d00dism

I’m both throroughly embarressed and relieved. The Mac Genius was able to fix my Powerbook.

The steps he took were:

1. Re-sat the Airport card. I didn’t know that could be a common cause.
2. Reset the power manager. I did that.
3. Reset the open firmware. At this point, the screen was working. When I did it, I had to use my external display.

All is well again and seeing as a little bit of my pride saved me several hundred dollars, I think I can suck it up. I’ll have to hold off a little on applying for a part-time Genius position though.

Rather than post separate entries, I thought I’d explain why I haven’t been around with one.

Visiting Hours

My friend Scott finally freed up some time to see the new place, which he now calls a sweet setup. I’m inclined to agree.

He came out Friday night and got the full tour. Naturally, the four floors of my place were a high point. So far, no one has really had a bad word, but then again maybe they’re all being polite and saving the criticism for later.

He stayed until this morning, allowing us to catch up and even figure out that the nearest theater (in Lowell) wasn’t all that far. Given, it can’t beat the theater just 5 minutes down the street in Northborough, but it’ll do.

Anyway, entertaining makes it hard to keep up with the online life (among other things, read on).

Waterworks

I spent most of the day helping father pull his boat out of the water. Ok, it took all day. My dad didn’t realize that at high tide, the ramp’s slope is really slight and as such, the trailer doesn’t get deep enough into the water to drive up on. That forced us to wait several hours.

I did get a footlong meatball sub out of it, so it’s not all bad, but it did prevent me from doing certain things today (read on).

And the Lights Went Out

So I decided to check some directions while Scott was dropping a nasty deuce into one of my toilets. I opened up my laptop to see the screen blink on and then off. That’s right, the screen died.

Being the troubleshooting wizard I am, I started going through things that would help (hopefully).

1. Shut down and started the computer. Nada.
2. Pressed the brightness keys. Nada.
3. Shut down the computer for an hour while at breakfast. Nada.
4. Reset the PRAM (waited for three dongs). Nada.
5. Reset the power manager. Nada.
6. Connected an external display.

The external display worked correctly, but when I visited Displays in System Preferences, only the external display was listed. Not good. System Profiler implies that the display is disconnected/off. In the words of Andy’s Dad, we are fucked, completely and utterly fucked.

I wanted to take it in Saturday to the Apple Store, but with Scott around, that seemed rude. I waited until Sunday, but I got back really late, so that was out. I’ll have to go tomorrow after work because I can’t live without the mobility. Sure, the desktop is certainly essential, but life sucks without my trusty Powerbook.

I’ll have to hope that I can afford the repair bill (and obligatory Amazon page plug). Oh, and thanks to whoever bought that big screen TV. I love you!

So I’m currently 4 out of 5 and Henry forgot to pick confidence so he didn’t get any points (Henry, if you’re reading this, fix it before this weekend).

1. smudie (101)
2. Katie (89)
3. Mike (85)
4. Me (81)
5. Henry (0 explained above)

It’s a little embarressing. For a scot living in France, Stuart knows his football. In fact, he did better than anyone in my work football group.

Here’s my picks ordered from least confidence to most. Real winners are bold. Bold are picks that I had right. Italics are ones that I was wrong.

1. Detroit vs. Green Bay
2. San Diego vs. Dallas
3. New York Giants vs. Arizona
4. Kansas City vs. New York Jets
5. Jacksonville vs. Seattle
6. Denver vs. Miami
7. Buffalo vs. Houston
8. Washington vs. Chicago
9. Minnesota vs. Tamba Bay
10. St. Louis vs. San Fransisco
11. Philadelphia vs. Atlanta
12. Indianapolis vs. Batlimore
13. Carolina vs. New Orleans
14. Cincinnatti vs. Cleveland
15. Pittsburgh vs. Tennessee
16. New England vs. Oakland

What’s interesting is that no one, save Stuart, thought New Orleans would win, not even Henry. That was a real coup. Other notable upsets were San Fransisco, Dallas, and Atlanta. As much as I hate St. Louis, I’m still surprised they lost to San Fransisco.

Everyone thought Minnesota was going to win over Tampa Bay, but it’s looking like they’ll be the big losers this year without Moss.

Having seen all the teams play, it’ll be interesting to see if everyone’s accurary improves or gets worse, particularly Stuart.

Earlier this week, Apple released iTunes 5 and the iPod nano. I didn’t write anything about either because I’m not particularly impressed by either. I’m even less impressed with the iTunes phone aka Motorola ROKR. I should say something though.

iTunes 5

This is perhaps one of the most pathetic iTunes’ “upgrades” yet. No, it wasn’t worthy of a first digit number change. 5.0 doesn’t have to follow 4.9 either. They could have continued with 4.10. There’s even an implicit acknowledgment of this by Apple illustrated by the lack of a color change in the icon. Every other first digit change brought a new number. I love green, but it’s getting stale.

Versiontracker has the following as the updated features:

• New Look - Streamlined design makes iTunes even easier to use.
• Search Bar - Find stuff fast and refine your search with the handy new Search Bar.
• Smart Shuffle - Adjust random playback to hear what you want.
• Sync from Outlook - iTunes now supports iPod syncing for Outlook and Outlook Express on Windows PCs.
• Playlist Folders - Organize all your playlists into folders.
• Parental Controls - Limit kids’ access to the iTunes Music Store and sharing features.
• Album Reviews - Browse over 1,000 album reviews.
• The Complete Harry Potter - Download all six audiobooks or the Digital Box Set and add the collector’s iPod with Hogwarts crest.
• iTunes for Your Mobile Phone - Sync music to the Motorola ROKR E1.

First, what I don’t really care about. Sync from Outlook is worthless because I’m using a Mac and even if I were using Windows, I’d have to be brain dead to use Outlook or Outlook Express. Parental Controls may be interesting to some, but I don’t have kids and even if I did, trying to use automated censorship is lame (in my opinion). The Complete Harry Potter is just content, not a feature. Besides, $250 to listen to all of the Harry Potter books when I could buy all of them for probably less than $30? Sounds a little foolish. Finally, support for the ROKR is lost on me because of reasons I’ll list below.

The new Search Bar is an incremental improvement. Hardly mindblowing.

Playlist Folders are neat, but they don’t show up on my iPod.

The Album Reviews are good, but they go into that category of iTunes Music Store content and not features.

Smart Shuffle is good for some people, but the response it’s getting is extremely irritating. “I’m glad they made shuffle more random.”"Shuffle is more powerful.” Steve himself said it. Smart Shuffle isn’t more random. It’s less. Part of truly random shuffling is the possibility of having several songs by the same artist in a row. As for “more powerful”, there’s more computation necessary, but I’m not sure that qualifies as more powerful.

The biggest change by far was in the New Look. iTunes has a much debated entirely new look. I’m on the fence about it. The purist in me really dislikes it. The user in me thinks it looks slick. I don’t like the custom corner radius. I like the lack of margins. I dislike the fact that the lack of margins makes it harder to adjust the size of elements. I like the way the background looks and the glassy look of the readout. I’m not going to chide Apple like some self appointed expert, but I will say that I’m not a fan. I really like consistency, which is what keeps me using the Mac platform.

iPod Nano

It’s a smaller capacity replacement for the iPod mini. I’m not exactly why Apple felt it necessary to drop the iPod mini completely. The iPod line is getting rather complicated, so some consolidation was a good idea from a marketing standpoint, but the mini had some things that the nano doesn’t.

It was bigger for one. The iPod mini was almost getting into the storage capacity that I could consider getting one. They may have hit a ceiling, but I’m not sure that’s a reason to dump it until the nano matches or surpasses it.

The iPod nano also can’t be used over a Firewire connection. I have USB 2.0 on all my Macs, but not all Mac users do. Sure, the old adage of “you need the latest to use the latest” applies, but part of iPod mini’s audience were users with small hard drives that could possibly fill up a regular iPod.

I think it’s a neat choice for many people, but I’ll still miss the mini.

Motorola ROKR

Two words describe why I won’t be getting one of these: service provider. As much as I dislike Verizon’s landline services (and their associated cost), their wireless is great. I get good signal everywhere. I’m not moving to Cingular. I’m getting tired of the fact that I can’t get cool phones because they’re tied to a single incompatible service type. Phone makers, please make cross-service phones. I want to buy the phone I want to use with the service I want. Unfortunately, when it comes to choosing the phone or service, I’ll pick the service every time.

I know it’s late notice, but I just got turned on to Yahoo’s Football Pick’em page (like what I did last year, but automated, so scrap that idea).

Anyway, I expect all of you to join and participate especially Henry (that’s two mentions), Dana, and Katie. The group has 50 slots, so if it comes to that, it’ll be first come, first serve.

You need a Yahoo! id and enough time to pick teams to win (no spread) and assign confidence (1 - 16). Each week’s picks have to be in 5 minutes prior to the first game of the week. The Patriots are playing tonight, so you’ll need to enter your choices before then.

In order to join the group, just go to Pro Football Pick’em, click the “Sign Up” button (or “Create or Join Group” if you are a returning user). From there, follow the path to join an existing private group and when prompted, enter the following information…

Group ID#: 40151
Password: slappy

I’ll post my weekly results and analysis of the group’s performance each week. Sign up now!