIX, Perl, MySQL, and database interfaces for web based applications? Those in the know (myself not included) are out there scoffing at the notion. “Piece of cake,” they’re thinking. For me… it’s a bitter pill washed down with vinegar. I am nowhere near the geek I aspire to be.
Don’t pity me though, dear reader. The real victim in all of this, as always, is my wife. And don’t get her started on Halo…
What about your iPod?
Flush with my success slaying the dreaded speaker buzz in my recently obtained piece of Apple lore, I decided to once again hack into my dead iPod. (NURSE! GET ME SOME WOOD, STAT!) If you are keeping score, this is case cracking number four (a rhyme I just could not ignore). Without going into too much detail, this near blind foray into the jungle of high tech involved: opening a case not meant to be opened, hacking away in UNIX, and thus far… two hours of processing time on my trusty PowerBook. Sound complicated? Relax. It’s amazing what you can do with a pocket knife, a piece of consumer electronics given up for dead, and no clue what you’re doing.
There’s always time for tinkering
I may be slaving away at work, but that’s no excuse for my trusty PowerBook to sit home alone, sleeping away the day in quiet oblivion. It’s here at the office with me, busily writing zeros to my (for the moment) resurrected iPod. Once it’s done with that it’s got a little reformatting to do… then a little matter of transferring eight gigabytes of data.
Between you and me, the iPod is probably a lost cause… but don’t tell my PowerBook. With everything else going on, I don’t need it to be upset with me too.
This just in from the wires… I may be the only person in state government at this moment to have three, fully operational computers, a temporarily restored iPod, and a Palm OS device… simultaneously cranking away on my desk. I’m not altogether sure this is an achievement I should be proud of or not, but I’m getting a shit load of stuff done.
Mush yon workers.
R.I.P. my bondi blue buddy
Yesterday marked the passing of my original, 1998 vintage, rev. B, bondi blue iMac. I was firing it back up to serve as a back up server, so I could bring the iBook off-line for some heavy duty servicing. Alas, my old buddy went down in an unspectacular snap, crackle and pop within thirty seconds of powering it up.
It seems like it was only yesterday I was ankle tackling a fellow post-Thanksgiving shopper to get one of the last promotional iMacs on the Comp USA shelf (they were giving away a free printer, scanner, Imation Superdrive, AND 13 inch color TV with the purchase of an iMac**).
As few of you as there are, I’d hate to lose one of you to server maintenance. Now that my little buddy is gone, I’m lost in a sea of uncertainty. What will I do now?!?
**After mail-in rebates. Note: the color TV was not exclusive to iMac sales… they were giving one away with any PC purchase.
UPDATE – 9.1 on a 20th Anniversary Mac
Friends, Romans, Countrymen… lend me your ears. We’re not in Rome, you say? A curse on you who mock my fit of whimsy!
When last I spoke of my bite of Apple lore, I was smote with glee over nine point oh four.
But you had to know that I wouldn’t be satisfied with half measures, didn’t you? This week I went whole hog and pushed the TAM to its official software limit – Mac OS 9.1. Alas, this is not a story chucked full of manna, honey, or candied Apples. Truth be told, it’s not a hell-of-a lot different than 9.04.
The next stop on the TAM tinkering tour is a removal of the thus far unused network card, plugged into the sole PCI slot, in favor of a used (re: free) USB card. With no available (re: authorized) network connection for my beloved TAM at the office, and with a Palm OS device that can do double duty as a USB flash drive, a USB card is my ticket to file transfer bliss.
OOOOH… File Transfer!