Month: August 2011

Almost All Mac, Well Sometimes…

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For over a year I have opted into a “bring your own equipment” pilot with my company.  It basically allows me to use a Mac at work.  There has been a great community helping with how too’s, what apps to use to replicate Windows apps, etc.  For the bulk of that time I have generally opted to continue to use a Windows machine.  It wasn’t because I wanted to, but it was because of limitations of email.  More specifically it was Entourage was a horrible app that came no were near its Outlook for Windows equivalent, and then it was that Outlook 2011 wasn’t compatible with the Exchange system I was using.  Last month that last part changed and I was able to use Outlook on the Mac.  It was the last major piece to my going all Mac again at work.

Over the past month I have been going days using all native Mac apps when working remotely and then days of using my Windows machine in the office.  For the most part I am able to work 80% or more on native apps on my mac when I try.  There are a few websites I need that require IE, plus doing certain things in Sharepoint is better looking or just easier to do in IE.  I can do a lot in Sharepoint on the mac but I do default back to IE a lot.

I also had a few issues with Webex on Lion.  I still have issues if logging in via one of the two Webex portals I use.  The other I found a work around for and it does work.  So half the Webex’s I need I have to goto my iPad or a VM.

As I mentioned earlier the big hold back was email.  Now that I can use outlook 2011, for a while I didn’t want to.  It is Outlook and much better than Entourage, however it is not as feature rich as Outlook 2010.  Plenty of reviews covered that.  But even with its limitations it is growing on me.  I am not yet ready to go all mac every day but I am getting closer.  Right now I am at 2-3 days a week.  Since I sit at a computer 8+ hours a day a change like this will take a while to get used to.  For now I hope to continue to be mostly Mac at work more days a week.

 

The Not So Big Hurricane

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Saturday M and I were planning on visiting a judge we are interested in being the officiant for our wedding. I was very concerned about the weather based off of what I was reading about the hurricane and the travel advisories. M was less concerned but I was worried that if we woke up Saturday morning and the weather was bad we wouldn’t be able to cancel our Zip car reservation. Because of those concerns and not being sure if the bridges would remain open if the winds got bad Friday night we canceled our zip car reservation. The judge was very understanding.

Saturday we planned on doing stuff in the apartment since we canceled our plans and figured it would be a good idea to stay home. Those plans plans got shot to heck when my mom called to see if I wanted to goto my cousin Derek’s wedding. He had a few cancelations due to the weather and wanted M and I to come. In our family to keep numbers down the 1st and 2nd cousin’s (my parents) are invited to stuff but all the kids are on the B list or else it would be too many people. I wasn’t offended at not being invited, but I totally forgot the wedding was Saturday. M and I talked about it and even though we (mainly me) didn’t want to travel upstate in the morning that we would risk going to long island at night for the wedding.

We got there just in time for the service and had a good time at the party. We left right after dinner to try to avoid the weather getting too nasty. That was already too late. Halfway home it got really bad out. I asked M if we were really stupid to be out if almost no one was on the road. The LIE was basically empty. That was almost scary. Thankfully we made it home without incident, except our strained wits if that counts?

Today I had several calls with work to review the status of things related to the weather. I am always amazed at how organized were I work is regarding incidents and disasters like this. It makes for many calls on the weekend but in the end thing weren’t down with any of the products i support so i was very happy.

Now M and I are relaxing on the couch. I am blogging and she is working on the wedding registry. I find it a bit cure that we both have Macbook’s (M on the 13″ Pro and me on the 13″ Air) on our laps listening to music. It is a nice relaxing end to a crazy weekend.

Day Off

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After working every night from Friday to Tuesday and parts of the day over last weekend I decided mid week to take a day off. Little did I know at the time that a major hurricane was supposed to be coming to the east coast. Honest, it wasn’t a master plan of mine or anything.

I was able to get most of the day to relax. I just verged out on the couch and on the computer. it was nice, but later in the day i did have to deal with minor work related stuff due to the Hurricane.

In general a nice restful day off.

Mmm Coffee

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After going to Crate and Barrel with M to do the wedding registry I became very interested in an espresso maker / milk frother. I have been using a Flavia machine to make Capuchinno’s for over 2 years now. M can’t stand it. She thinks it is brown water. Lets face it, it only makes OK coffee. I really wanted to find an easy to use and clean up coffee maker that will also make Capuchinno. I knew stuff was out there but hadn’t found anything that was cheap enough and easy enough.

On Thursday the sales lady at Crate & Barrel showed me a Nespresso Espresso machine that also had a milk frother add on in the back. It looked generally easy to use and I had heard good reviews of the Nespresso coffee makers.

Last night and this morning I did some more research online and went to Wiliam Sanoma this afternon and asked some questions. Once I was done there M and I went to the Nespresso Cafe on Madisson. One of the advantages of living in a big city is if a company is going to have an outlet store it will be in NY.

The Nespresso Cafe was pretty cool. It was a real cafe were you could get coffee and pastries but it also sold the coffee machines. I asked a bunch of questions and then they actually made M and I cup’s of Capuchinno using the model machines we were looking at. They tasted great. I opted to get a regular Espresso maker and a seperate milk frother vs the all in one unit. The price was the same but we wanted to have two units in case there was an issue with one so we don’t have to replace the whole thing.

M surprised me by buying everything since she owed me an anniversary gift. I will take delicious coffee over jewelry any day.

Registry Update

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Tonight M and I met up at Bryant Park for a quick dinner before going to work on our wedding registry again.  We got sandwiches at Witch Craft.  It was really yummy as always but we almost got drenched when it started to rain.  We got luck and weren’t too bad off.

After our brush with water we headed up town to Crate & Barrel to work get to work on our wedding registry.  We went to Macys already but there was a bunch of stuff we wanted to get from Crate and Barrel.  Their process was as easy or even easier than Macy’s.  We got the bar code reading gun and a tutorial and off we went.  I think we rounded out what we needed so we were very pleased.  We almost didn’t realize the store was closing and had to leave at 8:30.  As a rule when they stop playing music it is time to go.

Afterward we walked towards the train station but made a detour to Dillan’s Candy Shop for some Ice Cream.  It was a great end to a very productive and fun day.

Naming Schemes

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I am in the technology field. I think about stuff that not many other people might. Take for example naming schemes for your computers. Until recently most people only had one or two at home and probably had generic names for their stuff. I have worked in environments with hundreds of servers and other devices. Dealing with numbers like that you think about how to name things. For me that got me thinking about how I name all the deices at home.

At Partsearch in the beginning Gus twisted my arm to name stuff with some sort of meaning and avoid a utilitarian scheme. As a history major I opted for naming things for WWII naval ships. Our web servers were battleships. Our database servers were air craft carriers. Our production database servers were all US Carriers involved in Midway. you get the picture. That decision was universally disliked. I was almost pretty happy that everyone wasn’t happy since in the end Gus just gave up and let me name everything with a more formalized structure that I wanted all along.

Before the experience at Partsearch coming up with a standard like that I named my computers at home each as a planet in the solar system. My desktop was always Mars, my server was Saturn. Back then I only had two computers at home (typically) but if i had more i always followed that standard.

After dealing with thinking up a standard I read about how different people did it and I changed what I name stuff at home. I started using names of space shuttles and then generally any space capsule name NASA has used. My main laptop has been Endeavour for years. I have had Atlantis (still do) and Discovery for a while as servers or other extra boxes I have had sitting around. My main desktop was Odyssey for years, now it is Aurora.

I write about this topic now because after I got M a Macbook I have had to deviate from that structure a bit since she gets to name her own machine. It is funny to see how other tech people I know take great care in how they name their equipment and then how non tech people don’t think anything about it. To me this topic was funny to think about.

The New MacBook Air

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This week turned out to be a two laptop week.  I was already thinking about selling my existing 2010 Macbook Air and upgrade to the new i5 2011 Air’s that just came out in July  when I convinced M to order a new Macbook Pro but I finally pulled the trigger on the new Air today.

I was waffling for a while since the 2010 model is still perfectly good.  The big drawback for me was the processor wasn’t anywhere near a desktop or even a bigger laptop’s speed.  That changed when the new i5 Air’s came out.  After figuring how much i could sell my old Air for i decided to make the jump and upgrade.

I have bought lots of stuff at the 5th ave Apple store but today was actually the worst experience i have ever had there.  It was super crowded and it took forever to find someone to help me, only to have them tell me oh you need to find a free computer and tell the ipad sitting next to it you need assistance and then you will go into queue to get help.  Problem there is everyone is on these laptops for hours surfing Facebook and two no one tells you that is the process.  I have bought more than one computer from this store and this is the first time i have ever had to do that.

Drama aside i was able to get the model I wanted and headed home.  Well after more minor train drama i was able to get home but that is another story.

I had already taken a backup of my old Air using Carbon Copy Cloner so setting up this computer was as simple as plugging in the backup hard drive and saying yes restore from an external hard drive.  For that function alone i have to love Apple!

 

 

Another Convert

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Today the unthinkable happened.  I ordered M a new computer.  Since 2003 M has had the same HP laptop.  Long ago I gave up making fun of her for it.  For me I like something new, and I know that most people don’t.  For her even though the laptop was old by any standard it worked for her.  If she was happy, I was happy.

Recently however M has been rebooting the laptop constantly and commenting on how slow it is.  I am not sure if something changed recently or if it was just that she has been using my new iMac and noticing the difference in speed.  She was hesitant to spend the cash on a new one.

I finally convinced her to take the plunge.  I was pushing a Macbook Pro, but I really didn’t know her usage requirements so I wasn’t sure if she could do everything on a Mac.  After running a test of the one app in question I ran into a snag.  A remote desktop app she used required an activeX control and couldn’t be used on a Mac.  After talking with M I realized that app wasn’t used that much so using VMware was an option.

With the activeX issue squared away we ordered the entry level Macbook Pro 13″.  I am hoping M will be a happy Mac convert.  She is not the first person I have converted to the Mac.  Besides about a dozen friends or more I finally got my parents converted to an iMac also.  I think everyone has been happy as a convert with the exception of Jayson, but Jay is now looking to get another Mac so I will have a 100% conversion rating.

We await the new Mac to arrive later this week.  Then I have to figure out how to migrate all the data from the HP to the Macbook Pro.

Beginning a Gift Registry

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Today M went with one of her brides maid’s to look for a dress.  I got to lounge around in the morning.  Afterward I went to do some shopping at Macys.  M meet up with me and we went to work on our wedding registry.

The registry process (at least at Macy’s) was kinda fun.  We went and got a scanner gun and walked around scanning things we wanted.  They would immediately be visible on my iPhone.  We spent a few hours going through looking for items we wanted.

We found a bunch of stuff we were looking for but we are no were near complete.  We need to goto a few other stores in the next few weeks before we can tell people.

Meetup’s with Friends and Family

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Today M and I went upstate again to visit a different friend. One of her best friends since growing up was visiting her parents lake house and we decided to go up and see her and her kids.  She is not around too often since she lives near DC.  Getting there was as painful as going to Jayson.  It was 90 minutes on Metro North.

The house was amazing.  it was right on the water with a pool.  We had a great afternoon.  I will say that houses with kids pack the best snacks.  M and I were very well fed.

After the lake afternoon we headed back into the city to meet up with M’s oldest nephew, and in 6 months my soon to be oldest nephew and a friend of his who were in town for the weekend.  We ate at the Shake Shack.  As always it was delicious.

Once we were full from burgers we pondered about were to go with the out of town college kids.  Once we realized that Ryan’s friend never has been in a tall building we headed to The View at the Marriot.  Even for people who live in NYC, having drinks on the 48th floor in a revolving restaurant was pretty cool.  We had a good evening and it was fun taking the “kids” around the city.

We cabbed it home since it was late and we were pretty lazy!