Intel iMac

by

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.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Archiving

by

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!

Technorati Tags:

Tax Time

by

Today I decided to do my tax’s. I was going to go to a professional with the hopes of a big return but I decided to do it myself. I have done my own tax’s using Turbotax for years, and my return didn’t really change much from last year so I didn’t want to bother with the higher fee (and possibly higher return) of going to someone. I did everything online and I already know how much I will get back. I should have it in like 10 days. Now that isn’t bad!

Now I just have to wait for direct deposit to give me my money!!!

Hectic Week

by

Thursday was pretty much a repeat of Wednesday. I didn’t leave the office until around 8PM. I spent a large portion of my day helping (or organizing help) to get a project finished. The day was just a blur of activity.

Friday was hectic also, but not as bad as the rest of the week. I had to deal with AC issues in a computer room, and ensuring all projects are moving along normally. I was able to get out early enough to make it to my parents for my sisters birthday dinner. We ended up going out. It was nice to be able to unwind and have a steak, see my parents, niece, and sister.

Carrie gave me a ride to the subway while morgan sang me all the new songs she has learned!

Problem Solving Day

by

Today was hectic. The morning was spent updating project plans for all the big projects I have going on this quarter. I spent a while doing that and still have more to do. Working with project plans always seem like a never ending task.

I went over some technical policies with my boss, and then began work on a server migration. I actually get to do some technical work on this move. Mainly because almost everyone else is busy and I really need to get the project moving along. We are trying to migrate our data in one office onto a new larger file server. I wrote a few robocopy scripts to sync the data off of our old file servers to the new one. The files are coping since this morning.

I also worked on some fault tolerance concepts regarding our file servers using Windows Distributed File Server (DFS). I was able to setup a replica of the DFS share we use for file sharing. Next I looked at modifying our login scripts to map to the DFS root in Active Directory. That helps if the server with the DFS root fails we can use an alternate one already setup in AD. I also looked at a bunch of other ideas along those same lines. It was very productive.

In the afternoon I had to deal with last minute changes to some security rules in order to complete a project. In the end we found a way to make everyone happy, but it took some time, and a bunch of network design explanations.

I got home a bit late, I ordered food. I was just too lazy to make dinner. Now I can’t believe it is almost 10:30.

Home Entertainment System Update

by

In an about face I returned (by the time this posts I hope to have returned) the EyeTV 200. It was not as good as the Snapstream setup I have on my PC. It wouldn’t go full screen correctly on my 40″ LCD TV. It also didn’t have the ability to schedule season passes. I will go with the substantially cheaper option of getting another Hauppauge USB2 PVR off of ebay. There are not many of them but the price is right. I will plug it into my existing setup as a second tuner. If Apple comes out with a better DVR solution I will take a look at switching over, until then the last remaining Windows box that I rely on is my DVR box.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Back To Work Monday

by

It was hot at work. We turned the AC on in our office also. Just my luck that we are having AC issues all around. Our other office had an AC issue in one of the computer rooms, and our room in NYC was a bit hot. Not broken, but not at a cool 69 degree’s like it should be. I had to deal with that in the AM. Then I had some meetings and taking care of misc issues.

My group had to stay late to do a bunch of physical computer moves. Because so many people stayed it only took us an hour to do. I think everyone was working except for one phone that needs to get addressed first thing tomorrow. For the messiness of the job I am happy to report my Dockers where not ruined. We shall see how many issues we have related to the move from users tomorrow. That is the true test of if we did the work right.

Very Little Sleep

by

I couldn’t sleep much last night. It was first too hot so I put the ac on. Yes I know AC in NY in January. it was rainy so I couldn’t open a window without getting my comfy chair by my window wet. Then I was nice and temperature controlled, but my allergies started kicking in with the extra dust of using the AC for the first time in months. It was not a fun night. It didn’t help that I was a lazy bastard and took a 2 hour nap on Sunday.

Technorati Tags:

Lazy Weekend

by

So far this weekend has been absolutely unproductive, and I couldn’t be happier. Yesterday was reorganizing and then just lying around on the couch watching TV. Today has been a continuation on yesterday’s theme. I don’t know why but I got up early and just bummed around all day. Nothing else to report as of yet!