The Big Think

Welcome.

Happy birthday.

Today I am 34.

Today my blog is 0.

Thanks to Giles’ generous gift of a domain name and hosting space (not to mention several hours of setup time while he installs Movable Type), I am now able to finally enter the world of blogging. Something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while now. Thanks to Giles for making it possible. I’ll try not to get too popular, G. Wouldn’t want to use up too much bandwidth…

Yup, today is my birthday. I figure it was a good time to start the blog as this will give a memorable day to date it from.

I got up this morning and Erin made strawberry covered waffles with whipped cream and then I opened presents. She gave me a 2 year subscription to Workbench magazine (a GREAT woodworking/shop mag), I also got some good Pepperidge Farm cookies (Macadamia Nut and Saulsalito). She also gave me 2 other really nice presents:

First, a 10 piece 1/2″ shank router bit combo kit. I’ve had a router for about a year and always seem to have to go to woodcraft whenever start a project just to get the one bit I don’t have. I usually get one bit at a time, but this kit has been for sale at 1/2 off, and Erin got another 15% off because they quoted her the wrong price. I should be set for awhile. I can’t wait to start using these…. especially the roundover bit. Have a bunch of projects I want to start, but I have about 6 months of composing I have to do first. It may be awhile.

She also gave me the ibreeze for my Pismo laptop. I’ve had the laptop sitting on it all day. A great product for keeping laptops from losing their cool. And since it’s USB powered, you don’t have another cord to deal with. At first I thought the unit was bad, though. If I rested my hand on the laptop, the fans made contact with something and made a cutting noise. Turns out it was just because I had put the ibreeze down on a soft chair and the fans were digging in to the material.

The other night we had a birthday party at Zio’s. Giles gave me a membership to the local Mac users group ( capmac.org ), and also bought me this domain name and agreed to host my site (thanks tubesnake!). Mark Millard gave me the widescreen DVD of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Mark and Monica Wells bought my dinner. So it’s been a great birthday. Tonight Erin and I are going back to Zio’s so I can cash in on my free birthday desert and appetizer.

Been working on the PowerBook all day. I’ve been having problems ever since the ATI video blew out on the board. Couldn’t copy or paste, drag links, etc. It was a fresh install of OS X 10.2, but it was still wonky. I gave up trying to patch the system and just decided to reinstall. Target disk mode works great in a case like this. At one point I was updating the laptop’s install of X via firewire cable using the desktop’s connection to the internet. When this stuff works, which is most of the time, it’s a beautiful thing.

On the other hand, OS X hasn’t been the heavenly experience for me that Apple tries to convince users of (insert sound of Patrick falling off his chair when he reads that). Since the introduction of Jaguar, I’ve had to reinstall X at least 5 times on the laptop for various reasons. When I bought my G4 fresh from Apple 3 weeks ago, I went through another week of frustration while I reinstalled the OS and got it up and running to my specs. Granted, I have some rather unusual requirements, but it was a frustrating experience nonetheless. I realized the other day that every single Apple computer I have purchased has required a complete OS reinstall within the first 24 hours of owning the machine. Since 1992 I have owned:

LC
Performa 635cd
G3/333
8100 (bought used)
Pismo laptop
G4/1.25sp

The good news is that, once my initial issues get addressed, the machines all worked uber-reliably. Indeed, the computer running my home automation program (the 8100) is approx 7 years old and hasn’t crashed in over 400 days. I also think a lot of my issues with X are due to the fact that it’s a new operating system to me. I’m relearning all the little tricks and traps of maintaining an OS all over again. If memory serves, my first experience on a Mac back in 1992 was similar. It took several years of learning until I achieved a feeling of confidence that I could deal with whatever problems cropped up.

And one more note regarding the blog. Any graphical prettiness you see here is directly due to Giles’ input. I don’t know graphics from giraffes. I will, however, be prettifying it and putting in blogolicious links as I figure this whole thing out. Stay tuned.