scott

I Need A New Mac!

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I have been eluding to my desire to get a new Mac. The lack of hard drive space is killing me. I see people in the train station (did so today again) with the 15″ powerbooks and I go “i want one”. I day dream about the power of a Power Mac when it takes a minute for my Powerbook to load a PDF.

My problem is I know I want a new Mac, but I haven’t decided what I want to get. Until then I am stuck with what I have. Now it is in great condition, but I am hitting the limits of its performance.

My current options are a single processor G5 tower, the newer 12″ Powerbook, or the 15″ Powerbook. When I make up my mind I will go and get one. You know what that means? eBay in my future for my current model.

Mac’s Are Great, But Slow

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So if you read this site you will know I am a fan of Mac’s. Now this is new for me. For years I was such a Windows snob. I was so against Apple in every way. Over the past 2 years I have become a fan of Mac’s. OS X has done it for me. it is a great OS. My Mac of choice is the Powerbook. I love them. I have had 3 of them. I upgrade quickly, especially since eBay exists it makes it easy.

So I have mentioned I love the Mac. Now the downside. They are slow. I don’t care what Apple says, my Powerbook 1GHZ with 640 megs of ram is noticeably slower than my 1.5GHZ Thinkpad with 768 megs of RAM. Now the powerbook was bought in February. The thinkpad is 15 months old. Apple always says that the megahertz doesn’t always matter. Well let me tell you, I believe them to a point. But when it takes forever (3-4x as long as it does on my thinkpad) to open a PDF file with Adobe Acrobat on my powerbook, it is slow. When I have iTunes, Firefox, and Microsoft Word open and word is sluggish to respond, it is not looking good for Apple. they can claim that Microsoft or others don’t optimize their software for their OS, but I as a user just see it being slower on a mac versus my windows PC. Now I tolerate it, but it is becoming a problem. Granted I want to upgrade to a faster powerbook, but I shouldn’t have to just because their is a faster one out there. I want to upgrade because I need more drive space, but I am also hoping that the newer machine is allot faster. The speed issue as I said is becoming a problem. What is the deal Apple?

Birthday Party Brouhaha

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I went to my cousin Arielle’s birthday party today. Well it wasn’t a birthday party really. She had her friends over for a sleep over party last week. This week was the family getting together. Now that is always an interesting thing. I took an early afternoon train out to New Jersey. I got picked up by my cousin Synde and her mom, my aunt Marian. We did some shopping for the party and headed to Synde’s house. I got there early. I didn’t mind. it gave me time to catch up with Synde, Wayne and the kids. Cerina (cannot spell any of their kids names correctly) is getting so big. She is such a barrel of laughs. Arielle is grown up also. She is 9 as of this week. I remember holding her in my arms as a baby when Synde and Wayne moved into their house. I feel old. Merric is getting big, but I am used to that now, so it is not as crazy for me.

Synde had 2 of her sisters over and their family’s for the party. Shelly and Samia. Shelly caused a huge problem by bringing Arielle a rabbit for her birthday. Now that side of my family can be flaky at times, but who brings pets to a kids party without asking the parents first? Wayne was like we can’t keep it. He was right, but Arielle was upset for the rest of the day, and Synde and Wayne were pissed at Shelly for the incident for the day.

Besides the people over I mentioned, Wayne had his “other” cousin Scott and family over. Shelly & Gill’s kids were over, along with Samia’s kids. Conspicuously absent where my parents and Samia’s husband. I am not sure what is up with my parents. They used to almost live at Synde & Wayne’s house, and now they have (in my opinion) bad excuses not to show up. It is very noticeable, to everyone but that is the way it is. My parents both have trouble with long car trips, but I really don’t think they make an effort anymore. There I said it. I have been holding that one back for a while. if my mom ever figures out the internet enough to read this site, I think she knows my opinion already.

Besides the rabbit incident I had a great time. I like seeing my cousin’s but I don’t like large or even small family gatherings. So I am usually low key at these things, but I do enjoy seeing my family. This is the group of people I have the oldest memories of.

I don’t get to see the family as much as I like. I need to get out to see Synde and the kids more. Our schedules are always crazy, and I am lazy. I am going to make an effort to get out sometimes before the holiday.

Right now I am on NJ Transit on my way back to NY Penn Station. Wayne gave me a lift to the train. Once I get to Penn I hope to get a cab home and get some sleep. I am tired, and I have about an hour till I get home.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention that Arielle got mad at me after she played with my Treo. Turns out I should have had her name in my contact list even though she doesn’t have a phone. She was not too happy that her brother had an entry and she did not. She corrected the problem and promptly returned the phone after she took some pictures. Man that kid makes me laugh!

Tonight is daylight savings time change. I need to remember to change my watch before I goto bed. At least I gain an hour of sleep tonight…

Friday Night Crazyness

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Friday night I ended up going out with Jayson, Gretchen, Jennifer, Cari, Nelson and others. We had a good time even though Nelson cannot shut up. We ordered pizza from a bar on 3rd and 23rd. We drank, ate, some people played darts. I did not. I have no aim without drinking, so I decided not to throw pointy things after a few drinks.

I have confirmed my previous suspicion that nelson can control what he does and says just as much as I can control fire. He just says what is on his mind. In principle I respect that, but he has some vulgar and not really funny things on his mind allot. he tries to be funny. Sometimes it is funny, but it is also just mean or insensitive.

All of us ended up at Dan’s to play scrabble and poker for a while. I showed Danny, Jayson, Anthony and Nelson how to play Texas Hold-um. We didn’t play for money. Jayson surprisingly did well. I did good, but not the best.

After Dan, and others finished their game of scrabble Dan wanted to play Hold-um for “real”. Not many of us were in for it, but Cari, Dan, Jennifer, and I ended up playing. I ended up being the big winner, but pissed everyone off by leaving at 11:30 before everyone was done playing. They couldn’t win back any losses. Jenn was like, “i will make everyone remember that you left early”. My response was, “ok. I will remind everyone that you lost big time”.

It was in general a fun night. Nelson is still an ass, but I get along with him anyway. he is in he means well, and doesn’t mean to be a dick, he just is sometimes.

I Do Not Like Politics

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I really do not like politics. For that matter I cannot stand the news. I haven’t watched a news show for years. That is funny to me since my mom always said I used to watch the news when I was little. Now it is so easy to see whatever angle the news is trying to take. I cannot stand it. I read news from Reuters or AP, and that is about it. Even that is sometimes one-sided.

Everyone seems so passionate about this election. I have friends who are volunteers for the Kerry campaign. Other friends and coworkers have their own opinions. From observing people I know I have got 2 questions. One, why then is there such a large percentage of people who are still undecided? Come on, how many months do you need to decide who to vote for? Second what is going on with our political system? I am neither a democrat nor a republican. At times I have agreed with both sides, and disagreed with both. Why then is both sides moving more to the right or left (in my opinion)?

I wont vote for Bush, but not for any of the reasons most people sight. But I am not really compelled to vote for Kerry either. He will get my vote because he has one thing going for him, he is not Bush. Normally I don’t write about politics, and I think that is a good idea. Politics, religion and operating systems are way to polarizing topics to discuss. As a tech guy I will talk about OS’s, but that is the russian roulette I will play! What scares me more than anything is not that Bush is president, or will be re-elected, but that if he does win 50+% of the public actually voted for him. That will get me wondering.

If you want to understand my opinion of world politics today, you should watch the Daily Show with John Stewart. Yes a comedy show actually portrays the situation in our country better than any news show. I get more realistic news from John than from anyone else. His time on crossfire last week was priceless. All I can say is thanks to the internet, I was able to download and watch it. To watch real political pundits or whatever they are called attaching him for being soft in interviews was crazy. Stewart is correct in saying shows like that suck. I may be paraphrasing there, but you get my drift.

Ok, like I said I don’t like to talk about politics’ but this post was written out of frustration with the universe today. I will now resume my normal ranting about some cool gadget, or the Simpsons. Hey the Simpsons new season starts in 2 weeks!!! Was that a good segway?

Pimped Out Desktop

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Between meetings, cleaning my office, and real work I tricked out an old desktop today. Jayson and I seem to accumulate computers at work. He has 1 for normal use, it is a tricked out P4 so he can run multiple VMWares. He then has a laptop, and I think a desktop is collecting dust under his desk as a Novel 6.x server for testing.

My computers in the office are my laptop, a desktop that is nicely configured for VMWare workstation and burning, etc. I also have an older box setup to run Suse 9.1. I had another machine that I customized for testing, but it finally pissed me off enough today that I needed to replace it. The hard drive is going on it. So I replaced it. then the IDE controller got all flaky on me, so I gave up on it. I took an older (almost 3 years) P-4 1.5 GHZ that for some reason had a gig of ram in it and but a newer burner in it. Cleaned it up, and now it is a Windows 2003 server I am going to use as a test box. We hate that we have desktops proliferating in our office, so I threw on a test copy of VMWare GSX server on this new “super desktop” I built. I am proving that this server software is worth the money to go buy and put on a nice dual processor machine.

Right now I have several tests of software I need to run. First up is Ipswitch’s Collaboration Suite of software. It looks like their Imail mail server on group ware steroids. My company wants exchange like functionality, but they don’t like the cost in software, hardware, and manpower needed to get exchange. This product looks like it will do what most people want to do, and that is share calendars, contact lists, etc right in outlook.

Immediately we need to test and then deploy Intuit’s Track It. We are planning on using it as our support and helpdesk ticketing system. The software arrives tomorrow, and we need it deployed (if we decide to go with it) by January 1, 2005 in order to support some changes we are planning in our support structure for the new year.

Another focus I had today was getting the specs needed to setup another VPN tunnel to a partner of ours in India. That was a fun conference call.

Then I had a bunch of meetings about some data migrations we are planning, and a failover drill that is 4 months in the making.

Gus and I also went over a power point I am making for a big presentation next week. He had some changes and I created a few new slides. Have I mentioned I don’t like power point? The funny thing is when I first started out on the helpdesk all those years ago, I actually was very good at power points. I just haven’t done them in a while.

All around a very busy day. I didn’t leave work until 7:30PM tonight. I need to make dinner now. I just felt like writing when I got home. Some days (most days) I don’t feel like writing right away after I sat at a computer all day, but today I did. Go figure?

The MOB, or Lack of!

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I know recently I have been lacking on the photo blog entries. I know I have the phone in my pocket all the time. I don’t know why I just take it out and snap photos more often. When I remember I am usually waiting on the subway platform. Yes that is why you see so many pics of the subway. One answer could be because the camera on my Treo sucks so bad. Hopefully the new one will be better. I will attempt to take more pictures. One thing that is a problem is I haven’t been doing super exciting things that people may find interesting in pictures.

Going To The Movies

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A bunch of us from work are getting together later to see the new movie from the guys who made South Park. I honestly don’t remember the name. I just remember everyone says it is very vulgar and not politically correct. That makes me want to see it. I am lazying around my apartment until we are meeting up.

I woke up with a head ache today so I took a furiset. I am feeling better now but I will need to take another one near the start of the movie if the drugs wear off and I still have a head ache. These are the type of days where I DO get migraines. It is cool outside, but not cold. It is stifling in the apartment, and I am inside right now. This is the exact change of weather situation that gets me sick. I hate it. It is my demon I need to keep in check. I don’t want to have to cancel so I am medicating early. When I am home on a weekend I tend not to take any drugs. It usually leads to bad consequences, but I take the medications enough during the week that keeps me working and a normal functioning person in society. That is why on weekends (my time) I try not to medicate if needed. Unfortunately I end up canceling on plans allot since I refuse to medicate sometimes. My dad says I am crazy, but I get scared sometimes about getting a “habit” to some of these medications. Some of the stuff I take is pure pain medication. I could see how easy it is to get used to taking them.

Welcome to world! Just spoke to Cari, and Jayson. They are both in for the movies. Danny is even coming in from Staten Island. I am off to Jays in a little bit to hang out before the movie…

Lazy Saturday

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I am lazy. I admit that all the time. I blame genetics, dam that lazy dad of mine! Of course my mom is always busy and active, so wouldn’t that cancel the genetics of my lazy dad out? Ok, I am getting off topic. I am lazy, get over it. I am especially lazy on the weekends. I like to sleep in. Do nothing, catch up on my TV watching (thank you Tivo). Today is no different. I got a hair cut. The guy I am using chopped off way too much hair. I love it. I need to find the goop he uses to keep it down when he combs it for me. I am messing around now with the blog. Some people have hobbies I have blog writing. It beats doing nothing! Actually I like writing so I do enjoy this blog thing.

I am now procrastinating the work I have to do. I need to do some power points and update some documents for work. I also need to do some shopping for clothing, but since I find that one of the most boring things in the universe I am not going to do it right now. Part of me is nagging me to put up on eBay some of the old gear that I want to sell (get out of my closet). The rumor is the new Treo is being announced tomorrow so I should build up my bank account to pay for the upgrade that I know I will go and get. I also need to do some house cleaning again, but I don’t like that either so I will procrastinate about that also.

Weblog Design Time

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I once again tweaked the design of this site. I hated that the body of my posts were so narrow an area. I have a 20″ flat screen at home and when I look at the site it was always so narrow. The border was huge. I found a way to make it “fluid” so it scales right on the resolution a person uses. I love the Typepad templates regarding site design. I also changed the name of the site. See a future post as to why. I am trying to be more creative with the name. Probably not working, but at least I made an effort.