Author Archives: brad

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials: Day Five. NetBoot rules. And Workgroup Management, well, that rules, too. Apple has taken all the best things you can do with managing Windows clients from a Windows server and elegantly put them into Mac OS X Server. Except it’s so much easier. Today I can confidently say that I’m ready to deploy Mac OS X in a lab environment. Yesterday, I couldn’t say that. Now I just have to get NetInfo and Active Directory talking, but I’m getting closer all the time. Too bad the class is over; it was a blast.

I’m hoping to release Frequency 1.0b2 to my beta group on Monday. List of fixes: less hassle to switch between multiple weblogs, more forgiving of not setting up Blogger accounts. I might add a little iTunes button in there, too, but I haven’t decided for sure, yet.

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials: Day Four. WebDAV rocks. NFS re-sharing is the geekiest thing I’ve done in a long, long time. Virtual hosting is cool. So much cool stuff to learn more about. I’m learning a ton, but this class is doing more to whet my appetite than anything else! I’m seriously considering the ACTC exam when I’m done. I’d love to move on to the ACSA courses, but I don’t think there’s a budget for that.

Dave is such a wuss.

Bad news: The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.

The Anti-Virus Top Ten.

10 Tips on Writing the Living Web. Interesting read.

Can anyone else get though to MSNBC? I’ve only been able to reach them once since the war started. That sucks. Now I might have to start watching TV to get my news. Well, I mean, watching something other than the Disney Channel.

One bad thing about the server training this week: we’re on a closed network. Since we’re screwing around with DNS and DHCP, that’s a good thing. But I’m cut off from my mail. I feel so disconnected.

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials: Day Three. Oooooooooh. Today was cool. I learned some really cool stuff about Jaguar Server. For starters, the admin tools are absolutely wonderful. So nice, in fact, that I am ready to move all of my Mac OS X 10.1 Servers to Jaguar Server right away. They’re that nice. Also got some great tips for talking to Active Directory, which was my ultimate goal for taking this class. It’s funny, I’ve somehow become the Windows expert for the group; the instructor always calls on me for any Windows-related questions. Mention Active Directory a couple times and suddenly you’re branded. Tomorrow should be even better.

I ran MacBidoiulle through Babelfish and got this gem: Japanese users who received their PowerBook 17″it dismounted to see the entrails of them. Many photographs will show you all, of the hard disk to the sensor of luminous power… I love translation software so much. Always good for a laugh. But now I’m wondering if my PowerBook has entrails, too.

CREATE, huh? Well, here’s hoping.

An online dictionary of HTML META tags. Hmmmm.

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials: Day Two. Things got even more interesting today. Did I mention my instructor has the seventeen inch TiBook? It’s beautiful in person. I got to play with some BlueTooth stuff today, for the first time. It’s very cool. It reminds me of what IrDA wanted so deparately to be when it grew up. Pairing was a snap, and sharing files was slick. We had a great roundtable about troubleshooting Mac OS X today. That followed the lesson where we all left the room, our instructor “broke” our machines, and we came back in and figured out what was wrong. The poor woman at the end of my row had a tough time. The instructor took a screen shot and set it as the desktop picture, then proceeded to hide the dock and hard drive. She couldn’t figure out why the menus worked, but the dock and hard drive didn’t respond to clicks. Mike and I did that to Dave several times. We even got him to do a clean install when he was still Mac OS 9. He thought his control strip was hosed.

Mac OS Rumors: As had been widely predicted, Apple has released a March 24, 2003 Security Update to OS X, which is available for download and install (requires a restart) via Software Update. Egads. Good show, fellas! Not really a rumor, though, is it?

Well, the Safari seeds are done, thanks some ne’er-do-wells. Gruber has a great analysis here.

Daniel Pepper: Anyone with half a brain must see that Saddam has to be taken out. It is extraordinarily ironic that the anti-war protesters are marching to defend a government which stops its people exercising that freedom.

Jar-Jaromir, the half-brother of Boromir and Faramir. Thanks to Hyatt for the link.

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials: Day One. Fairly interesting class so far. I can’t say I learned anything new that really rocked my socks today. But, in all fairness, the instructor did say that today would be the most boring day. Today’s topics included: Installation (I’ve already done this more times than I care to remember), Network Configuration (ditto), User and Permissions (actually interesting; I may have learned a really slick trick for migrating users between boxes), File Systems (not at all what I expected), Application Environments (I may have to start respecting Java at some point; not yet, but maybe soon), and Service Discovery (the most interesting by far – now show my how to tie into Active Directory and I can retire).

I came to a decision on Friday. I simply cannot teach Microsoft Word. I just can’t. I’ve tried several times now. But whenever I go to show the class how to do hanging indents, or decimal tabs, Word decides it’s time to take over the formatting for me. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were consistent, but it’s so hopelessly inconsistent and illogical. I’ve tried so hard to like Word over the years. I was an avid user of Word 5.1 in college, until I switched to WordPerfect 3. Those two were the nirvana of word processing for me. These days, it’s AppleWorks all the way. It’s quite a capable word processor, despite its reputation, and it stays out my way. Word is just too tiring anymore; I feel like I’m fighting it the whole time, wrestling for control of my content. I don’t have time for that. It was refreshing to hear other people say that they feel the same way, though.

“I feel sorry for the customers that bought PowerSchool.” – A former employee (reportedly just laid off).

“It’s not a problem that Moore has an opinion, a point of view, and an agenda. But it’s a major problem if Moore is trying to convert people to this point of view via mistruths and deception.” – Andy Ihnatko, on Bowling for Columbine. As usual, Andy sums up my thoughts before I was barely aware of them. I was without an Internet connection for most of the day, so I didn’t pick up on Moore’s little “speech” at the Oscars until recently, but Dave covers that here, with a catchy little title to boot.