The last item on my list of things I need to do before I go back to work. I probably could have taken it home and shipped it back, but I'd rather not lug it across country if I can avoid it. Mostly though, I just don't want to disappoint a certain young lady by telling her she has to wait any longer.
I'm hoping to finish before my mom wakes up in the morning and discovers I borrowed the mouse from her computer.
I have had the same DSL modem since 2003. Well actually, it's not the same device, but it is the same model as what I received/was forced to purchase when I signed up for DSL. The first one died and the repair technician that SBC AT&T sent out said it had been fried by a bolt of lightning. Yeah, whatever.
Not only is the modem an excrutiatingly slow 802.11b (did you know that anyone still used anything so arcane?) but it also has this problem where it stops talking to any computer on the network. Did the computer say something inappropriate and offend the modem? Is there an electronic version of "talk to the hand'? The only way to get it to start working again is to drop the power. I mentioned it at work once and got one of those smirky "you need a lesson on wireless networking" kind of responses. Of course, after an hour on the phone troubleshooting the problem, the same person offered a mea culpa because, oops, there really is a problem. The computer still sees the network, but there's no access to the outside world, even via the ethernet port. You can't see the logs without restarting the modem, but that wipes out the logs, so I don't what is happening. Sometimes it works fine, or as well as can be expected, for a day or two at a time, while other days I have to reset it multiple times in the span of a few hours.
While the obvious solution here is to simply replace the modem, I haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet. Consistent, reliable access to the internet is a luxury, right? Okay, maybe not, because it wouldn't take too many drives into the office while I'm on call to spend as much on gas. But I still have to choose a replacement, and that seems too much to think about. I thought about buying a DSL modem without wireless and adding an Apple Airport Extreme, which would get me 802.11n (really fast), but that would be over $200. The other option is the modem with wireless, but that is slower. (But still much faster than what I have now.) That's a more reasonable $80, but hello? That's $80!
Everybody wants our money, eh?
I attended an Apple seminar on Leopard, and seriously? That is so cool! Please don't misunderstand, I am not evangelizing for Apple--I just really like some of the features they added to the operating system. It is not an appropriate platform for everyone.
Here are a few highlights:
Time Machine is the feature that seems to have gotten the most press. It simplifies automatic backups to an external hard drive and makes it incredibly easy to find and restore a deleted file, or to restore an earlier version of the file. That part would have come in handy the other day.
There's also Cover Flow, which allows you to view the contents of a file without opening it. That doesn't sound like such a big deal until you see it in action. You can page through a multi-page PDF without opening Preview or Acrobat, and even see videos.
In Mail, which I use for my personal email, they've added support for RSS feeds (hello? it's about time!) and Data Detectors, which recognizes that addresses are addresses and email addresses are email addresses. This allows you to easily add contacts without retyping or copying and pasting. You can also pull up a map with the same information.
If you use Boot Camp (which allows you to run both Mac and Windows on the same box), you can access files you saved while in Windows from within Mac. If you need to use Windows (I have it running in Parallels), it is some much easier if you don't have to shut down and restart in Windows just to get to a couple of files. Actually, I don't know if this is new or if it was part of Boot Camp beta, but it's very cool.
Screen sharing in iChat. If you are working with someone--say helping someone with their computer--they can share their screen with you so you can fix a problem they might be having, or even share your screen with them to offer a live how-to demo. You can also share just one file with them, like a PDF or a spreadsheet, and walk through it together.
The thing is, no matter how cool the new features are, I'm not convinced I should upgrade. In more than ten years I have upgraded and installed Windows hundreds of times, but I don't know much about Unix, and I don't have the same resources available for Mac that I do for Windows. It's one thing to experiment on a spare, but I'm less daring when it's my production computer, so I'm still debating. On the one hand, it appears that all of my critical apps will work with Leopard, but there are still reports of problems. Some upgraders have reported that their wireless access does not work as well as it did before the upgrade, and recently I heard something about an issue with moving data between disks, but no details there.
I have an appointment at the Genius Bar and I'm making a list of questions to make the most of my 15 minutes. I'm sure I'll take the plunge eventually, but I'd like to be as prepared as possible. That, and a good backup, should get me through.
I work in a small IT shop. By small, I am referring to the physical space which we occupy as well as the number of staff, but not the scope of our responsibilities. Because there are only four of us, we all work on a lot of different things, in addition to our own areas of expertise. Unfortunately, those wide-ranging responsibilities sometimes means it can be months or even years between really meaty project assignments. For example, the last time I wrote a program I used VB6--an older and not terribly sophisticated programming language which was popular because it allows you to develop applications more rapidly than other more robust languages. Even though we upgraded to later versions of the language and took some training on those tools, all of the pending projects were pushed down the priority list so I didn't get to jump in and really figure things out.
Recently one of those great projects finally percolated to the top of the list and I've been carving out bits of time to both start the design work and hopefully tackle the massive learning curve of the new version of the language. I felt like I spent the entire day today swinging madly between elation at the amazing new components that are available now and complete mystification about how I will ever figure out to use them.
Instead of worrying about the code right away, I decided to start with the interface. At least that way the end-users will be able to give their input before I program a bunch of features they neither want nor need. Unfortunately, although it seemed like it was going well, I finally realized that it wasn't working out quite the way I expected. I saved my work before I started poking around to figure out my options, and when I'd completely mucked things up, I closed the file without saving.
At least I thought I did. You know what's coming here, right? Yeah, it was almost all gone. Either the application automatically saves, or I did one of my nearly compulsive Ctrl+S saves without being aware of doing so. It was just a practice file, so it doesn't really matter, but it was a bit of a shock.
I guess I still have some work to do on that learning curve.
One of my friends received an external hard drive from her husband for Valentine's Day. While that might be unpardonable in some relationships, she was thrilled. Not only was it something she needed, but it was also really cool. I have a couple of external hard drives, but this one is both small and lightweight and best of all, it does not require a separate power supply. It would be ideal for use if you travel, or even if you just work in alternate locations occasionally. The SimpleDrive Portable is available in capacities ranging from 120GB
to 320GB, but if you need more, the desktop model is available with up
to 1 TB.
I spent several minutes checking out the various bells and whistles--it's pretty straightforward, so it didn't take long--and wondering how I could rationalize getting one for myself. My friend laughed out loud and told me that her husband predicted I'd have that response. Yeah, okay, I'm not buying one, but that was an excellent Valentine's Day gift, and it's going to last a bit longer than roses.
I hate hearing a recording of my own voice. The recording never sounds like it does to my own ears, and I always wonder how anyone can stand to listen to me if that's the way I really sound. Really, it's excruciating, and that's before I take into account what I think is hemming and hawing while I scour my brain for the words I need.
Several years ago, during a visit home, my mom took me to the local radio station for a tour of the facility with the DJ. The station was preparing the year-end countdown of hits and he asked us to record a clip for the promo. Mom was all over it while I cringed in horror. Record? My voice? And play it over the airwaves? Alert! Alert! Oh the horror! Warning Will Robinson! Danger! Danger! Unfortunately, I couldn't find a plausible way to extricate myself without admitting my crippling fear, and did I mention that mom really, really wanted to do it? I could barely squeak anything out for the level check. It was awful, but I said my line and she said her line and it was over. Whew! And then he played it back--what was he thinking? Except, it sounded really cool. I had no idea what a difference professional equipment makes. I didn't have to step through the hole that I had been wishing would open in the floor.
Lacking professional recording equipment, I haven't been prepared to voluntarily record my voice since, at least when there's a risk I might have to hear it, but this weekend I decided maybe I could just get over it. I recorded a video clip of the backyard for Suzanne to give her a better idea of the layout (she's never seen it in person) and decided it wouldn't kill me to do a voice-over to add a little context. I plugged in the external microphone, changed the settings in System Preferences, and started talking. And got nothing but empty track after empty track. So I tried again in Garage Band. Still nothing. I gave up after about a half hour and just used the internal microphone, assembled the video clips and voice-over, packaged it up and sent Suzanne a link.
Turns out the voice as recorded with the internal mic sounds nothing like mine (isn't this what I've been saying all along?) and in fact sounded a bit creepy to young ears. Sorry about that. Today I borrowed a different microphone at work and tried again, and still nothing. The computer doesn't register anything when you speak into the external microphone. Apple Support was no help. The technician to whom I spoke thought it should work, and when I asked (after a half hour) if it would be better if I just took it to the Apple Store, he leapt at the suggestion and sounded as though he couldn't imagine why I'd be talking to him if I have an Apple Store close enough to visit.
After a bit of Internet searching I discovered I'm not the only one who's experiencing this problem. My microphone had worked before, but apparently line-in stopped working as a mic-in after the OS updated to 10.4.10, and Leopard users are reporting the same thing. I won't say I'm thrilled to learn a USB microphone may be the only solution (unless I want to sound spooky), but it's nice to know I didn't imagine that it used to work.
Now if someone could tell the Apple folks so they can write an update to fix their update.
This past weekend has been filled with a series of potentially limb- and/or life-threatening mishaps and minor irritants. I emerged relatively unscathed (there's just a small bruise from the slip and fall on the stairs from the kitchen) as well as relieved that it wasn't worse (that car definitely could have hit me as I spun in circles on the icy highway--well, my truck spun in circles with me in it). I can even live with having to drop power to my DSL modem 4 or 5 times a day in order to access the wireless network in my home (for a while, anyway). Not having a satellite signal on any receiver in my home, however, is really starting to wear thin.
My DirectTV service has been out since Thursday evening. I didn't worry about it initially because we'd had a couple of inches of snow that day, although I don't usually lose reception unless there's a heavy rain shower or snow storm. I watched a couple of programs that were stored on the Tivo and figured it would be fine the next day.
Only it wasn't, and when I tried to watch a program stored on the hard drive of the DirecTV DVR while I walked on the treadmill the next morning, the darned thing just whined about not having a signal from the dish. Tivo receivers let you watch what's recorded even when there's no signal from the satellite, but apparently DirecTV didn't think that was important when they decided to build one of their own. I would love to have an hour with a DirecTV product engineer. I called DirecTV on Friday evening, and although he was very polite, the representative couldn't do anything to help other than schedule a service appointment (it's still under warranty, thankfully). How about Tuesday morning? Oh, hello?! I'm not going to take a half-day of vacation for that, and Tuesday? As in, the whole weekend without? We finally settled on Tuesday afternoon, during that very specific 4pm-8pm window.
I really do spend time in my house without the television, but you'd have never known it from the withdrawal-like symptoms I suffered this weekend. I like having the television on, particularly the news, when I putter around the kitchen. It allows me to multi-task while keeping up with current events. It was awful, and compounded by the icky weather conditions, I was darned grumpy about it. I can only hope the technician actually shows tomorrow and is able to fix the problem. 'Cause I like Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser just fine, but I can only watch The Bourne Identity and The Mummy Returns so many times before they cease to provide enough distraction for a treadmill workout.
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