Technology

Intel iMac

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I thought about it for a while and said I would wait. I really said I would hold off. I said I didn’t need another computer that was all in one. I said the mini was perfect. Then I heard great things about the new iMac. Office ran great dan said. Then I tried some new applications on my mini and stopped using them because the mini was so dam slow (man it is a great little box, but it really is slow). The final nail in the coffin was my tax return. I got around what I thought I would get. That meant disposable income. I could save it, but returns where meant to be spent.

I think I may have a serious problem. I think it is called eBay. eBay is my enabler. It allows me to sell stuff and buy newer stuff. It has gotten me into this mentality that I can buy stuff and sell it in a year or so and buy something else. It is more than a mentality. It is a reality that I have been living since like 2000. When this iMac gets to be not enough computer for me (and it might not for a while) I can goto eBay like I did with my last 20″ iMac.

I got picked up the iMac last night after work. Jayson (always willing to go with me to spend money) and I hit the apple store in soho after Danny, Jay and I had some dinner and drinks. It is always better to spend money after drinking! I had the new machine setup in like 15 minutes. The rewiring of my desk took all of today.

First impressions are good. So far Office installs and runs fine in rosetta. Cisco’s VPN which didn’t work at all finally came out with a universal binary on Friday. It was if they knew I went out and bought a new computer. Toast works fine even using rosetta, and they promise an update to universal binary soon. The only program that I want to install that may have a problem is the Missing Sync for Palm. Mark/Space does promise a universal binary by the end of march. For now I will sync with my work Powerbook.

More thoughts on the new computer soon.

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Archiving

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I finally broke down and bought Roxio Toast Titanium 7 today. I really wanted some of the advanced features it offered over the plain old burning of disks of the Apple finder. I am now able to take MPEG-2 files I DVR and back them up onto DVD’s. Not just as a file, but playable dvd’s in any normal player. My digital archiving and clean up continues. I probably should clean my apartment, but physical cleaning is less interesting!

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Busy Documenting Crap

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Today I was busy doing documentation for Bob. he needed to be prepared for a meeting and needed my operations overview updated so he can get a handle on our systems. It took some doing but I got it down. I also had to deal with finding a suitable replacement to our IBM Thinkpad laptops. My team finally said we don’t want to deal with Thinkpads anymore. Too many issues to list here, but we ended up with a similar configured HP unit. The first user gets it tomorrow since his thinkpad is toasted.

Not Quite Black Projects

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I was busy yesterday and today. I just don’t think I can write about it here. All good things, but busy things.

On a topic I can discuss I started reading bits from O’Reilly’s RT Essentials. I already have some big changes I want to make to how we use Request Tracker. I have always been a huge fan of using this system. Reading what little I have of the book has got me thinking of enhancements we can make to our ticketing system. I like the fact that the changes I want to make will allow for better metrics of what we do, and help us isolate recurring issues. Now all I have to do is get everyone else like the tool and not just use it!

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Crackberry

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I finally got my replacement Blackberry yesterday. My old one was fried. It did a ton of quirky things. I finally had enough when it wouldn’t connect to any computer and I lost all my contacts out of it. This new one seems ok. I have all my contacts synced up and I can see caller ID now. I can get back to using it again. I was starting to go through withdrawal from not having it. That was interesting since there where weeks I didn’t use it or didn’t want to use it because I could use my Treo for allot of the same functions. But I always end up back with the crackberry since it really is the best thing for real time mobile email.

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Electrical Work

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Today was busy with electrical work upgrades in our Computer room. We needed to add several circuits to support filling up the remaining rack space we have. Now that the holidays are over we were able to get the work done. Next week will have a flurry of activity to clean up the room and mount and power the gear that has been waiting for a home.

Virtual Community

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I just noticed that VMWare has a free public community of VM’s. You can build and publish VM’s of free OS’s on the VMNT. I already downloaded several to play with. They are already added to my growing collection of OS VM’s. I think this is a great idea. The first VM I want to look at is the Asterisk PBX VM. I have wanted to setup one up for a while, but haven’t had time to deal with it. This may be worth a look.

Day Off

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I took a personal day today. I wasn’t sure if the strike would continue and I didn’t want to deal with the commute so my plan since Tuesday was to take today off. Turns out the strike ended, and my company gave everyone in our office the day off anyway. It was nice. At least I didn’t use up my personal days.

I ended up at the office anyway. I had to ship out my sold powerbook. it is easier to do that from the office than at home. I also got some shopping done. I got cards for everyone that I needed to, and went to the bank.

I meet up with Jayson at night and we went to Compusa to get IDE disk enclosures. We both have internal drives that we can’t use now that we have laptops and use Mac’s. I got a IDE disk enclosure for like $45. It works great so far. USB 2.0. I just plugged in my drive and formatted it. Unlike the other one I got before the summer this one does not have a fan so I don’t have to worry about the bearings burning out like the old one did. I will go back next week and get another of these cases to replace the old broken one. I should say it is not broken. It does work, but when running it makes an awful sound.