Category Archives: uncategorized

My allergies are killing me. I haven’t regularly taken allergy medicine since about two weeks after I went on the Atkins Diet (in May, 2000). But this week I’m just getting hammered and taking my Actifed knock-off four times a day. If I don’t, my head fills up and I can’t even think straight.

Today was the last day for students at my school. Monday will see the last of the teachers leave for the summer, and then we can really get busy. We’re migrating to Windows2000 servers over the summer, so we have our work cut out for us.

I just looked over at my Far Side desk calendar (my Mom gets me one every Christmas) and noticed that I haven’t flipped it since May 9. Odd. I would think that I would have noticed before now.

REALbasic 4.5 is out of alpha and now in beta. I’ve been lurking on the developer releases mailing list and it’s shaping up to be a pretty cool release. To all those who say REALbasic is for sissies: shut up.

This evening I heard strange sounds coming from the hallway. I left the computer room to find Gracie carrying the squirt bottle that we use when Jack’s barker gets out of control. She was spraying random spots on the walls of the hallway. I don’t know why, exactly. I’m not sure what she was trying to accomplish.

Just installed Silk on Mac OS X 10.1.5. Very cool. Very smooth. Nice job by Unsanity on this one.

Installed Apple Remote Desktop last week. Works just like I expected — it’s pretty much Network Assistant 5.0. The only really interesting feature is that you can observe/control a machine in a window or in full screen, in color or black and white. Strangely, my informal tests lead me to believe that color screen sharing is faster. The other nice thing, aside from the fact that it’s a native OS X application, is that it’s as modal as Network Assistant 4.0 and below. I can start a long file copy and still continue to use my computer. Couldn’t ever do that before.

Jen is feeling much better now. She still gets tired more quickly than she used to, and I expect that to continue for a few weeks or so, but she’s much healthier overall.

I realized something frightening today as I was talking to my friend and co-worker, Mike. Everything that comes out of my mouth has made it through the filter. Everything I say has made the cut, so to speak. I told Mike, “You ought to hear the stuff that I keep to myself if you think I say stupid things. This is stuff that the filter doesn’t catch.”

Mike replied, “I’ve turned off filtering because it used too many CPU cycles.”

I always thought we were just getting raw sockets from Mike. Now I know.

Well, Gracie is three years old as of Saturday. I can’t believe it. She’s so big now. I can’t remember when it happened, but all of a sudden she went from being a baby to being a little kid. And the stuff she says and comes up with these days. I can’t believe how fast time is going with her around.

Her new swing set was a big hit, which is good because it’s too big to return and it was quite an investment. My father-in-law and I put landscape timbers around it and filled the area with playground mulch so she can have a soft landing when she inevitably falls off of the swing, slide, or deck.

We weren’t sure how her party was going to go. On her first birthday and her second birthday, it rained, so I wound up grilling in the rain while everybody crowded into our slightly-too-small-for-that-sort-of-thing home. This year, we made it. It rained just before the party, but it stopped as everyone was arriving. Fortunately, we have enough mature trees that the backyard didn’t even get wet while it rained.

Got a new fridge for the office at Lowe’s last night. Everybody seems pretty happy with it. That’s good. It was time for a new fridge anyway.

From one of my favorite sites, Crazy Apple Rumors Site: Fatal Flaw In New iBooks. “I put it down on my desk and immediately noticed something was wrong,” Gregory said. “The hinge mechanism should be away from me, on the other side of the laptop. Instead, I opened it up and the lid was facing me. It’s useless to me like this. I can’t believe they let this ship.” For some reason, the stupid, absurd stuff they write just makes me laugh out loud. I guess because they sound so much like all the real whiners in the Mac community.

Mergers we don’t want to see, from UserFriendly. I laughed out loud at this.

I think I killed the fridge. I was defrosting it, and the screwdriver I was chipping at the ice with slipped, and then . . . there was a horrible hissing sound. I’m sorry.

Hmmmm. BlogPoster appears to be working again. Not sure what was up. I can only assume it was something with Blogger, because I didn’t change anything on my end. Oh, well, at least it’s working now.

Tommorow I’m helping a friend (also my part-time employer) migrate her PowerBook G4 over to Mac OS X. She’s ready to make the jump. Of course, she’s been listening to me rant and rave about OS X since the release of 10.1. She owns a marketing and design firm, and she’s still deciding when to take her artists to OS X. Most of the tools are there now: Photoshop, Illustrator, and QuarkXPress. Oh, wait, Quark isn’t ready yet!!

Saw the first half of Office Space this week. Pretty funny movie so far. I’m watching the rest this weekend.

Just checking something.

Jen had her second surgery today and it went very well. She went in for the procedure at 1:05, and at 2:05, the doctor was out to tell me they were done. At 3:15, we were on the way home. The doctor found a little bit of scar tissue, but no more than he had expected, so she’s done for now. Hopefully this is the end of this chapter for us, which is a blessing. It’s been going on for two years now, and she hasn’t really felt well the whole time. Thanks to all of you for yours prayers and support. Now to get ready for Grace’s birthday party…

One year to the date after his untimely death, there is a documentary about Douglas Adams, one of my all time favorite authors. I had an opportunity to meet the late Mr. Adams at MacWorld New York in 1998, along with my friends Mike and Joe. He was autographing copies of the strategy for Starship Titanic, his latest video game release. We waited in line to meet him in person, but we weren’t really interested in the game, so we asked him to sign our original iMac posters (actually I think Joe did the actual asking). He looked at us rather strangely, but obliged. When I finally had the chance to tell him face to face how much his writing inspired me in my youth, all I could do was stand there like a blithering idiot, spouting off random syllables. Not words — syllables. It was humiliating. So at least one of my heroes died thinking that I’m a complete idiot.

Because of that experience, I don’t think I’ll ever try to meet Ray Davies, Joe Walsh, Paul Simon, Darren Clarke, Steve Jobs, Bruce Momjian, or any of the guys from Jars of Clay in person. Why risk it?

[By the way, Adams died on May 11, not May 12. I tried to post this last night but hit a few snags for some unknown reason.]