Panther is Cool

Blog news, More on Panther, and Re-trip to Apple Store.

Well, the blog is still broke, so you can’t read this, but I am still here.

I know the problem, and if you can see this, then I have fixed it.

Panther is awesome, just find more and more cool features. Apple’s statement of 150 new features is certainly an understatement. Expose, desktop printing, easier app switching, fast user switching, classic menu item, and so much more.

I am getting re-settled in. Most of my apps and docs are re-installed, only a few less used items remain.

I want to go back to Somerset by end of year. Walk around and see whole mall. Is three stories, 2 buildings. I have only been in 1 building, maybe 7 stores total. Another thing I want to do is a BIG road trip. Probably next summer. Would be cool to buy a $500 beater and just drive till it dies. I don’t know, sounds cool to me.

OK, I can’t think of much else so I am going to work on fixing blog again.

later,
nick

If you can’t say something nice, make sure whatever you do say is muttered under your breath

Road Trip

Trip for Panther party, Panther, Car, and Suchyta’s message.

Ok, we are currently at Exit 84B heading North on I 75. I tried to post in line at the Apple Store, so I could get uploaded over their wifi, but couldn’t get iblog to work right. Anyway, I got Panther at 2:33 pm today. Installed and we headed off to Troy about 5:30. Drive down was ok, not to busy. North bound lanes were in a complete stop some places though. Hopefully that has cleared up some by now. Ate at Steak and Shake at Great Lakes Crossing. Got to Somerset and line was pretty long. Probably 200+ people. Walked around store for about 35 minutes once we finally got in. 23″ Cinema Displays are HUGE. And 17″ PowerBooks are just weird looking, they are SO wide. G5s are faster than I can believe, though so are the 1.25 G4s that are still around. Lot of people in store, compared to when I bought ibook and we had 3 people waiting on me alone. I bought a Brenthaven case for ibook. $79. Probably shouldn’t have. In fact I just realized I could have bought online and saved $20 through .mac coupon. Shit. Oh well, we’re 25 miles away already.

Panther is awesome though, lot of nice features. If you want to see some, let me know. I would be happy to show off.

In other news, car gets fixed tomorrow. Guess thats all. See you all come Monday, unless I update this post when I actually send to server.

nick

Before you insult someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way you’ll be a mile away, and have their shoes.

And Suchyta says “Hi, Okay, so we stood in line and answered several questions for people who kept asking why we were standing in line waiting. Some people looked at us like we were crazy. Oh well, maybe we are.”

Woohoo

Fin. Aid rebate, Panther, and School. Plus complaining.

I got my check. And guess what…

It was for full $2500!

Delta said it would be for $1250 because they split the MEAP award over two semesters, but I got it all! Problem is, I need to attempt to restrain paying too many bills, because I need to save some to pay for delta next semester.

One problem: I got check just before class, class was 4 – 6, and bank closed at 5. So I am sitting here with the check and never got it cashed. Tomorrow morning I guess.

Three days till Panther! Some people have reported it having been shipped, but few are saying this, and we will see when they arrive. Mine is listed as “open” with 2 day shipping, so should go out tomorrow. Hope it arrives before we leave Friday, would be cool to show up to Apple Store running Panther before the schmucks in line can even buy it.

Next Thursday (the 31st) I finally start my HTML class. Should be easy, I mean, it’s HTML. The other classes are going fine.

Ok, off to dream of what to do with my money. I am going to Apple Store this week, and G5 starts at a mere $1999…

And Friday update will be fairly early, will post before we go to Troy. May update the post when we get home.

Till friday,
nick

HEY! I am running out of quotes, seriously!
And use the comments or lose them, having all those (0)s is a bit of a downer.

Already?

Time again, Circuits, iTunes, Free music, Evil people, Good to vent, Panther coming, Website, and Casino.

Well, I was sitting here watching Erin Brochovich and realized it’s that time again. So here I am.

I realized a few days ago how screwy the circuits in this house are. If I turn my fluorescent desk lamp on or off, it sends enough EM interference out to fuzz up my TV. Thing is they are in outlets on opposite sides of the room and are both in surge suppressors, that should be filtering the interference. Maybe I just need better strips?

I am pissed at both Apple and Belkin. First the good stuff though. Apple had a big announcement earlier this week. They released the second version of the iTunes music store, and iTunes 4.1 to take advantage of it. They also released iTunes for windows, including access to the music store. I encourage all you who use windows to at least try iTunes. They also announced two big deals. The first is a with AOL to send users to the iTunes music store when looking at music in AOL’s music section. The second is with Pepsi, to give away ONE HUNDRED MILLION free songs from February 1st to March 31st. At $.99 a song, thats $99,000,000 in music, with one in 3 being winners.

But the bad news. Belkin announced a new voice recorder and media card reader that connect to gen3 iPods. I own a gen2 iPod, so I can’t use these. Now yes, I bought it refurbished well after it was discontinued, so I knew something like this would happen. But there is no reason the voice recorder can’t be used on gen2 iPods. The media card reader does require the new dock connector as a means to pass data to the ipods HD, but the voice recorder uses the headphone port and a software update, meaning it could easily work on the older iPods. I blame both Apple and Belkin for this. Which brings me to my second problem, why no more software updates for gen2s? They haven’t been updated since iPod software 1.3, while gen3s are up to 2.1. There is no reason Apple can’t put the extra games and faster functionality on the older iPods.

Anyway, there’s my ranting. Been a long time since I did a good ranting, and it felt good. I will need to get pissed off more often.

Next week I get rebate check, and Panther, WOOHOO!

I did some website updating last night. A page on my computer and entertainment system, and added link to my mostly blank library page(yes Scott, just for you) Both are on the “Everything Else” page.

I went to the casino Thursday night. Ended up about even, slightly ahead. If I had left after 15 minutes though, would have been much more ahead. Got triple 7s twice in a row, then again 5 pulls later. Had single coin first time, 2 second, and 1 third. That’s 50, 100, and 50 coins, 200 x $.50 = $100 Oh well.

See you all Tuesday, when I’m $1250 richer.

later,
nick

“Hard Work Often Pays Off After Time, but Laziness Always Pays Off Now”

Money in, Money out

Interview, Panther, Fin. Aid, Breaks, and Website.

Hello world, and how are you?

I just got back from IBEW interview. Turns out this was just the residential interview, so I should be receiving another letter in the mail for the lineman interview. Went well though. They started 20 minutes late, which didn’t help nervousness, but was fine.

Only about a week till Panther. Can’t wait. My iBook is becoming rather bit-rotted after almost a year, and I need to re-install anyway. All those programs I tried and then deleted have little fragments laying around that need to be removed. That alone should bring a fairly nice speed boost.

I also have learned that financial aid rebates come out next week. I think Jason said Monday the 21st though, which confuses me, being Monday is the 20th. I think will be 21st though, as I remember last year it was a Tuesday because I picked it up during break in Environmental Biology. Problem is, I owe most of it to my mom, plus I just found out I need new breaks. Life is so nice.

I did some work on website. Added a Dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide page. Is on the “Everything Else” page in side bar of website. Scott sent me a link to another DHMO danger site, which I have a link to on the bottom of the page. I have given up on CSS and #include, as they don’t want to work like I want. That and Apple’s server doesn’t fully support some of what I want them to do. So I guess I will just need to do copy – paste for the repetitive stuff. No biggie.

Ok, thats all for now. Close the door on your way out.

bye,
nick

Bow before me, for I am root!

Anniversaries!!!!!!!

Three anniversaries!

Happy Anniversaries!

Today we have 3 special anniversaries:

1. Post 50
2. Day 128
3. Visitor 200

With the combined blogger re-posts, test iblog posts, and general posts, this is my 50th blog entry. That should mean 150 days, but I posted rather erratically at the beginning, so I wound up ahead.

I have been blogging since May 27th. That means today is the 128th day I have had a blog, which is a special number in computing (notice memory comes in 32, 64, 128, 256? It’s because computers are binary) (128 is 2^7). Not extremely special, but better than nothing.

And the 200th visit. Obtained by Lauren Anna Exora Somalski at 10:29:47 pm. You may be saying “but the counter wasn’t always up, you blogged for a while before you started counting, I could be the 200th!” Well, I am here to say that “You’re talking to yourself, and we don’t care what you say!”

And most important, I didn’t miss this one! Remember last anniversary, when I forgot to post? Yeah, we’ll avoid that.

Anyway, thats that. I was in the middle of Java homework when I remembered it was 3 days. IBEW interview Wednesday, will let you know…

See ya,
nick

I want to open a mexican restaurant, “los pantalones del perro”
(the dog pants)

Different Continued

Bugs, Panther, Road trip, SC4, Cleaning, and 2nd difference.

What is with these bugs? These little LadyBug looking things are everywhere, and they bite, and are plain annoying anyway.

Apple announced the release date for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther yesterday. Will be available 8:00 pm October 24th for $129, $69 student. Mine is already ordered and will be delivered late day the 24th. Jason, Nick, and I also plan to drive down to the Somerset Apple store in Troy for the party too (exit 69, Big Beaver Rd.).

Got S*m C*ty 4 CD 2 finally. Game is awesome, much faster than forums led me to believe. Budgeting and keeping population happy is much harder than in SC2K.

No progress on cleaning room. Between SC4 and work, not much time.

OK, so here’s the poem then. This is from 11th grade English. Were took a walk around the school, then wrote a poem about it. Most were generic boring rhymes. Mine though, well, you’ll see. Not greatest, but better than most.

Ok, have fun.

till Sunday,
nick

“Poem” was originally posted here but has since been moved to the Portfolio section.

Something Different

Panther, Website tools, Counter details, Visitor countries, and the “Something Different.”

Hi all, hope you had a good weekend. What do you say we start with news.

Mac OS X 10.3 may be out this month. Rumors point to between the 24th and the 30th. Every day they seem to become more reliable, and the date becomes more likely on the 30th.

I downloaded the demo of Dreamweaver MX 2004. Supposed to have really good CSS support, will play with it for a while. Also want to try GoLive CS, the successor to my current app GoLive 6.0. Yes, I do know HTML, but you should see website code. Not too horrible using tables, but going to CSS will make hand coding very ugly.

Because some have asked, there are 2 main reasons I removed counter details. First is it shows most of your IP address, which isnt nice. Granted, its not all, but it brings it from near infinite possibilities to 256, which I don’t like. Second (and really the only, main, and most important) is that it was only a 60 day trial to list on website. Unless you want to pay $10 a month to see your IP, it’s over. I can still see it though, and I have thus far had visitors from: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the UK, and the US.

Pretty good for a little blog in Bay City.

Uhm, what else. I guess thats it, so here is the “Something Different.” In 10th grade, I had to re-write a fairy tale as an English assignment. I did so, got a good grade, and didn’t think about it again. While cleaning my room this weekend (which isn’t done) I came across this story and a poem. Today, you get the fairy tale, and Thursday, you will get the poem. Is just copied and pasted from word doc, which was scanned in from the old printout, so all spelling is only up to my 10th grade skills (which are probably higher than now). Formatting and font will likely get screwed up.

Enjoy,
nick

My Beauty and the Beast short story was originally posted here, but has since been moved to the Portfolio Section.

Hi

Comments, ipod, headphones, Airport, 10.2.8 v.2, Panther, Cleaning, Website, and IBEW.

Hey! I’m glad to see some of you are taking advantage of the comment system. Only 3 of you (well technically 2) but there are only 3 or maybe 4 that regularly read, so thats pretty good I guess. I have removed access to the counter details, for a couple reasons. I doubt many of you ever really used it anyway.

I am enjoying ipod more each day. I want to get some new headphones though, Looking at Sennheiser’s PX200s. Sennheiser is the same company that makes most Aircraft radio headsets and studio mics, so they already seem like a good choice. This model also has great reviews, as does the very similar 100 model. Plus, unlike the other higher end models I had looked at, they fold up nice and tiny, and are only like $40 -$50!

Also enjoying Airport card, using it right now! And now that 10.2.8 v.2 is out, my battery life is back to normal. My 6 hr battery that will generally give me about 4 hours in OS9 and 5 in X, was down to about 2 hours in X with the first 10.2.8 update. Maybe when Panther arrives (Oct 24th?) I will see even better time.

I am cleaning my room, very slowly. Moved bed, cleaned up computer table, filed some papers. Problem is brother’s stuff is skattered about too. Doubt will get much further tonight, and work tomorrow. Maybe finish Sunday?

Want to redo website again. According to counter, nobody goes there really, but what the hey, its something to do. Granted, that will mean beginning v.3 when v.2 isn’t even finished (or v.1 for that matter) but I always knew it was going to be a work under constant progress (hoped there would be progress anyway). Will decide before next update weather I will attempt it or not.

Received letter from IBEW, I am accepted for interview, what did I tell you. Interview will be next Wednesday (the 15th).

Ok, thats all for now. Want to try and get back to old blog, where I would just complain and you would read it and laugh. I guess thats a complaint, so I am doing well toward goal.

Ok, TTYL,
nick

There are 10 types of people in the world.
Those who know binary, and those who don’t.

The 46th Post

iblog update, Comment system, Requests, River of Time, Apple refurbs, ipod, Wifi, LOTR, School, and Mac’s 20th.

Lets see. I just upgraded from iblog 1.2.6 to 1.3.1. Apparently it has been available for a while, I just wasn’t aware of it. Has these rulers and stuff, is weird. Allows text alignment though, which is nice.

Last night I added comments to the blog, by request. Leave a comment if you want something else, I will try to accommodate.

Hmm. River of Time was ok. If your not going for the root beer and kettle corn though, you minds as well not go. Oh well.

Apple refurb. list is still rather bare, not that I care, I have what I want.

I got ipod working in car. Have it connected to the FM modulator for the CD changer in trunk. Works well, though I need to have volume on both ipod and stereo maxed for it to work. Modulator expects a line-level input but ipod just can’t do it. I get my debts payed off maybe I will buy an itrip…

Went wandering with ibook. No wifi at Delta that I can find. My Linksys works to almost the end of the block, about 60ft short. Thats approximately 210ft radius!

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King trailer came out today. Is on QuickTime website here. ipodlaughs.com has some interesting photoshops here.

Unix class is still boring. Unix is cool and all, but the teacher just cant make it. I am starting to get back into C++. Java is easy, I am preferring it over C++. Granted, Java sucks to run; its slow, can be quite buggy, and ssslllooowww. But, it will run on almost anything without re-write, and is easier to program in the beginning.

January 24th will be 20 years since the Macintosh was released. Perhaps we should expect something from Apple? When the 20th anniversary mac was released to celebrate 20 years since Apple’s founding, it was near cutting edge with leather palm rest, Bose designed audio, and an LCD display. Today though, LCDs are commonplace and G5s come standard with 5.1 optical out. What will Apple come out with next?

Ok, thats enough for now. More friday. Go away now.

nick

Geek: the guy who buys a new G5 so his atari emulator will run faster.