Life with the New Kitteh

I've done three Snow Leopard installs now -- one in training, one on my production machine in the office and one on my MacBook. I love the way this beast installs. Most software installs just copy straight form the DVD to the target filesystem. SL does some nice stuff: it does the same source and target media / filesystem integrity checks (checksum on the install media and fsck on the traget filesystem) as 10.5 did, but instead of archiving the old OS then installing the old way, it creates a temporary partition on the target disk, copies the install packages there, removes completely the old system then replaces it with a new system.

This is a lot more reliable.

Not to mention that SL has a much smaller HDD footprint. Installing SL freed about 10 gigs of space on both HDDs I've installed it on.

Not to mention that I'm not getting a lot of calls about SL issues. Both Tiger and Leopard were big call drivers on release.

Only one glitch of consequence so far, and it is not Apple's fault. SL shipped with a metric buttload of print drivers for numerous popular printers. One large makes of printers, one whose name rhymes with "Pewlett-Hackard" apparently failed to deliver the drivers Apple was expecting

More drivel . . .

Firefox has been crashing on most of the sites I'm visiting tonight. This is more like Safari 3.x behavior. OK, basic browser troubleshooting 101: I have the most recent update. OS X is likewise up to date. FF Add-ons (like Foxytunes) are turned off, killed cache and cookies; basically went nuclear on the browser user data -- nada. New user account -- same shit, different time stamp. Pulled Firefox, from /Applications, reinstalled the app, the full monty . . . same fscking thing. I am NOT reinstalling OS X. Restore from Time Machine? -- Maybe once I get home from the movie.

10 min later: Found the issue. My troubles began when I visited a site to download a neat little song. In order to log into the site, I had to switch something called the "User Agent" to convince the site that I was using IE7+ on Windows instead of Firefox on Mac OS X. Damned site assumes that everyone has the evil that is Microsoft ActiveX enabled. Fsckers. Anyway, their workaround for the Mac community is Firefox User Agent Switcher. Anyway, swapping user agent back fixxored Firefox. Turning the add-on off left the browser in IE7 user agent mode. Damned pref list files are in strange places.

OK, off to get a bite before the show.

End of the Weekend Stuff

1. Dressing change went well; wounds continue to heal. My doc seems happy with my progress. Also: my aplication for FMLA was accepted. This will cover my, uhm, back at work if I need to miss work for appointments.
2. iKlear -- a cleaning solution formulated for Mac computers, iPods and LCDs -- is GOOD STUFF. I got some because I took a look at my MacBook one day and decided that I could no longer stand the way my keyboard, topcase and LCD looked anymore. Now my system looks NICE. Me likes. It also does a great job on eyeglasses and cell phones.
3. Musical strangeness -- I've been craving unusual music lately -- witness the music .sig below. Today I even heard some depths-of-the-70s fscking disco -- music like that from Saturday Night Fever that I hated when it dominated AM radio 30+ years ago -- and I actually enjoyed hearing it. This is not really nostelgia, not "your 50th birthday is in sight, time to mourn the passing of your youth," nothing like that at all. I mean, OutKast was what my stepsons were litening to (and dissing) five years ago, and some of those disco and old-school R&B moldie oldies nearly drove me up the wall back then.
4. Personal goals for the month of March. I haz them:
a. Visit Sophia and Sam in Berkeley, scheduled for 3/23 Monday.
b. Write one substantiative (one paragraph) O:M entry a day.
c. No serum glucose test results outside the Green Zone
d. Lose 5 pounds (a modest and realistic goal)
e. Socialize with someone in person and in realspace at least once a week.
f. Finish the O:M overhaul (almost done with this).
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Listening to: OutKast - Hey Ya!
via FoxyTunes

Monday Musings

1. Safari 4: Apple's web browser for both Mac (and Windows!) looks kind of neat. Outside of work, I do not use Safari all that much. One reason is that some web sites and Safari simply do not get along very well. Firefox seems to work better on these sites; the reason there is even a browser called "Safari" at all is because Microsoft ceased development on Internet Exploder for Mac OS X prior to the release of Panther (OS X 10.3).

I use Safari 3.2.1 at work under Leopard (10.5.6), and at times, I am not amused by its miserable performance.

Lately Firefox has been showing signs of acting just like Safari 3.2 -- beach ball of doom (think "hourglass busy signal" in Windows), random unexpected program quitting, etc, on two systems that are meticulously maintained. And, these are sites I visit all the time, not sites with wonky logins and SSL.

Safari 4 seems faster than FF. Apple has always marketed Safari as the fastest browser anywhere, based on small-print benchmarks. Small print benchmarks do not impress the typical user all that much. They want speed they can perceive and experience, hands on with their system. Safari 4 launches faster (and does not pollute the startup group with "helper" launch on login crap, thank Odinn) and seems to render the same pages faster, even when both browsers start with nothing cached. Apparently Safari 4 is using a new rendering engine, not good old open-source WebKit (as Firefox does).

I was able to bring my Firefox bookmarks over without pain. Import them (of course you have to know where FF stores bookmarks, but damn it, I'm a tech!) then stick them into the Bookmarks Bar or Folder as appropriate. A nice Automator or AppleScript program would make this easy cheese even for a novice.

Safari 4, in the tradition of all Apple products, has some nifty innovations. Tabbed browsing has been around for awhile; Safari 4 puts the tabs at the top of the window instead of below the bookmark bar. This is actually less confusing to novices. Toolbar customization has been simplified and made friendlier to new users (and it is a LOT friendlier than FF). The big enchilada is Top Sites. Top Sites is a way to view the most frequently visited web sites on a single page. It reminds me of Cover Flow view in Leopard and iTunes -- something that gives me the willies in the former -- as well as the "Spaces" feature of Leopard.. It is visually spiffy and easy to use.

Of course, Safari 4 does this by taking caching to a much higher level than ever before. This means that marginal Internet connections are really going to feel the pain. If your Internet connection is lousy, then the time it takes to fill the caches will make Safari seem dog-slow.

Not to mention the total lack of anything like "Foxytunes" in Safari. I like the ability to post the song I'm listening to -- or a theme song of some sort -- into my blog posts. Safari lacks this ability because the Foxytunes browser addon does not have a version fro Safari. Yet a version exists for IE. Go figure.

2. WoW: I got some good playtime in this weekend. Did a 25-man Heroic difficulty raid on the Obsidian Sanctum with my guildies. Just one wipe (the first time we did OS, I think we wiped a dozen times), but we took down ol' Sarthiron (he's a big-ass black dragon) in what a Brit would call "a close-run thing." The best loot this guy drops is a token that you can cash in for a piece of top-end raiding armor tailored to your class and specialization, aka "Tier 7 gear".

Well, I got the token on a percentile dice roll of 96. And I bought the Valorous Earthshatter Grips

I've been waiting a log time for some tiered armor. I never got a single piece of Tier 4+ gear in 6+ months of near-weekly raiding of Karazhan in the last expansion.

3. Health: Serum Glucose levels are right in the middle of the Green Zone (80-140), and I actually feel somewhat energetic. I have a dressing change later.

4. Photo stuff: iPhoto 8's editor really does a number on red-eye. I got some shots on Saturday that make my Goddessdaughter's eyes look like something out a bad horror flick where the kid just reaches puberty and it is revealed that she was sired by a malevolent entity with the express mission of removing the collective soul of humanity as painfully as possible through its nostrils with mere mind powers.

" . . . 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

From teh WTF files . . .

" . . . this 'Mirror Agent' error message on my Mac: is this a sign that Homeland Security thinks I'm violating the PATRIOT Act? (expletive deleted) Republicans!"

-- a customer from Berkeley I talked to this morning

Me: "No, Mirror Agent handles making a copy, or mirror, of your online iDisk on your desktop. It has nothing to do with the US Government, Homeland Security, domestic signals intelligence or Republicans."

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Now playing: Black Sabbath - Paranoid
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

It's official!

Apple's iTunes Store is the top-selling music store worldwide, beating even WallyWurld

Bits, bytes, nybbles and other data constructs

Scenes from a geek's life:

1. My hip going "pop" as I was getting ready to leave the doctor's office. Tylenol is helping; two of the world's most awesome nurses *ever* making sure that I did not leave the doc's office until the pain had diminished. Valarie and Connie are a matched set (literally!). I've met more educated nurses, sure...but none who are so patient-centered.
(Gheekspeak follows)
2. I get my job satisfaction shots in strange doses. Few things make me happier than rescuing a customer from a mistake. One of my axioms of Mac Teching is "Walk non-technical customers through the start of an Archive and Install (preserving) because there are too many ways for a nontech to fsck it to hell and beyond." "Archive and Install" (preserving) is a common resolution for software issues on a Mac; what it does is move the /System/ folder to a new location (the "archive" part) and installs a new one. It does NOT overwrite the old /System/, /Applications/ or more importantly, /Users/ (the "preserving" part). The /Users/ folder is home to things like the Desktop, Documents, Music, Movies and all the stuff you store on a computer and want to not lose. Well, Ms. Customer made one little mistake: the did the archive and install with the "preserving" option disabled. When this happens, the /Users/ folder goes into the archive as well. Upon completion of the install, your system goes through first time setup as though out of the box and looks like all the data is gone! The call started out with my diffusing the customer's demand for scalps. I told her how I think it happened, without assigning blame (I care about happy customers, not the whys of breaking things or Who To Blame), and showed her the mystery of how to restore a archived /Users/ folder without hosing the file permissions. This customer went from mistrustful and hinting at legal action to wanting to fly me to the East Coast for personal Mac lessons. Long call, because this restore process is a bit delicate . . . but the call ended with a VERY happy customer.
(end Gheekspeak)

3. Last night, in semi-secret rites in Nygel's Point, Desolace, Dakatirr (my shaman) was passed the title of Guild Master for the WoW guild Legends Till Death . Yet another case of insufficient reluctance. I'd been looking at starting my own guild for awhile, but I literally could not buy nine signatures for a guild charter I took out for . I did not set out to take over someone else's guild, but now that I have it I'll be doing as much administrivia as I do actually playing.

4. A few days ago, Barack Obama gave this little speech about race, faith and a few other things. My inner Orator (the one who got free in speech classes in high school and college and earned the highest degree of distinction from the National Forensics League for oratory, debate, extemporaneous and impromptu speaking) was amazed. Presidents are supposed to be inarticulate boobs who cannot sting together two original thoughts without connective tissue. Presidents are supposed to be rhetorical embarrassments. At least that's been the lesson of the 21st centuty dark age that is the Bush / Cheney administration. BO was brilliant in laying out his vision for that nation, his view of this nation's historic and persistent racism. (geek sideline: while his first and last initial suggest something odorous, his full initials -- BHO -- is a Windows geek acronym: Browser Helper Object. Some BHOs suck, others are not so bad) Folks, Barack Obama (BTW, his first name means "Lightning" in Hebrew and was also the name of Ariel Sharon's armored brigade in the Sinai in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the name goes back to a military commander from the Old Testament) is the Real Deal.

4. Finally: to the piece of human debris who parked his or her car less than a foot from my van which was centered in it's space at Kaiser, forcing a buy with a sore hip and not-so-mild claustrophobia panic attacks to climb in through the cargo door: FSCK YOU WERRY MUCH, ARSEWHOLE! I was just one security camera away from keying the passenger side door of your PoSmobile. Please, for the sake of the people who must share the road and parking spaces with you, get a real license to replace the one you have courtesy of Cracker Jack and Learn To DRIVE and PARK, you miserable dollop of dog crap.

Macbook Issues . . . again

Fun times here.

Yesterday my MacBook's power adapter said it was not charging -- or no light at all, as though there was no juice going through it. Then, at the same time, WoW started fscking up. To wit, in one place on a single gryffon flight path, the game would hard-crash . . . and at no other place I tried in the gameworld.

Went into troubleshooter mode on the MacBook: eliminated the power socket and adapter. Unit ran fine on AC only. Battery was at 191 charge / discharge cycles (about 2/3 of the service life) but fullcharge capacity was too low. Issue did not replicate with a replacement battery. Apple replaces these batteries free out of warranty or not within 2 years. A trip to the Genius Bar got a new battery; in the store it charged in my 'book.

The first time I plugged it in at home -- same issue. Battery stuck at 5% charge, does not charge . . . but system runs on AC only. The Mac Genius took a look at the system and told me it would not be economical to repair it at this time (has other issues with optical drive and top case cracks). The adapter light he says is a main logic board issue (The original MB doesn't have a dc-dc / dc-in board? . . . . Hmmm)

The MG in the Arden Fair store kept the new battery in my 'book for maybe 20 seconds. The issue appeared on my system right after boot up. I wonder . . . when a new battery is inserted and recognized, the system checks to see of the battery's firmware is up to date and if not runs the battery firmware updater. I'm starting to suspect bad firmware flash jobs killed the batteries. The test battery the MG tried was inserted for less than 20 seconds (update occurs after boot . . . ).

I think that the battery firmware was flashed by the updater, and there was a problem either with the firmware.

As for WoW, I can replicate the issue on that flight path with multiple toons on one realm. I've already run disk util, repaired permissions and the filesystem (no issues), tossed all custom UI config data for the wow client, tossed all character config data stored on the client, tossed the caches, pulled the client preferences. I'm going to try another computer with WoW loaded and see of the issue replicates. If no issues, then I uninstall and reinstall WoW and TBC on the MacBook. If there are issues, then I call Blizzard tech support. In that case it isn't my MacBook; may be server side data issues.