My new MacBook Pro arrived today and I had to decide how to set it up. Apple has a great Migration Assistant for transferring information from an old machine. So I could either use that or do things manually. I decided for a mixed approach. I copied all the info from my old machine (via Gigabit Ethernet) and installed everything by hand. I didn’t copy the preferences over as they sometimes contain cruft. After about 5 hours, everything was working! Yeah. I just have to get backups going again and then I’ll have an even bigger smile on my face.
More Negative Campaigning
Following up on my previous post about the local city council election, I’ve decided to post copies of ads I received from both candidates (these ads are only the ones I received today; I receive ads a few times a week from both candidates).
From April Boling, the extremely negative campaigner:
From Marti Emerald, my candidate of choice:
Please, oh please, don’t elect April Boling; we need cooperation in government and all she seems to want to do is put down her opponent. To me, this seems like someone that has no good qualities to be in government, so she slams her opponent.
Any quote can be taken out of context and misconstrued. Let’s not stop there; the photo of Marti Emerald has been flipped horizontally; the original is the other way. And while I’m on a roll, that picture comes from a site that is copywritten which may make using it a copyright violation.
(The images above are posted with the understanding that I can use them under the Fair Use Doctrine of US copyright law. If asked by the copyright holder, I will remove the images.)
Enough with negative campaigning
I know I’ve written about this before, but I finally decided to write a letter to the editor about it.
The race for City Council District 7 is heating up with both sides sending numerous printed ads to us, but each side has a different tactic. April Boling has decided that negative campaigning is the only way to win the race; instead of focusing on what she can do for San Diego and our council district, she has chosen to show what Marti Emerald hasn’t done. Of course, it hasn’t been Marti’s job to change city council, but April feels it is necessary to blame the city’s problems on her.
While I’m disappointed that the Union Tribune has decided to endorse a candidate that has nothing positive to say nor has any real solutions for San Diego, I’m not surprised. I hope that voters in council district 7 don’t simply take the Union Tribune’s word on who should represent this district and can see that we need a city council member that is an outsider and can bring much needed change to our city.
Will they publish it? Probably not.
Bit by 32 bits
The other day, I went to install a program on one of my clients systems. I’ve installed the software before on Linux without a problem; the problem started out that this was an Xserve running OS X Server (Leopard). I started by trying to install the PHP extensions needed for this program. I found information on the web to help me and things seemed to work fine, except when it came time to test the extensions; they all failed.
Turns out I missed a very important step; the instructions mentioned “does this for 32 bit machines and do this for 64 bit machines”. Up until this time, I had never used a 64 bit machine (my MacBook Pro is a Core Duo based machine which is 32 bit). So I had followed the 32 bit instructions not remembering that the G5 processor in the Xserves was 64 bit. Once I realized my mistake (hours later), the install process went quite smoothly.
Winter in San Diego
It’s almost winter in San Diego; how can I tell? Well, I had to wear long pants a few times this week and it was too cold to wear my Tevas. Next week will have a few warm days (80-90 degrees), but it’s just the weather trying to trick us. While the winter isn’t bad for most people (especially those from other parts of the country), I’ve lived in San Diego long enough that I almost can’t handle it 🙂 When the temperature dips below 70, it just doesn’t feel comfortable. I know, I know, some people would call me a wimp as it dips well below freezing in many parts of the US. I’m OK with people calling me a wimp.
I think I’ll start counting down the days until spring (late spring is my favorite time of the year…the weather is perfect for me).
ComputerGate
UPS now tells me that my computer left Anchorage yesterday.
ANCHORAGE, AK, US 10/18/2008 2:17 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN 10/18/2008 11:54 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
However, UPS hasn’t updated where it is and I can’t think that they’d drive it out of Alaska so it must have arrived somewhere else. Maybe the governor of Alaska or her husband liked my computer so much, that they decided to keep it and say that since it passed through their state, they were entitled to keep it! If that didn’t happen, maybe the TSA wanted it.
The wait is killing me!
Geek vs. non-geek
Today we went to the Apple store so my wife could look at the new MacBooks and compare them to the white MacBook as I told her I was going to get her one to replace his more than 3.5 year old iBook G4 (yes, I know it is ancient). She liked the new one and we checked Amazon, but Amazon has them on pre-order, so I went ahead and bought it in the store; that was like 10 hours ago. She still hasn’t opened the box! What is wrong with her? If it was me, I would have ripped (OK, gently opened) into it and taken time off from work to set it up.
Oh well, I still love her even though she isn’t a geek and as excited about a computer as I am 🙂
What is an SUV?
Yesterday I borrowed my dad’s Ford Explorer to pick up our screen door that was getting repaired and getting a doggie door. I had never driven his vehicle before and boy was I in for a shock. I drive my Toyota Highlander or my wife’s Honda CRV, both of which are considered SUVs. Neither of these cars (I’ll call them cars as they are built on car bodies or so I’m told) rides anything like the Explorer. The Explorer had a hard truck ride that was quite uncomfortable. I guess if you’re used to a truck, you don’t realize how bad it is. The next time I look for a vehicle, I definitely want it to ride as well as the cars I drive, but have the space I have now (even a little more as long as the ride doesn’t suffer).
(The Explorer is just enough longer and wider to get the screen door in; it just wouldn’t fit in my Highlander.)
Computer missed its flight
Right after the new MacBook Pros got announced last week, I placed my order with a custom configuration (2.8 GHz and 320 GB 7200 RPM drive). I received a notice that it shipped on October 18. Now UPS tells me that my computer missed its flight “THE SCHEDULED FLIGHT WAS CANCELED DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND UPS CONTROL”. Then later it said that it caught another flight and was in Japan. I just checked and apparently that information was wrong as my computer is still stuck in China. Maybe it wanted democracy or didn’t like all the human rights violations so China kept it. Hopefully the machine will get here next week as the suspense is killing me.
Shorting out my keyboard with drool
Like a good geek, I kept refreshing the live blogging of today’s Apple event. Based on the rumors I read, nothing was really shocking. Right after the store became available, I went ahead and used my developer discount (basically the select developer program cost is offset by the discount of the machine), selected a 2.8 GHz MacBook Pro (15″), with a 320 GB 7200 RPM drive (this has me quite excited) and got the DVI and VGA display adapters (sucks that they aren’t included, but Apple is making more and more things add-ons). I hope to have my new machine next week; I’ve been waiting a long time (in computer years) for this. My current MacBook Pro is 2.5 years old and is a Core Duo based machine (first generation Intel based MacBook Pro). I wouldn’t say it is on its last legs, but it will be nice to have a zippy machine with all the bells and whistles. It should be state of the art for at least a week!
Oh and the new Cinema display looks nice; I like that it has speakers and the 3 cables that goto the MacBook Pro make it almost like a dock (right now I plug in 7 cables into my MacBook Pro when it is on my desk).