Wall•e

I saw Wall•e with V. yesterday at the 11:30 am show. Of course there were kids but it wasn't too bad. And the movie was GREAT! It was so cute, and very clever.

Software Updates

As fellow Mac users know, Apple is frequently updating its software. I've been clinging to 10.4.10 for months now, because—after having been a Mac Tech for 8 months--any kind of update brings risks with it. (On some things, I have learned it is not best to be an early-adopter). And when I updated my work Mac, Safari 3 went all crashy for awhile. My iMac at home is also the very last version of the PPC Mac before they went intel.

But Apple changed .Mac to (the all too cutesy) MobileMe and along with that, apparently changed how you connect to your iDisk. I mounted it last night to make a few changes to my web site, and when I tried to unmount, I got the Spinning Rainbow Beachball of Doom for like 10 minutes (I try to be patient, really). I finally had to do a hard restart, which I hate. Then I read that you have to be using 10.4.11 to have MobileMe work properly. Well, crap.

So I gritted my teeth and ran the update, muttering the mantra "It takes a lot longer to boot up after an update... don't panic... It takes a lot longer to boot up after an update... don't panic... It takes a lot longer to boot up after an update... don't panic..." And I reminded myself I have my whole startup disk cloned onto an external drive should the worst happen.

Well, it seemed to come up fine (though for a few minutes the fans went into full-power wind-tunnel mode, which can be a bit alarming, because it means your processor is getting way hot, and I lost a bunch of widgets, what's up with that?) Tonight I'll see if the iDisk connection works okay now. And Repair Permissions of course.

Shopping Spree

I've been on a kind of an inexplicable shopping spree the last few weeks. Not a huge spree (maybe a few hundred dollars) but usually I'm pretty frugal. I bought a bunch of movies from Amazon, including Ethan Mao (which will probably just make me depressed) and a couple of Gaysian romantic comedies (who knew there were more?). I also bought some clothes from Old Navy, And a few other miscellaneous things online.

Work this morning was a bit stressful. The UPS on the file server died so I had to reboot the whole network, and the print server was acting up, and when I restarted it, it took forever to come back up. A bit scary; I was sweatting it. I think it's time to set up a full mirror backup for that little beast.

It's Thursday!

And I made it to another class, though my sinuses were driving me crazy. It's like a faucet!

Today's topic is page layout software. I remember the days (affecting a crotchety old voice) of Aldus PageMaker 1.0, that came on a floppy disk! Page layout software has come a long way. PageMaker was bought by Adobe, and became ever more sophisticated, but then out of nowhere came Quark with Xpress (yes, that's the name of the program; it just shows how badly Quark became a one-product company). Quark was superior in many ways, especially when it became possible to generate film directly from the software.

For several years, Quark was the reigning software; then they got arrogant and complacent. Their customer service was crappy and impossible to reach. Upgrades contained few innovations. Meanwhile for a long time it seemed that Adobe was letting PageMaker languish. Then suddenly they came out with InDesign. At first I was skeptical: it had limited features, and seemed kind of clunky. But they are up to version 5 now, and I have to say they have leveraged the fact that they also produce Illustrator and Indesign quite effectively. You can place native versions of those files in IDD, and open placed files from those apps directly from inside IDD. I used to be a total Quark master, but now I'm getting used to IDD, and I have to say I like it.

Nightmares of Mine

Whew, last night was a bad night for the ole' subconscious. I had no less than three separate nightmare sessions. I'd wake up from one, then fall back to sleep and start up another. I'm sure it was exacerbated by the fact that it was Wednesday night, when I never sleep well, worrying about waking up for spin class. The worst was round one...

Yesterday my boss (the owner of the company) gave me her laptop so that I could migrate her files to her new laptop. Just before she handed it over, she kind of clutched it and said "I'm trusting you with this, I don't want anything to happen to it."

No pressure! So, as I told her I would, I locked it in my desk, along with her new laptop. I hid the key. So last night, what was my dream? That I came in this morning and opened my desk... and both of the computers were gone. So I woke up in a sweat and laid there, thinking of all the stupid things I had done (not taking the key home, not making sure that the desk was really, really secure, not hiding the laptops under stuff in the drawer... you know, silly paranoid stuff your mind thinks up in the middle of the night when you aren't completely awake.

The second one I don't remember, but it will come back to me.

The third one was about missing class, but not because I was late, but because I went in to teach someone an abs class and lost track of time, then was suddenly 15 mins late. And the new hardass manager was there, and there were all these disruptive people, and the bright lights were on... (spin clas is almost always done in a darkened room). Ugh!

Interestingly, there was an article in the Washington Post about Dreams, basically saying Freud and Jung were full of it, and youre dreams are not symbolic of anything.

So away with the repressed urges and surreal symbols. Today few psychologists believe that dreams talk to us in codes of any kind, and the action in dream research is empirical rather than broadly theoretical.

I think that they are what you make of them, and it doesn't hurt to pay attention to them.

Memory

Gandalf the White says something in the Two Towers that I have found particularly resonant with me, to the point that it's my signature on the ICE discussion boards:

"I have forgotten much that I thought I knew, and learned again much that I had forgotten. I can see many things far off, but many things that are close at hand I cannot see."

Yeah, sucks to get older. But in my new job they are tossing new challenges at me, which I eagerly accept. I was an old PageMaker--then Quark--hand, and my InDesign skills have been limited to mostly print setup. But now I'm getting into some complex design and layout. Good to learn... for my own projects.

Been Too Long

I have not been to SF in years. I need to go back. Every time I go, I love it. MacWorld I think, the last MacWorld I attended was a dark time, pre Jobs return. Yes, I think it is time... I should record my SF visits, from that first strange gaming con one in May of...

iPod touch

I stopped by the Apple Store last night after I subbed a spin class, and checked out the iPod touch. I have to say I was not impressed. The bevel around the face is kind of rough, it didn't behave all that intuitively (I thought), and I've heard the screen is not as bright as the iPhone (you'd think they would just use the same one).

One thing that is holding me back from getting either one is that they are not compatible with the radio remote. I listen to NPR most of my walk to work, before I go underground on the Metro. I don't want to deal with a whole separate radio. Bah.

New iPods

In just a few minutes, Steve Jobs will take the stage in the Moscone Center in San Francisco and announce the new iPods.

I'm more excited about this than the iPhone, mainly because I'm just not that interested in a phone (and the iPhone doesn't have enough capacity to suit me). The rumor is that the new iPods will be 'an iPhone without the phone' which would suit me fine. It may even have wi-fi...

I'm all excited... I'm still a hopeless Mac fan-boy.

Update:
New iPod Nano: fugly!
New iPod 'Classic': eh
New iPod Touch: I WANT!!!

Another one down...

Karl Rove resigned! One of the things that creeped me out the most about him (and there were many things) was the fact that he used a Mac. People like him should not be allowed to use Macs.

Thursday already?

Feeling so much better than after class last week! One odd thing this morning though: for the first time that I can remember, I was sound asleep when my music/alarm went off this morning at 5:00am (good thing it's working). Normally I am wide awake at least a few minutes beforehand, and shut it off right before it goes off. I'm not sure what is different; it could be any number of things... but I do feel like I got pretty good sleep.

We got this fancy new 3D printer/modeler at work, and somehow I got put in charge of it... It's interesting, but there's a lot of peripheral labor involved, some of it with chemicals. Ewg, chemicals. But it kind of takes me out of the drudgery of day-to-day production for awhile, which is nice.

Oh and they haven't cut off the internet to our little department (at least not yet) while they have cut off almost everyone in the rest of the company, and curtailed email. Apparently they can't figure out how to restrict some access yet allow us to get to the web-base printer queues. And they may not know how to cut off the Macs at all (they're not too swift in some areas). And my department head said that I at least should still be allowed access to keep up to date on Mac news, download updates, read tech forums, etc. We'll see... And I would certainly never use company email for anything personal; you gotta be stupid to do that: they can read it!

Wasting Time On Saturday Afternoon

Class today: okay. It was a bunch of women, and the big cute 20-something guy who always takes the bike front and center, which makes it just a little bit awkward. He comes in every time wearing baggy shorts over his bike shorts, takes them off at the beginning of class, then pulls them right back on over his bike shorts when class is over. That's right up there with the guys in the locker room who pull on their underwear while still wearing the towel around their waist. Even I'm not that shy anymore.

Anyway, one of the songs was Donna Summer's This Time I KNow it's For Real an 80's uber-gay classic. Check out the video. Campy dancing galore, including some sort of country dance moves (Billy, help me out). And isn't that an Asian guy with big hair front and center of the dancing reporters? (I know, the video is awful quality).


Then I happened to stumble onto the WineKone. This guy is strangely hilarious (and, okay, pretty cute; though apparently despite all the gay jokes, straight). I love the clone video.




Oh and one more geeky comment. On Stargate Atlantis last week, the team discovers a hollowed-out moon some civilization was using as an ark to hold their people in suspended animation. Rodney tinkers with their computer system and says it's locked up and he has to reboot it. After he gets it going again and awakens one of them he tells him how their computer had failed them, and says "Maybe you should have used a Mac." Of course the joke falls flat on everyone present.

Update: Watching another WineKone, in this video he out-of-the-blue references Goo Goo Dolls' Iris, which I quoted several posts back (in reference to, ahem, Cho). That's a little weird.

What a Day

So. I was already stressing about today last night when, right before I left work at 11-ish pm, my nice boss says "I'll be in early tomorrow to wrap some things up, so I'll probably see you." Argh. I say "I might be a little bit late." "Oh, that's fine."

What exactly is 'a little bit'? As loyal readers might remember, I had said 'screw it' about getting a sub, since the main job employer had fired the alcoholic (should I be worried? I ask, as I sip my dry vodka martini, remembering that Seung had mentioned vodka) and reduced us to a 4-week rotation of working Saturdays. I am not supposed to sub out a class more than once a month, and I don't like doing it anyway; it makes the members feel like you don't care. (Most of the time I go to a class repeatedly because of the instructor; I usually hated a sub; which made me feel all the better when I would sub more and people would come up to me after class and ask where I taught regularly.)

So I go teach class, hurriedly leave, curse DC traffic, find a parking place fairly fast for a Saturday downtown and rush in, rehearsing apologies for being over an hour late for a 5-hour shift (probaby more than 'a little'). Boss not there! The operator there (I am the 'manager on duty', oops) says he will be in at 2:30. Whee! I file grovelling apology away for another day (BTW, I am NEVER late for work, unlike many of my co-workers). AND I did not get a ticket for parking for 4+ hours in a 2 hour limit area on the street on Saturday.

AND while at work I whipped through all kinds of stuff including a big layout job (which actually I kinda like, and they are sending me that stuff more and more).

So all in all, I think it went awfully well. So I bought myself a few episodes of Babylon 5 from the iTunes Store. But you know what that means... I am creeping towards a purchase of the Apple TV. It seems logical. I have a HUGE 50" digital tv in the living room I rarely watch, except for DVDs. All the remotes, the broken SONY DVD changer/sound system, and the horrid Comcast interface... too much trouble. But as the iTunes catalog grows....

Glad I have a backup system. Do you?

Japanese 'Get a Mac' Ads

How cute!

Procrastination

Yep, doing assorted stuff around the house (and blogging) instead of finishing up that darn adventure. Maybe it's because I find doing NPC stats soooo boring. And I don't even usually go through the whole character process; I just make 'em up (oops).

I'm almost (almost) looking forward to the Thursday-Friday 2-11 shift, giving me more free day-time. Unfortunately I stayed up too late the last 2 nights watching old episides of Enterprise. Why do I torture myself, you ask? I think Trip is hot and T'Pol is cool. But really, the whole premise of the 2nd season quest is so wrong in so many ways. First of all, how stupid of the Xindi to send their test destructo probe all the way to Earth to see if it works, and in the process warning Earth that someone wants them blown up? And second, even if they did destroy Earth (which they want to do because they believe in 400 years humans will destroy them), there are human colonies and ships all over the place. It would be almost impossible to wipe them all out. Feh.

Oh, and supposedly there are these annoying crackdowns coming at work. There seems to be some internet blocking software starting to show up on the PCs. We'll see if they bother to try it on the few Macs this company uses. And since I am 'the Mac guy' maybe I'll be in control of it anyway. We'll see. In any case discretion is going to be the better part of valor.

Oh and no more Casual Fridays. Why does management do crap like this? Don't they know it just crushes morale and creates resentment? Stupid managers.

Oh and most of you bloggers who I read regularly: you don't post often enough! ;-)

Sigh

Apple Newton Nominated for Biggest Technology Flop.

I used to have a Newton, way back when.

Frustration

So the technician came yesterday afternoon and re-routed my phone line. He said he'd been with the company for 32 years, and things had changed a lot. He was pissed that the guy Friday hadn't done the re-route and said he should have known to do that. Also strange was that he said that a lot of the lines were dead and he was surprised that more people had apparently not complained.

So my DSL is back on, but the phone jack in the 2nd bedroom/office is mysteriously dead now, and, worse, the TiVo modem seems to be acting up. I wonder if all these shenanigans fried my modem? I'd be pissed. There are a few other things I can try, including apparently attaching an external moden through the serial port on the back (glad I kept those old modems!) I'd hate to give up the old TiVo now, with the lifetime subscription and all.

Also feeling just kind of generally down and blah today. Can't wait to go home.

Oh and speaking of that. They finally fired the night manager, and now I get to work late 2 nights a week. Well better than 5 nights a week I guess!

3 Months

Well I've been on the new job for three months now. I almost feel like I should ask for a raise. I remember when they first offered me the job, I asked for more leave time and the guy making the offer (not my current supervisor) was a little stupefied, and practically came out and said that if I'd have asked for more money it would not be an issue, but apparantly no one asks for more leave time and it would be a big deal. (I did get an extra week of vacation; their standard leave is amazingly miserly).

I was thinking back over the last year, and I had to use my blog to go back and retrace my work history for 2006.

First job: Jan 1 -- June 6.
(six weeks on sabbatical)
2nd Job: July 17 -- Oct 1st, 3 days a week, then Oct 1st -- Dec 15th, full time (wow I was only working there full time for less than 3 months!)
Current Job: Dec 21st -- Present.

Damn that six weeks off went by fast! And then over two months of four day weekends! What did I do with myself? Um, don't ask.

Yesterday at work turned into a clusterf**k because the screwy night manager was 6 hours late, and we were buried in work on top of that. Two of us had to stay late. Fortunately the other night guy and I managed to have a sense of humor about the whole thing and keep things running. And they are training a new night guy (who started yesterday and seems nice enough, very quiet). I just hope they don't fire the night manager before they find a new one because I do not want that job. I like my Tech job, thanks.

Random News

1. I'm happy to report that my weight is back down to 165 lbs (about 75 kilos?) after an unhappy belt-tight period of being up to 172 back in January-Feb. I'm not sure what I did, except maybe eating/drinking a little less in the evening (thanks Shigeki!). The 'experts' are divided on whether eating in the evening is worse than another time of day, but if you are reducing your overall calories, of course that is going to help. And in the last few weeks I've started doing some upper-body weights work again, which I'm proud of. I get stress-relief from a good 30 mins of cardio at lunch, but I need to build some muscle. Not getting any younger!

2. I now have enough Amex points for a round-trip flight to Europe. Now, what to do with that?

3. They are hiring a new night guy at work, which is a bit of a relief for me, making it less likely that I'll have to stay late for some emergency or if one of the other guys is out (assuming of course they aren't planning to ax one of them...). My position is apparently okay right now, partly since the department head just told me that I was one of the two people he wanted to send to training for this new high-tech printer gadget (yay!).

4. Have I mentioned lately how much less stressed I am, even though this is supposed to be (and it is, believe me) a 'high-stress' job? Still some stress, but nothing like that consulting job. Oh, I have mentioned it? Well I'm mentioning it again! :-)

5. It's Friday! Much to do this weekend. I think I'm going to try to clean up this blog, among other things.

6. No one is warning me against bamboo sheets, so I'm gonna give them a try. I need something pretty in my bedroom. ;-)

My ipod Shuffle is dead!

Well, actually, it's not dead, but the USB connector suddenly stopped working today. This did not coincide with any particular event that I can recall (I had not yet done the latest iTunes update, for instance), but when I plugged it in, it didn't show on iTunes or on the desktop (I had it set to also use as a flash drive to store data on). I tried another USB port; I tried my laptop... nothing. The Shuffle still played music, and the battery indicator said it was charged. But since it can't communicate with a computer, it is doomed to a slow death with only the music currently on it. Some other people on the Apple discussion boards have reported the same symptoms with their first-generation shuffles, but there are no solutions. I can't even try to reset it or erase it, since it can't be seen.

So, I guess I'll get a new shuffle, since I am certainly not taking my nice color iPod to the gym. The burning question is, should I get blue, or go all gay and get pink? I don't think I'm brave enough for pink...