Day: 11 March 2005

Mac Mini Twins

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Being single + impulse buyer + tax return = new mac mini for Scott. I was at the apple store Monday. Gus may refer to it as his Mecca! I was looking for a bluetooth USB adapter for my Mini. I happened to ask if the Mini’s were in stock. I wanted another one, but I haven’t wanted to wait for it to show up so I haven’t ordered it yet. Stupid logic, but it works for me. The guy at the store said they had the high end one in stock. In a moment of weakness I said I will take it.

Now I use my mini at home almost excessively. I sometimes use my Thinkpad or my HP desktop, but very rarely. The Thinkpad is only for work emergencies. that happens enough to warrant me taking it home every night. The HP is my DVR and not much else these days. I live off of my Mini. That is why I wanted another one. I spend 10 hours a day at work and allot of it is on a computer. hey I am in the Technology field. So I figured dropping a Mini at my desk would be great. I can do allot (but not all) of my work on a mac. And the mini is portable so I can throw it in my bag and take it with me when I need to. The logic worked for me. As I said I had tax return money. So now I have more computer than I can count. Well that is not true. I have 1 PC desktop, 2 mac desktops, and 1 mac laptop. The rest of the computers I discuss are not technically mine. The Thinkpad is the works. But it makes sense if you look at it a certain way. I need a PC at home, and I need a Mac. Another mac for work, and the powerbook for when I travel. Well in my head the logic worked. I know I am crazy. you don’t need to tell me.

So far I am happy with both Mini’s. I should get my 512 meg ram upgrade for the new mini in a day or so. I didn’t want to shell out the outrageous price for the 1gig chip again. With my new camera phone I can take better pictures of the inside of the unit compared to the bad ones I took when we opened my first mini.

Update, I got the 512 Meg ram upgrade. Jayson had the handy putty knives from the last time we did this and had the memory upgraded on this new mini in 20 minutes. I have it sitting on my desk at work. I was able to use it for more than like 80% of the day Friday. I need to find a good open source SSH client for OS X. I am starting to make a list of business software that I could use on the Mac.

I got the new mini to bluetooth sync with my Treo 650 after about 2 minutes of trying. It worked like a charm. So much simpler than my horror with the 3com PCMCIA card with my Thinkpad, and the Xircom bluetooth card that I never really got to work right.

Computer Buying For Novices

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I had to explain computer purchasing concepts to my brother in law. he doesn’t understand why he cannot buy a $299 computer and be happy with it. I tried (not sure if I succeeded) in explaining that it is low end crap, and that it will be easily outdated in 3-5 years. Since they want to (plan to) keep the computer that long, they should not buy the bottom of the barrel. I didn’t mention but felt like I should mention it, that I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemy to buy a $299 computer so I would not let my family buy that stuff. The only exception of the rule mentioned above is Gus. Since he seems to think he can run the universe on his old P-2 300mhz, I would recommend a 5 year old used Dell off of ebay for him:)

How Can He Be A Pisces Too?

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It felt like Friday, even though I worked from home yesterday. I am feeling better this afternoon, but this morning I still felt lousy. Jayson took off at noon on his week long trek to Baton Rouge. I think his timing on the drive was off, but I wasn’t going to argue traffic patters since neither of us drive that much anymore. I wasn’t driving down there, so I was happy. Danny is moving this week so I won’t see him till Wednesday. I feel all alone!

It was Nelson’s birthday today and they did the traditional birthday lunch with him. A bunch of people also went out after work. I went for 1 drink. It was one too many. I knew I shouldn’t drink if I was sick recently, but I was stupid. Thankfully I only had one.

I am just trying to figure out how Nelson and I are both Pisces. I think he is faking it or something. I have made it almost a mission for me to distance myself in every way from him. And Nelson if you are reading this, yes I am kidding! Dan if you are reading this, no I am not kidding.