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Happy New Year! We hope that you’re off to a safe and prosperous New Year. One of the things you should be thinking about this time every year is your credit rating. You should check your credit every year and the good folk at CardFish have a quick and easy how-to article. I used their methodology and it worked just fine. It was easy and, oh yeah, FREE!
Posted by Ivan as Blogosphere at 11:20 PM EST
It’s been a while since we last posted here. Mea culpa. It’s been a busy summer and suddenly we looked up and it’s fall, it’s cold the Leopards are prowling about the Mac world. Of course I decided to stand in line to buy Leopard the day it came out, albeit with only about five other people at the local Micro Center, which also had (and has until 12/2) a nice $30 rebate on a family pack of licenses.
So I rushed out and installed it on my main MacBook Pro with no problems. However, in my rush to do the install, I neglected to select “archive and install” instead of straight upgrade. And that’s–I think–the root cause of some of my problems with Leopard. So what’s been the problem?
First off, Time Machine is having some real problems. It started out working just fine, with the first backup (contrary to some other users’ findings) running quite well and quickly. The issue was after I had to reboot, my external Firewire drive disappeared from the desktop. There was no way to get it reappear, even though the hourly backups continued running just fine. It just didn’t show up. Turning the drive off, unplugging it, reformatting it as GUID–nothing worked. Oh, except the GUID reformat did work at least temporarily. On the next reboot, the drive did appear on my desktop. However, another reboot and it disappeared again. Oh well, at least the backups kept working.
Until it stopped working. After a few days–during which the drive wasn’t by any means full–the backups started to stall out at around 10-20 GB of data backup. Bad enough that I wasn’t getting backups, but suddenly the machine started acting flaky. There was a number of unexpected kernel panics and sudden lockups. It seems like the two were related, because I bit the bullet and did an erase and install this morning and suddenly my machine is running much more smoothly again. Although the Time Machine drive still isn’t showing on the desktop.
Oh, and the drive isn’t a Lacie drive, which some people have been pointing to as a common problem.
So overall, I have no real series problems with Leopard except the most important thing–that Time Machine doesn’t seem to work properly and I feel that my MacBook Pro is a little more unstable than it used to be, which isn’t acceptable to me as my main production machine. I’ll suck it up and expect it to be fixed by oh, 10.5.3 or so. But I shouldn’t have to wait.
Any ideas why my Firewire drive isn’t showing up on my desktop? Let me know.
Posted by Pilip as Apple, Mac, Technology at 11:31 PM EST
It’s been a while since I’ve posted–been a busy summer! Yeah, I finally did get an iPhone only a couple of weeks after it came out. So, far, I think it’s great. It’s certainly not a low-end product. If you’re looking for just a good phone, there’s many better choices. However, if you’re willing to spend a little more on a phone and are into gadgets, it’s a great product. Check out CNET’s review for more information.
Posted by Pilip as Apple, Mac, Technology, Telecommunications at 1:57 PM EDT
So the iPhone is out. When will I get one? Well, first I want to wait to see what the initial feedback is after it’s been out for a month or two. At $599 for the 8 GB model, it’s far too costly to purchase as a test product. I’ll keep you posted should I decide to take the plunge. Have you?
Posted by Pilip as Apple, Mac, Technology at 12:26 AM EDT
Fairfax County board chairman Gerald E. Connolly sounds like he’s never heard the “..if it quacks like a duck..” saying. It certainly appears to this observer as though he has a serious conflict of interest in both participating in Fairfax County government and in having a high-ranking position with Science Applications International Corp. Connolly doesn’t have any qualms with legislating (or perhaps not) his employer.
Like most political hacks, he also gets testy when called on the carpet about his conflicts by the Washington Post. When asked how much he gets paid by SAIC, Connolly answered:
“None of your business. So long as I can’t live on a supervisor’s salary, I have tried to find employment with no conflict and no overlap. I’m entitled to earn a living.”
Nice. Sounds like he didn’t try hard enough. There’s plenty of good paying jobs in Fairfax County, even though Connolly and his crew are trying hard to tax businesses out of the county. Apparently, SAIC likes having the Board of Supervisors chairman on it’s payroll and is willing to pay enough for a part-time job to get Connolly’s attention. I wonder why?
Posted by Pilip as Centreville and NOVA at 6:26 PM EDT
It’s good to hear that Fairfax County is cracking down on things like zoning violations. There’s a couple of houses in our neighborhood that have just a few too many commercial vehicles around and having them parked all day on the weekends is an eyesore. We aren’t seeing them as frequently on the weekends, so it looks like complaints to the HOA and possibly the county have paid off.
Posted by Pilip as Centreville and NOVA at 8:13 AM EDT
Hand-wringer Carter is at it again, blasting the Bush administration in his latest dementia-induced rant. We don’t like Bush any more than the next guy, but it’s hard to take criticism seriously from the worst ex-president ever.
Posted by Taras as Centreville and NOVA at 4:54 PM EDT
Back in November, I thought I’d wait for a while before upgrading to an Intel-powered MacBook or MacBook Pro. Well, I was wrong and upgraded just a couple of weeks ago.
The reason I upgraded was that the “old” PowerBook (circa April 2004) was acting strangely. As in really strangely, as in maybe logic board failure. And I had some presentations to do and couldn’t get it to work properly, even using all the usual tricks short of formatting and reinstalling the OS.
So I sort of panicked and decided that this was maybe the time to get a new machine. So off to the store in Tyson’s Corner to look for a new laptop. I seriously looked at both the MacBook and the Pro. The price and form factor of the MacBook were both really appealing to me. What made me pop for the 2.33 mhz/2 GB MacBook Pro though was my stupid eyes. I’m just starting to have some issues seeing text on the screen and the larger screen of the Pro is just a bit more comfortable to me. Plus the fact that I’m using it for a few hours every day and decided the extra power and speed would be worth it.
So, how do I like it so far? Well, as far as speed and the built-in iSight, this is a great machine! I thought my 1.5 mhz G4 was fast. This thing makes the old one feel like a tortoise. Plus the fact that the form factor hasn’t changed very much means that it’s comfortable to me.
What don’t I like? Minor nits. The trackpad is bigger and gets in the way of me typing. I don’t like the feel of the base of my thumbs dragging over the trackpad. I thought the trackpad on the old G4 was just perfect as-is. I also don’t like the fact that I (apparently) can’t run SideTrack on this. While the two finger scrolling is pretty cool, I preferred using SideTrack to set the very right-most side of the trackpad for scrolling purposes and having a single tap on the trackpad act as my right click. When I figure out what I’m doing wrong, I’ll get SideTrack reinstalled. Finally, the bezel is wider due to the built-in camera. It makes the screen look a bit less sleek.
What about the G4? Grrr (&(&##A#. After doing an archive and install, I think it’s back to running, although the fans are crunchy loud now (and it’s out of Applecare…). So, I keep it down in the basement and use it while I’m watching TV down there as a spare laptop. I might try to sell it on eBay, but haven’t yet decided.
Bottom line is that if you’re in the market for a fast laptop that can also run Windows (blecch), check out the MacBook Pro. Recommended by us!
Posted by Pilip as Apple, Centreville and NOVA, Internet, Mac, Technology at 9:00 AM EDT
Today’s Washington Post contained another article that’s part of their efforts to blunt efforts to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the United States. Today’s article tries to make the point that hunting down the illegal immigrants would be too hard, by covering an evening’s effort by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as they tracked down several illegal immigrants to secure them for deportation.
The Post tries to make these folks sympathetic, by bringing up the fact that they have children in the country, have been here a long time and so forth. As if that makes up for the fact that the illegal immigrants being detained were guilty of numerous felonies, both in the United States and their home countries. To be clear, these are not nice people, nor the type of people we want wandering freely about our streets.
Our take is that it’s not too hard to track down the worst of them. And what’s the harm? Don’t know. I can’t think of a single reason that having less felons on the street is a bad thing. Can you?
Posted by Taras as Centreville and NOVA, Common sense at 8:30 AM EDT
You know what it means?
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Posted by Taras as Blogosphere, Internet at 7:20 PM EDT
Our neighborhood finally got door-hangered. Verizon’s FiOS is coming soon! I can’t wait until they start digging and laying the fiber. Looks like my Vonage problem may be solved.
Posted by Pilip as Centreville and NOVA, TV, Technology, Telecommunications at 7:42 PM EDT
I was checking my mail today and found a notice from Bank of America that indicated they were adding a minimum finance charge to my account. The fine print gave me the option of rejecting the imposition of the finance charge, as long as I responded by May 1st to a P.O. Box in Delaware and indicated that I was rejecting the charge.
I’ve taken to rejecting anything a credit card company gives the option of rejecting, with my thinking being anything they are doing to me is not good for me. If you’ve got a Bank of America credit card, particularly if it’s one that was recently added to their portfolio through the MBNA merger, be on the lookout for an amendment letter in the mail.
Posted by Pilip as Business, Centreville and NOVA at 10:39 AM EDT
…senior management at Circuit City is looking for a way to juice their numbers for a few quarters before the inevitable bankruptcy and eventual dissolution of the company. Either way, the shareholders of Circuit City got the shaft from the recent management blunder in Richmond.
Before I go too far down this road, I need to confess my bias. I have never been a big fan of Circuit City. I find their store design dark and repulsive, sales staff to be either sleazy (before they went to salary) or poorly-trained (before and after the move to salaried staff). The stores are cluttered, poorly-stocked and pale in comparison the Best Buy that’s typically just down the street. So take what I say with a grain of salt.
To recap, Circuit City is laying off about 3,400 “overly paid” employees and replacing them with newly-hired and lower-paid employees who ostensibly do the same quality of work, at least according to a McKinsey study. So what’s overpaid? By one report, it’s $.51 per hour. I started to get more interested in this once I read that, so I put together a quick and dirty worksheet, which is also attached:
As you can see, if you assume that McKinsey only charged $1 million for their work (doubtful, if you’ve ever worked with them) and that Circuit City only pays out $1 million to settle class action lawsuits and only does $5 million in damage to their brand equity, the break-even is 4 years out. Yes, this is simplified, because I haven’t taken into account the fact that the benefits are probably a lot cheaper on the newer employees, but I’ve probably balanced that out somewhat by only assuming $2,000 per employee in training costs. I’m probably in the zone here.
Now, did this debacle cost Circuit City only $5 million in damage to their brand equity? You be the judge. Google “Circuit City Lays Off Workers” and see over 1,030,00 articles on the topic. They’re not flattering. I think I’m not taking into account the full extent of the damage to brand equity in my calculations.
So, what’s the purpose of this effort? If you believe McKinsey isn’t incompetent and senior management at Circuit City isn’t that incompetent, then you have to believe they know they’re not doing this to save money. And if that’s not the case, then they’re doing it to send a message. To who? Wall Street.
And what does Wall Street care about? Primarily, it’s the next quarter or two. Anything that’s remotely plausible for cost savings, especially those things endorsed by organizations like McKinsey, Wall Street likes. So, the plan will juice the stock for a while, enough for bonuses to be paid out at least one more time before Chapter 11. Nice plan.
Posted by Ivan as Business, Technology at 10:50 AM EDT
Talk about great customer service! I purchased some parts for my Vacuflo central vac system–another head and hose set–from a company I found on the Internet called MD Central Vacuum Systems about a month ago. I think I neglected to tell them that a part was missing. Today, I received an unsolicited request (bonus point) from a real live person (more bonus points) who asked me how everything was going with my purchase.
I responded back to let him know that I was missing a part. Seems like almost instantly I got immediate follow up from not one, but two people who immediately solved my problem and confirmed that they’d ship it out tomorrow. Jackpot! Now that’s customer service!
So, we highly recommend MD Central Vacuum Systems for all your vac supplies.
Posted by Pilip as Business, Centreville and NOVA, General, Internet at 7:16 PM EDT
We’re starting to get ready for phone service after Vonage. It’s just a matter of time before they’re dead, probably within 120 days, regardless of Jeff Pulver’s contention that it’s only the bottom of the seventh inning for them. It might be worthwhile to try to port over to Sunrocket, but we have no idea if they have the same patent problems as Vonage. Getting our phone number back from Vonage might also be a really big problem. We’re now thinking that it might be worthwhile just to change over to cell phone service and drop the landline completely.
Posted by Pilip as Telecommunications at 1:48 PM EDT
That wild ‘n crazy guy John Dvorak is at it again, helpfully commenting from the sidelines that Apple should pull the iPhone now and save themselves a world of hurt. Dvorak’s laugh a minute troll is a desperate attempt to get more attention for himself, and it’s funny because he’s so out of it, he can’t even get the timing right. Why not jump all over the iPhone at launch? Let’s save this one under “Apple” and come back three months after launch (when Dvorak says Apple will be leapfrogged by somebody else) and see how well this prediction does. See you in October!
And please read his article for the obvious entertainment value.
Posted by Pilip as Apple, Business, Internet, Mac at 6:57 PM EDT
We’re a Mac shop over here, after many years of running Windows XP. And without a lot of drama, I might add. But I just like Mac hardware and OS X a lot better and I’ve found it to just be easier to setup. But some of us still need to run Windows, perhaps at work, and we know friends and family who have to run Windows. What’s the first thing I do when setting up a machine to run Windows (as I’m doing now, because my attempted upgrade to Parallels 3188 bombed my Parallels 1970 setup. Grr.)?
I do the following things:
This is the critical piece. I have never had a problem with a computer running AOL’s automatically updating safety product. It just gets rid of spyware, virii and the like. I just finished that on my new Win XP installation on my Parallels virtual machine and I feel a lot better already.
Posted by Pilip as Internet, Mac, Technology at 8:51 AM EDT
We’re increasing our Web 2.0 compliance, with the addition of a MySpace page. I should say “another” MySpace page. I keep creating the darn things and then forget the URL, the password or whatever. That usually happens after I’ve spent some frustrating time trying to customize the page with MySpace’s crappy tools. Somewhere along the line, the browser beachballs and all the work goes down the tubes. I’ll try again. This time, we’ll be at www.myspace.com/horilkadotcom. If you’re on MySpace, please add us as a friend!
Posted by Pilip as Blogosphere at 8:30 AM EDT
It’s good to hear that we’ve got another Garrett–John–on the Cowboys coaching staff, along with Dat Nguyen joining as a defensive assistant. The Garrett family has a great coaching history and Nguyen was a great and hard-working defensive star for the Cowboys for many years.
Posted by Pilip as Dallas Cowboys, Football, Sports at 5:59 AM EST
