"Begin Again, the Browsers Wars Have . . ."

As a veteran tech-head, I remember well the first browser war between Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Netscape Navigator was the feature-rich, lightweight, intuitive champ, IE was clunky, slow and had the user interface from hell . . . but in the end, the vastly-improved IE 5 / 6, integration with the Windows operating system and feature bloat eventually killed Netscape.

As a Mac user, I've had the choice between the bundled Apple Safari browser and Mozilla Firefox. While Safari is fast due to tight integration with Mac OS X, boasts the clean clear interface of any Mac program, most of its deeper settings are not readily available to the user -- and far too many web sites just do not work with Safari. Firefox launches very slowly, renders slowly but nicely, has just about the right amount of settings exposure and is a lot more compatible with respect to web pages it will render.

To continue the Star Wars meme . . . "there is another . . ."

And, at first glance, this "other" is pretty damned good.

A couple of years ago, while I was still earning my daily bread by troubleshooting Macs, I downloaded an early beta of Google's "Chrome" web browser. At the time I was singularly unimpressed with it. Chrome was buggier than a roach motel then, so I soldiered on with Safari for work and Firefox for everything else. In my post-Apple life I can count on the extended fingers of a clenched fist how many times I've launched Safari.

After one Firefox crash too many, I downloaded the latest version of Chrome for Mac. The bugs that so annoyed me before were no more. I am very impressed with the rendering speed on even new web pages. I like the tight integration with my favorite general-purpose search engine and I love the low memory footprint I'm seeing in Activity Monitor. Chrome imported my Firefox bookmarks without any fuss or bother.

As a quick "smoke test", I logged several web pages that I use frequently that give me issues with Firefox. I tried a few Facebook games of the variety that sometimes blow up Firefox. The games performed without issues. The World of Warcraft Armory page -- another page that makes heavy use of Flash -- also rendered flawlessly.

My verdict? Firefoxes are cute, but Chrome shines.

Musings, ventings, raids, etc

Just a bit of venting. Nothing serious.

1. It seems like ripoff artists are getting more and more brazen all the time. Between idiots who do not know how to make change (and assume that I do not count back my coin and match that count to the math when it is given back to me . . . I've had two of these con artists at various retail establishments in the last month), "scare-ware" scams, "Free" Credit Reports that are anything but, getting honest-to-Ghu checks in the mail with fine print like "cashing this check signs you up for our exclusive service where we charge you $15 / month for a 2% rebate (max $100 / year) on your credit card", "credit cards" that are little more than sweet looking poisoned hooks into one's income stream . . .

Fortunately, my father is an astute businessman who counseled me even as a wee child to read the fine print. I did, and do. As a wee childe, I was also a fan, back when being a consumer advocate was still cool, of TV consumer advocate David Horowitz' wonderful show "Fight Back!" Horowitz's segments on predatory business practices always included "the tip-off to the rip-off" -- the clue that you are headed for a fiscal reaming by buying into a too-good-to-be-true "deal."

The same tools can be applied to the various Internet scams, like the recent Facebook drive-by scare-ware antivirus / anti-porn download. The driveby download popped up a scary looking Windows Explorer window on my Mac (running 10.5.7, not Boot Camped or running winderz in a Virtualization engine) with a dire warning about virii and pictures of nekkid people and the immediate need to remove them by downloading this lovely little .exe file.

However: Windows virii do not run in OS X
Not only that, OS X does not have Windows Explorer windows.
I can see how an inexperienced user might be panicked into buying
Preying on folks who do not know better and in some cases cannot know better pisses me off.

2. "Your Skill In Cooking Has Increased By (a lot more than) 1" -- I got a confirmation this morning of one of the reasons I have eschewed cooking my own meals at my current digs. My roomie, an otherwise reasonably tolerant and calm soul, is a neat freak's neat freak who makes Felix Unger of Odd Couple fame look like Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip. I am not a total slob -- at least not anymore! -- but I tend to be not obsessive about my immediate surroundings. Common areas are another matter. Roomie informed me that my kitchen cleaning was not to spec, the stove top and counters needed to be wiped down. However, I did those things!!

So, rather than get pissed off and engage in my nominal default (avoidance) behavior and not cooking just to keep His Anality off my arse -- and to save money -- I need to do a better job than the everything but polish the fscking thing job I'm doing now. Part of me -- the lazy, tantrum-prone little boy inside me -- wants to say "Bite me!" and stop cooking. However, since Meece entered my life, I've begun to get a certain enjoyment from cooking my meals. It's more than saving money, it's about crafting something healthful that I will enjoy in the making, the eating and even when I talk to Meece about it. She inevitably suggests variations to my ideas -- some I'd already considered, some that I'd not even thought of.

I know, about bloody time I started cooking. The old excuse -- "Mom did not deign to teach me" -- does not cut it anymore, if it ever did. I've had some good teachers to overcome my lack of childhood instruction. Now I have the positive feedback that enjoying cooking gives to motivate me to try New Things™

3. Naxx-a-ramma, Part Deux. Tyr's been back to Naxx. Phat Lewts dropped from the Lewt Pinatas therein. Tyr even got some phat lewts from there. I'm very close to having a full set of main spec epic gear. My "gear score" -- a numeric measure of equipment quality -- is over 2k (which is OK for normal Ulduar!) now, and there is still room for improvement.

4. Major annoyance last night. One of the USB ports on my MacBook no longer accepts a USB A plug. Visual inspection of the lower case showed that the port appears physically misaligned. Looks like it's going to need service.

Daily Bloggery 2009-03-31: Back in Harness

1. Goal reviews tomorrow. I didn't make all of them (one or two SGL spikes, no DB for Sun-Mon), but I'm down another 2 lbs this weekend (made goal easily) and, well, I have a Gwenny now.

2. Health: SGLs are hard green, wound beds look nice and red. That is what is supposed to happen. My weight is down another two lbs. Gwenny -- thank Odinn -- had Healthful Foods™ available and is mindful of my issues.

3. Tomorrow is Apple's 33rd birfday. I'm going to celebrate by booting up at least one Mac.

" . . . I want to install Leopard on a Dell . . ."

Talk about "putting lipstick on a pig . . ."

And I'd like to install iPhone OS on my Palm Pilot and RAZR V3 . . .

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Now playing: The Elders - Turning Point
via FoxyTunes

Software Review: MoneyWell

Last post I mentioned this very nice piece of software I found for managing personal finances on a Mac. Macs are starting to challenge the stereotype that PCs are only for number-crunching and gamers while Macs are only for artsy-fartsy creatives like musicians, photographers, graphic artists and the like. Apple's Numbers spreadsheet, part of iWork'08, is a great start in that direction and FileMaker's Bento database app puts Access to shame for the personal user. Sadly, there have been no decent personal finance apps. Microsoft Money -- my daughter's favorite piece of personal finance software which is among the most user friendly of Microsoft apps -- is Windows only. Since for a variety of reasons I'm not going to Boot Camp my system anytime soon or resort to a virtualization solution like Parallels or VMWare Fusion, and I detest Sicken, er, Quicken -- the other most common Mac app for financial management (I'm just not Intuit . . .) because it is crippleware next to the Winblows version. As for web-based apps, please spare me. Ick on a fscking stick.

One day while checking out VirginTracker, er, Versiontracker one day on break, I found MoneyWell. Impressive piece of software. The idea behind MoneyWell is this: If iTunes and a financial app got stinking drunk one night at the office Yule party and did the nasty in a broom closet, MoneyWell could be the result born 9 months later. Your Chart of Accounts becomes a group of playlists, your bank account is like an iTunes library, etc. Budgeting is a matter of allocating money to "buckets," add in income and the proggy fills the buckets with money. Add in the graphing and analysis tools, and you have a killer financial app. In a sense, this tool turns budgeting into a RPG point allocation system, something I have a easy time understanding. As someone who designed a custom small business financial accounting system about three jobs ago with spreadsheets and QBASIC macros (don't try this at home....) for MS-DOS 5.x / Netware 2.2.x, I know how beastly these things can get. MoneyWell's learning curve is not steep, and the built in help is as good as anything I've seen in Leopard; the online tutorials are excellent, as good as those for iPods.

Unlike many such apps form VirginTracker, this one's polished and professional. No Thirst Software did a wonderful job. It reminded me a lot of Bento, another great Leopard app I make a lot of use of in my gaming. At $39.99 USD for a license -- the shareware version is limited to 200 transactions -- it beats the hell out of Quicken.

Color me impressed by this app. If you have a Mac and you have budgeting issues, get this proggy. Try it, you'll buy it.

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Listening to: The O'Jays - For The Love Of Money
via FoxyTunes

Overheard at work...

"A former Apple guy going to work at Microsoft then coming back to Apple to sell Office 08 for Mac is like Anakin Skywalker going to the Jedi Council to apologize after he massacred the kids at the Jedi Academy."

Thanks, Tim, I needed that. Especially this morning.

Stoopid StarCraft Install Tricks v 1.0

OK, so there I was, at work, installing the copy of StarCraft I got as a prize on my MacBook via Firewire target disk mode (due to the bad optical in this MB) when the evil nasty badness began. My MB was on battery and in the middle of the install it shut down, out of power.

One of the "thall shalt nots" of FireWire Target Disk Mode is "do not forcibly dismount the target volume during data transfer or you will hose the target disk."

Oops.

I restarted my MB, hoped for the best and got the worst. Dreaded apple /gear startup. Disk Utility confirmed that the volume was as hosed as Chicago in 1871.

So, I reformatted the hard drive, reinstalled Leopard from a FWTDM'd workstation and went home.

Once home, I started first time setup and restored from my Time Machine external backup volume.
EVERYTHING is BACK -- all my gaming notes, my bookmarks, email, iLife suite, music, pictures of Her Cuteness, and oh yes World of Warcraft. Only a couple of hours lost in restoring. Had I had a working optical I could have restored while booted from it.

Mac users: if your machine can run Leopard, and you have not installed it yet, your data is at risk...If you've installed Leopard and not gotten an external hard drive for Time Machine, your data is at risk . . .if your machine cannot run Leopard, get one that does. You know you want to, and it is the right thing to do.

If you're not using a Mac, well you need to.

Update 1: Ran software update and it hosed my HD AGAIN! Fortunately, archive and install fixes this crap.

IT WORKS!!

The new external hard drive (the black thing on the right hand side of the picture) worked as expected right out of the box. Well, except for the fact it was formatted as the Windows-default NTFS. That was a bit unexpected, but that's why Mac OS X has Disk Utility. I set up three partitions, one for Time Machine (HD Welles), a smallish one as a bootable Leopard partition (DaVinci), and one as FAT32 for D&M (Dandelion).

Once Leo detected HD Welles, Time Machine went right to work. 50+ gigs backed up without any intervention on my part. An hour later, another backup . . . etc.

To see how restore worked, I deleted a folder full of old WoW mods from my desktop and emptied the trash. Invoked Time Machine, and looked at my last backup. There it was . . . Two clicks later, and it was back on my desktop.

Just for fun, I forced a TM backup manually rather than waiting for the hourly automated backup. The only sign I saw on my screen of the backup in process was a small circle icon next to the external hard drive. Groovy!

Now to install Leo on the DaVinci partition. I'm also going to use the partition as dump storage and to test how other applications interact with a external hard disk. I'll be doing that at my workstation because there I have an optical drive that works.

The very best thing about Leo . . .

Two words: TIME MACHINE.
Time Machine is the very best single reason for a Mac user to buy and install Leopard . . . and of you are a Windows user, the very best reason to go get a new Mac. Time Machine is a backup and restore utility. In a word, you can, at need, "go back in time" and restore your entire system or even a single file from any 1-hr increment in the last day, any day in the last month and any month thereafter. So, if in the middle of writing your master's thesis your MacBook Pro's internal HD packs it in, if you have TM and an external hard disk, you can restore the last backup (not to mention OS X, all your preferewnces, email, etc) of your thesis once the hard disk is replaced, and on you go.

You can restore a single file, your whole iTunes Library or thw whole fscking startup partition. No more need to use Target Disk Mode and another Mac. No more "log in as root, drag and drop your Home folder (c:\Documents and settings\yourname for you windows users) and HOPE you got it right." For some users, enabling the OS X "root" account is like handing a drunk with Tourette's Syndrome a greased grenade . . . only "sudo rm -R /* is capable of more damage in less time (think dropping to DOS, cd c:, then del *.*). No more Retrospect, .Mac backup 3.x (not a bad program, but it's about as intuitive as brain surgery when compared to TM) or needing to rely on a non-Apple solution.

Best of all, TM does this silently and automaticly..

Windows, by comparison, has "system restore" which is great for restoring Windows system files . . . but it does nto do jack about your master's thesis or your email, pics, music, videos or porn.

I had been looking forward to buying a new external hard drive to try this feature out once my finances allowed for it. Fortunately for me, I won a nice 250 gigabyte USB 2.0 drive today for quarterly sales performance. This is plenty of space to allow me to back up the 100 GB drive in my MacBook (currently about 40 gigs free). I'm going to put at least three partitions on the disk: one OS X for TM (I'm going to names it "HD Welles"), one also OS X (one just big enough to serve as a 10.5 startup disk, probably named "DaVinci" -- as in Leo-nardo) to install Leopard so I can boot off this drive at need and one formatted for FAT32 (Disk Utility does not speak Windows NTFS) so my good friends Michelle and David can back up their docs/music/pics/etc/omg/wtf/bbq.

Since the disk will be partitioned three ways, I think I'll call it "Gaul." Of course, people will look at me funny (not that they don't do that already . . .).

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Listening to: Styx - Suite Madame Blue
via FoxyTunes

Apps! (cough) Apps!

I got up early this morning thanks to a lovely coughing fit. Feeling better than yesterday, though.

I spent a bit of that early morning time playing some more with Bento, the FileMaker database app I mentioned yesterday. I forgot to mention that it accesses the Mac OS X Address Book and iCal too. This makes event planning sense.

I foresee a Macworld release for Bento (mid-January).

Tuesday also saw a major, tasty update (version 2.3) to World of Warcraft. The biggest change is under the hood: optimization for the common dual-processor machines like the Intel Core / Core 2 Duo-driven machines like almost all of the Intel Macs. Prior to yesterday's update, WoW would typically run almost exclusively in CPU#1 (I saw this in the Activity Monitor utility) and load it down to 80%+. After update, the load is much more balanced between the CPUs. They also tweaked the graphics animations (probably in response to Leopard's introduction of the Core Animation API).

The big fix from the gameplay point-of-view is that the leveling curve has been flattened between levels 30 and 60 by giving about 15% more XP per quest completed or monster slain and reducing the XP needed to level by about 15%. Prior to 2.3, leveling slowed waaaay down between levels 30 and 60. In addition, it became very difficult to "solo" a lot of the non-dungeon quests, and as a player hit level 40, far too many of the quests available in places like Arathi Highlands, Dustwallow Swamp and Stranglethorn Vale for leveling the character were simply not soloable. I'd usually bypass these quests and either go "grind" some easier monsters or hope to put together a pick up group (PuG) and hit a dungeon. Apparently this slowdown was frustrating so many new players that many were quitting. PuGs for dungeons can get really ugly.

I noticed the difference right away on my Level 55 Troll Shaman alt. It typically takes me 12 hrs or so of play to advance one level at 50+; I went from 54 + 50% to 55 in less than 4 hours. Me likes.

Oh and 10.4.11 and 10.5.1 updates come out today.



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Now playing: The Elders - Message from the Battle Zone
via FoxyTunes

Something very nice this way comes or Bend it Like Bento

After coughing my lungs up all night, I feel semi human this evening.

Oh, the things you can learn from a RSS feed . . . I subscribe to the MacFixIt.com feed for Version Tracker. VT is a site that lists new software releases for Mac OS X, Mac OS Classic, Windows and Palm OS. New software releases including things like virus signature files for antivirus suites, security updates for core operating systems, and updates for applications major and minor. If you want to make a Mac so something that Apple has not provided a program for, say, ripping DVDs to your hard drive, look at Version Tracker. Want new iTunes visualizations or updates to World of Warcraft? VT's got 'em.

Something very interesting came in on the OS X feed tonight: FileMaker, a Mac software company so venerable that Apple bought it some years ago, has a public beta / trial version of Bento, their new personal database software application.

Database software is usually one of the most user-unfriendly of the common applications. On the one hand you have general purporse database apps like FileMaker Pro. dBase, Microsoft Access (an oxymoron if there ever was one!), etc that are very flexible tools for designing exactly the database you want to build. Very nice until you need to retrieve something from it. Then you need to learn a query language -- basically a specialized scripting computer language -- in order to search that database. On the other hand you have special-purpose applications like WotC's D&D eTools that are very easy to use -- no programming and no data structures knowledge needed -- but are one trick ponies, inflexible, unusable for anything else.

This gap has long been recognized by software developers. OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Claris Works, Microsoft Works (another oxymoron) and other suites have database programs that attempt to address the issue; all of these apps require a degree of familiarity with database software conventions and programming that is beyond most users, and is not worth the trouble for even someone like me to learn to use.

Bento hits the nail on the head. It is a very flexible database editing and search application aimed at folks who do not want or need to learn SQL. Three things about this app: Start with the source list / app work area of iTunes and the iLife and iWork applications; add to that drag and drop database design and tie that to Leopard's Spotlight metadata search functions and you have Bento in a nutshell. If you can make an iTunes playlist, you can make a functional and usable database.

My test of this nice little tool is the creation of NPC databases for D&D and Serenity.

Yet more Fun with Leo

Lesser-known but fscking impressive things about Leopard

1. Empty the trash "securely" also empties "in use" files that are often a pain to get rid of. Windows Media Player for Mac (R.I.P.) used to be the biggest PITA in this category.

2. Bluetooth file exchange looks looks like a ftp client on steroids. NICE.

3. RSS feeds. Safari in Tiger handled them well, Now Mac Mail can get your RSS feeds. I subscribe to numerous tech, political and culture feeds, so I read them in Mail instead of a dedicated RSS app or browser. Safari is a decent browser, I use it all the time for work because it is the only browser supported on the webapps I use there. These apps simply do not work with Firefox. Now I have a non work reason to use Safari: to bookmark RSS feeds for Mail.

4. TextEdit can read .odt files. "ODT" is "open document format," a standards-based alternative to Microsoft's "xdoc." Xdoc is a next-generation XML document file format that Microsoft debuted in the latest version of Office. ODT files are the native output format for OpenOffice or NeoOffice. Neo is the "Cocoa" native port of the X.11- driven Mac and Unix versions of OpenOffice. This beats the hell out of "install X.11 and the broken as hell version of OpenOffice and hope that Rosetta (the Mac OS X runtime PPC to Intel software emulator used on all Intel Macs) does not hose you.

5. A default guest account. This account self-destructs once logged out of. This means all downloads, bookmarks, caches all go bye bye at logout unless saved on something like a thumb drive. Now I can let others use my Macs assured that if they download something, it will go away when they log out.

From Teh Innerweb for your Bush-Bashing Pleasure!

I like this





I was looking for a website with a countdown clock where I could use the new WebClip feature of OS X Leopard Safari 3.0 to make a Dashboard widget showing a countdown of the time till Shrub is scheduled to leave office. The widget even has a reset feature to reset the countdown in case the SOB is impeached. They also have Winderz screen savers (the Mac version is for pre-Tiger versions of the OS) and other assorted widgetoid things.

More Leopard FUN

The only reason I did not install Leopard on my personal machine on the first day it was released was that my personal machine has an optical drive that keeps on ejecting discs. Again. But tonight I got the cat to purr as it should.

OK, so how did I manage to get Leo installed? Four very important words to the Mac Geek: Firewire Target Disc Mode. "FWTDM" allows a Mac to boot up and say to all the world that it is nothing but a hard disk. When that Mac (the "target") is connected via Firewire (aka IEEE 1394, if you're keeping score) to another Mac booted normally into OS X, the target disk is treated like another external disk -- it is visible on the desktop and accessible through the Finder (the Mac answer to Windows Explorer).

FWTDM is a godsend for those times when a drive will be recognized and "mount" (become accessable by the Finder) but you cannot boot from that drive into Mac OS X. You can use it for data rescue (most common use). Another use for FWTDM is for times when you want to mount optical discs from one Mac's optical drive to one where the optical is nonfunctional on the targeted system.

So all i needed to do is borrow a Firewire cable and wait until after work to use my iMac workstation's optical drive to install my copy of Leopard onto this system.

That is the theory.

Install attempt number 1: I got clever and did an Archive and Install preserving instead of the usual upgrade install. One of my favorite tech sites suggested it, and their reasons made sense to me. Sadly for me, the AC power glitched enough to shut off the targeted iMac (the MacBook didn't blink thanks to the battery). Installus Interruptus. Welcome to my nightmare scenario. This is a bad place to be; most of the time this is a reformat. The MacBook, predictably enough, booted to the classic "Apple / Gear" screen that is the hallmark of damaged system files or filesystem. If damaged files, no worries, a straight archive and install fixes that. If damaged filesystem, then I'd have to reformat the drive, lose everything on the system, and reinstall. Your basic nuke and pave reinstall. Fortunately, Disk Utility dubbed the filesystem to be OK. Dodged that bullet!

Attempt number 2: Archive and install preserving user settings. Worked fine until I tried to log into my user account -- bad password. Tried to reset it with the Password reset utility, and it would not reset. Disk util said things were still OK with the filesystem, thank Eris. Then the MacBook started kernel panicking (BSOD for you Windows users). Ick. Deja Vu all over again.

Attempt number 3: OK, I decided then and there to do one more A&I, but this time NOT preserving the user account. If this install screwed the pooch, it was time to bite the bullet and nuke it from orbit. This install was smooth as glass. The system booted to first time setup as usual, Made a brand new account with the exact same name as my old one and a four letter password (fsck, of course). Lo and behold, the MacBook booted to the Leo desktop.

Thirty minutes of user account migration and a password change in System prefs later, my email, bookmarks, address book, documents, wireless peripherals, Bluetooth enabled phone, and World of Warcraft were working perfectly. Not to mention iPhoto and the uber-neat Screen Sharing feature. Now to make sure that I install Palm Desktop (Arch and install ALWAYS breaks Palm Desktop's Transport Monitor), my printer drivers (nice thing about leo is that the open-source Gutenprint driver set I use with my "OEM drivers for Windows ONLY" printer (HA!) is now included with a standard install) and a few other apps I can download form the Internet and I'll be jake.

Not to mention that none of the 'puters on which I have Leo installed on have taken any kind of performance hit. Startup is still fast and there are a few strange behaviors. The only major casualty of the install has been my Windows partition because the arch and installs eat disk space.

Oh well, Windows can wait until I get the optical fixed.

Not a bad night's worth of hands-on teching!

Mac and Moto Madness

My new phone arrived today. Kudos to AT&T and FexEx for getting it here so quickly.

OMG, the RAZR is a slick phone. I've always liked how this phone looks. Now that I have one of my very own . . . I wish I'd gotten one a couple of years ago. All I had to do was slip in the SIM for my POS Sony Ericcson, charge the battery for 30 minutes, and I was ready to roll.

This phone and my Mac get along very very nicely thanks to iSync and Bluetooth. I paired up the phone just like it was any other device, iSync did the rest. Much easier than syncing a Palm PDA because Palm Desktop and Hotsync Manager is NOT involved. Now my PDA, my Macs and my phone all talk to each other in perfect sync.

Reason 2 why I'm impressed: it can be powered through a mini-USB power adapter. Mini-USB makes a good data connection for the Bluetooth impaired, and with a mini to A cable, you can power it off a standard 500 mA (high power, same kind iPods charge from) USB port. The power adapter prongs fold into the body of the adapter like those on a Mac / AirPort Express "duck head."

Reason 3: I noticed in the Bluetooth settings that this phone had a Bluetooth "service" called "OLX Object Push" The Bluetooth wireless link allows a number of different services -- printing, headset, dial up modem and others. OLX Object Push is for sending files back and forth. Mac OS X has a feature called Bluetooth File Exchange for sending files to a Bluetooth device. I tested the feature by snapping a picture with the camera and sending the resulting jpeg file to the Mac. That pic appears above.

Color me in-fscking-impressed!

I've only begun to explore this little jewel of a phone. More later.

Oh yes, Leopard, aka Mac OS X 10.5, is likewise awesome. Much more later!

Random bits, bytes, nybbles, etc

1. " . . . that [his] name not be lost to the knowledge of men . . . " -- One of the very best folksingers who ever lived has not had his tunage for sale on the iTunes Store . . . until now. When I started buying music via iTunes, I looked in vain for Canadian folk muisc legend Stan Rogers. I was first introduced to Stan's music in, of all places, the SCA (yes, his songs are almost as "period" as an iPod). I first heard Barrett's Privateers at a Society bardic circle. I asked for the lyrics from the bard and learned the song by heart by the time I got home from the event (a 5 hour drive to An Tir for a war). I ran into more Stan Rogers goodness a few years later in the context of what was then the most compelling science fiction RPG background of the 1990s: Traveller: The New Era. Apparently, one of the developers was a Canadian, because one of the adventures for that game involved a starship called the Mary Ellen Carter. In many ways, that song pretty much sums up TNE. One trip through teh google later, I made the connection between these two experinces and Stan Rogers. Once other, more pressing, needs are met, I'll be downloading teh good stuff again. I currently have recordings of both songs -- the rather good 3 Pints Gone cover of Mary Ellen Carter and, in two of the greatest offenses ever recorded against the memory of a great artist, that fools-gold voiced tenor frank emerson's "covers" of MEC and Barrett's Privateers. If you're going to pay tribute to a legend AT LEAST GET THE LYRICS RIGHT AND DON'T DROP VERSES! Biggest waste of two bucks ever. And don't get me started on the waste of iTunes Library space that is his version of The Minstrel Boy! To paraphrase PeeJee from Something Positive, were I female, I could menstrate better music! I can only hope his name is lost to the knowledge of men!

2. ID10T: It's not just for computer novices anymore!
Customer calls in, issue is that his Mac is booting to a blank gray screen on its LCD display. This is not an especially common issue. There are notes from prior contacts where the previous "tech" documented that he did "everything" -- reset SMC, booted to CD, advised trying an external monitor and calling back with the result. He did everything, all right . . . everything but what was to me the blindingly obvious: resetting the fscking PRAM. I had Mister Customer reset the system's PRAM, and lo and behold, built-in video returned.

/rant=ON
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: I simply could not believe this. Resetting PRAM fixes a lot of stuff: USB / Firewire / ethernet / modem port issues, mis-recognition of the hard drive and most especially video issues. Usually PRAM resets are an overused troubleshooting step for issues where they are singularly ineffective, typically startup issues that arise after the OS starts loading. This is stuff any noob fresh out of training knows.

And this guy was NOT a newbie. Nor was he from an outsourced contact center. He sat two isles over from me. He made a customer troubleshoot ineffectually and even left him with the expectation that his system would need service, for an issue that should have been resolved with the very first troubleshooting step tried. He made someone call in a second time, wait on hold to music that may not quite be to taste, for an issue that should have been fixed in less than 5 minutes.

People like him are why I sometimes get angry enough to explode. Why? Because call center tech support reps like me are ranked for perks like desirable schedules, promotions, awards and such by two things: sales and call statistics . . . especially call duration. I got the distinct feeling from the customer that he felt rushed by the rep (something we are NOT supposed to do) because after we did the quick fix on the one system he had two other issues with other computers for me to look at! Fscking stats whores like him do this all the time. So you piss off a customer and leave me to clean up the mess. Not to mention hosing my call stats, which makes getting awards, promotions, and a decent schedule harder.
/rant=OFF
I feel a bit better now....

Got the call theis morning

And they did not replace the hard drive!

Just the main logic board and fan.

Now the fan is not running like a triathlete when WoW is
up, my video frame rate looks nominal (15-30). It's all good.

Now to restore my data and get back to having some WoW fun....

Macbook Held Hostage...Day 11

I was actually hoping to get my system back today; that's not going to happen. When I last statused this at the store, I was advised "Under repair, being tested." Apparently it did not pass the tests again; Waiting more parts, from the look of it. At least it looks like the hard drive will not need to be replaced. I hope; I really REALLY do not want to repeat the install-o-rama for the TENTH time.

RAM issues

What a day. When I embarked on the reinstall fest, I never thought the following would happen:

Reinstall all working software and OS updates -- OK
Reinstall World of Warcraft -- failed on disc 1
Clean all 5 discs failed on disc 3, different issue
Tried WoW four more times -- failed on different discs every time, never getting past 3rd disc
Booted to CD, ran disk utility -- extant allocation errors (same thing that I got last week)
Erase and install, update os x, run disk utility -- same issue
Removed windows partition with Boot Camp Assistant, reformat entire drive, run Disk Utility-- no issues
Erase and install -- Got to desktop
Installed 10.4.9 update and rebooted -- now cannot log in, password is rejected (nidb looks hosed)
Archive and Install NOT preserving, new user account -- now can log in
Disk Utility -- extant allocation errors, AGAIN
Apple Hardware Test: 4MEM/1/40000000: (error message)
Verdict: flaky RAM or mis-seated RAM, do not have a screwdriver small enough to reseat the memory
Set genius bar appointment for 1130 Monday at Arden Fair, sent system profile to Apple.
Replaced torn out hair with a bad toupee

I can understand how bad RAM can corrupt a hard drive; I see it all the time. At least I have enough functionality to run os x and do basic stuff, get on the internet, etc. Just cannot install or play WoW. At least in OS X . . . .
OK, here's what *I* do not understand: How does a system pass Apple service diagnostics yesterday in the store but fail Apple Hardware Test at home?

Install / Restore fest, Dreams, and Music, 2007 version

Got up this morning to the sounds of screaming sore legs and to the sounds of a screaming psyche. The legs I am keeping elevated per doctor's orders. The screaming psyche is the result of a bizarre dream I had last night. Apparently someone had hacked a World of Warcraft server -- the one where I often have 1st person dreams of being a WoW character. Anyway, I was being chased across Elwynn Forest by some kind of Nazi Troll Shaman (I am a human in this dream, not a blood elf as usual). I was getting seriously ganked, corpse-camped (kind of like my days on Maelstrom) and graveyard-camped by this guy. The next scene had me out of WoW and on a German Ford Tri-motor transport plane (like the one in one of the Indiana Jones movies). I was in POW garb, and this same troll from the game was sitting behind me, all decked out in his Waffen-SS uniform. The leggy blonde Aryan goddess-stewardess brings me a huge cup of hot coffee to drink while this troll keeps taunting me from behind about how he pwned me like Hitler pwned Poland back in '39. I turned around in my seat and spilled the entire liter-plus of steaming hot coffee all over his nice oberstrunfurther's uniform. The next thing I remember I was learning of the joys of free-fall from 10k feet, sans parachute . . .

I have a very long list of must-install software for this MacBook. Almost all of it is work-related. I am refusing to reinstall install WoW or any other game or RPG app until the work-related software I can install at home is installed (some of the proggies I need to put on this machine can only be done at work).

To wit:
All OS X updates done,
X.11 (needed for OpenOffice, not part of standard OS X installation) installed
OpenOffice 2.x installed
BootCamp Assistant installed (in case I have to nondestructively undo the Windows partition)
iTunes library AND playlists restored to iTunes; iPod content restored
Firefox 2.0.2 installed and updated, bookmarks restored
Flash Player for Intel Macs installed
AirPort Utility installed and tested
Gutenprint (gimp-print 5.0.0 print drivers for Epson printer w/o OEM drivers) installed and tested
Stuffit Expander (needed for other installs, think "Winzip for Macs") is installed and tested
Palm Desktop is installed and iSync Palm Syncing is activated. Palm user restored
Old contacts, calanders, etc synced to iCal and Address Book via .Mac
Flip4Mac (successor to Windows Media Player for OS X) installed.

Yesterday I mentioned Seanan McGuire's new album of filk awesomeness, Stars Fall Home. Oh. My. Fscking. GAWDS. I've known Seanan since the start of the worst year of my life (1995) I'd just moved to Lodi after spending almost 2 decades in Sacramento to move closer to a job I was to hold for only a few months and away from my then-best-friend, who had less than six months to live (neither of which I knew at that time). One night while perusing a used bookstore I met Seanan, who flounced into said bookstore, saw I was looking at science fiction and immediately proposed marriage to me. Being a red-blooded male, I accepted . . . as did the small platoon of other fiancees she was going to marry at the World Science Fiction Convention that year. My kind of wierdo! Right after that I met Michelle, who was working at the Pizza Hut across the street. Hard to not like this creative, insane wonderful young lady . . . and in the twelve years since she has grown into a wonderful singer, songwriter and (Real Soon Now, I hope) novelist of staggering awesomeness.
Summer 1995 was the Absolute Worst Summer of My Life. I lost both a decent job and a the aforementioned best friend in the span of a month. Combined with my sudden withdrawal from the SCA, I was more depressed than Weimar Germany's economy in the 1920s. What relieved the strain and kept me from ending it all was Michelle's constant stream of books and the sheer joy of Seanan.

1995 finally ended; I got through it and over it, finding myself in the process. Seanan went on to grow up into an accomplished young woman. Last year Seanan released her first album, Pretty Little Dead Girl. PLDG is a live recording of her Guest of Honor concert at the 2005 Ohio Valley Filk Festival; it got me through my hospitalization last year (Thanks again, Michelle . . .). SFH is her first studio recording (as far as I can tell) and it is AWESOME. Some of the tunes appeared on PLDG, but the new stuff . . . "Evil Laugh" is very nicely upbeat, reminds me of "Maybe it's Crazy" from PLDG . . . and I defy you to not weep when you hear "Still Catch the Tide." I cried when I read the lyrics; Seanan's voice wrung at least twice as many tears from me with the same words. You see, not too long ago, under similar circumstances, a woman I once loved spoke words like those to me . . .

Anyway, SFH is great. Get it. OK?