Today I'm thankful for ...
... getting a chance to do something fun like going to the theater to help celebrate a friend's birthday. We also got to build cupcake monuments and set things on fire!
31 July 2008
26 July 2008
Thawed
Today I'm thankful for ...
... Apple's Time Machine. Oh heck yes.
Yesterday my Parallels installation of Vista bit it hard. And I mean hard. Its virtual hard drive was so corrupt that chkdsk was trying to recover system files. I blame me dropping my laptop last week, but who knows. Anyways, so I've been using Time Machine quite regularly and so I had a backup of the Vista installation. I opened up the archive, scrolled back to July 20, and there it was: the old versions of the virtual machine. So I just copied them back and Vista is back working again. YAY!
... Apple's Time Machine. Oh heck yes.
Yesterday my Parallels installation of Vista bit it hard. And I mean hard. Its virtual hard drive was so corrupt that chkdsk was trying to recover system files. I blame me dropping my laptop last week, but who knows. Anyways, so I've been using Time Machine quite regularly and so I had a backup of the Vista installation. I opened up the archive, scrolled back to July 20, and there it was: the old versions of the virtual machine. So I just copied them back and Vista is back working again. YAY!
17 July 2008
Halt!
Today I'm thankful for ...
... my Mac sleeping nearly instantaneously. I was at a club last night for an event where I needed my Mac. In a dark corner and on a very short table ledge I perched the Mac. After I was done with a quick bit of work I closed the lid and started to turn away from it. At that instant the Mac tipped off the ledge and made a sickening smack on the floor. I turned back just in time to see it land on its bottom side.
Holy crap.
I picked it up and looked for initial damage. The right side received a dent because I had a laptop security cable plugged in it and it must have landed on that first. But then it must have tipped flat and the whole bottom side clattered to the floor about the same time. Other than that there is no visible damage.
I powered it up to find that it was in fine working condition, no screen cracks, no case cracks, no broken keys or trackpad controls. Then the moment of truth: would the Mac's operating system report errors? After logging back into the computer ... it was fine! Yes! It appears that as soon as I shut the lid the drive stopped spinning and so the heads were already parked when the laptop smacked the concrete. I know the Mac has an accelerometer to suspend the disk in a fall, but I think the Mac was already asleep before it hit the ground.
Back at home I ran a disk check and things looked a-OK. Whew. I'm so glad I set the Mac to hibernatemode 0.
... my Mac sleeping nearly instantaneously. I was at a club last night for an event where I needed my Mac. In a dark corner and on a very short table ledge I perched the Mac. After I was done with a quick bit of work I closed the lid and started to turn away from it. At that instant the Mac tipped off the ledge and made a sickening smack on the floor. I turned back just in time to see it land on its bottom side.
Holy crap.
I picked it up and looked for initial damage. The right side received a dent because I had a laptop security cable plugged in it and it must have landed on that first. But then it must have tipped flat and the whole bottom side clattered to the floor about the same time. Other than that there is no visible damage.
I powered it up to find that it was in fine working condition, no screen cracks, no case cracks, no broken keys or trackpad controls. Then the moment of truth: would the Mac's operating system report errors? After logging back into the computer ... it was fine! Yes! It appears that as soon as I shut the lid the drive stopped spinning and so the heads were already parked when the laptop smacked the concrete. I know the Mac has an accelerometer to suspend the disk in a fall, but I think the Mac was already asleep before it hit the ground.
Back at home I ran a disk check and things looked a-OK. Whew. I'm so glad I set the Mac to hibernatemode 0.
16 July 2008
Bigger! Bigger!
Today I'm thankful for ...
... FedEx Kinko's having online printing. I was able to collaborate with my boss on a series of fliers and posters, and we were able to send the job electronically to a 24-hour Kinko's. Better yet, we got the PDFs blown up to 36"x46" size and a series of double-sided fliers were generated too.
... FedEx Kinko's having online printing. I was able to collaborate with my boss on a series of fliers and posters, and we were able to send the job electronically to a 24-hour Kinko's. Better yet, we got the PDFs blown up to 36"x46" size and a series of double-sided fliers were generated too.
15 July 2008
You so smrt
Today I'm thankful for ...
... B knowing how to write Cocoa apps. With his help I was able to put together my very first app for the iPhone. He gave me a quick tour of Xcode, Interface Builder, and showed me how Objective C sends messages. At the end of about an hour we had an interface that was able to hide and reveal a text label, count the number of times that switch was toggled, increment a page counter, toggle a button bar, and increase a progress meter. It may be ugly as heck, but it really helped me understand how this all fits together.
... B knowing how to write Cocoa apps. With his help I was able to put together my very first app for the iPhone. He gave me a quick tour of Xcode, Interface Builder, and showed me how Objective C sends messages. At the end of about an hour we had an interface that was able to hide and reveal a text label, count the number of times that switch was toggled, increment a page counter, toggle a button bar, and increase a progress meter. It may be ugly as heck, but it really helped me understand how this all fits together.
14 July 2008
I love it when a plan comes together
Today I'm thankful for ...
... a wonderful weekend trip. I got home safe and sound pretty much right when I predicted I would. After stepping through my door I plunked down on my couch and reflected on a great visit up north.
... a wonderful weekend trip. I got home safe and sound pretty much right when I predicted I would. After stepping through my door I plunked down on my couch and reflected on a great visit up north.
13 July 2008
Plan B
Today I'm thankful for ...
... not waiting for Cousin B to get off the ferry and skipping dinner with some other relatives. It turns out B was delayed by traffic and a detour the boat needed to make, so she and I were never able to meet up. But Cousin P and husband decided to go out to dinner at a local place instead. It was a nice gathering of 6 of us.
... not waiting for Cousin B to get off the ferry and skipping dinner with some other relatives. It turns out B was delayed by traffic and a detour the boat needed to make, so she and I were never able to meet up. But Cousin P and husband decided to go out to dinner at a local place instead. It was a nice gathering of 6 of us.
12 July 2008
Long time, no see
Today I'm thankful for ...
... mom and dad keeping in touch with their families. It was because of them I was able to get the details on an uncle's 80th birthday. The evening was nothing more than visiting and eating, but it was nice to see us all there to wish D a very wonderful birthday.
... mom and dad keeping in touch with their families. It was because of them I was able to get the details on an uncle's 80th birthday. The evening was nothing more than visiting and eating, but it was nice to see us all there to wish D a very wonderful birthday.
11 July 2008
No thanks, I'm OK
Today I'm thankful for ...
... not having upgraded to the iPhone 2.0 software today. According to what I've read the AT&T servers have been down part of the day. And, since I'm traveling in Canada right now I really don't want to be stranded up here w/out any phone! Besides I'll be back in the US soon and hopefully all the kinks in the activation process will have been ironed out by then.
... not having upgraded to the iPhone 2.0 software today. According to what I've read the AT&T servers have been down part of the day. And, since I'm traveling in Canada right now I really don't want to be stranded up here w/out any phone! Besides I'll be back in the US soon and hopefully all the kinks in the activation process will have been ironed out by then.
10 July 2008
Go go spaghetti power
Today I'm thankful for ...
... only being partially hungry for dinner tonight. It turns out that I had plenty of leftovers. Since I was up late I ended up finishing all of them. It kept me going until about 3am, when my body finally quit out on me.
... only being partially hungry for dinner tonight. It turns out that I had plenty of leftovers. Since I was up late I ended up finishing all of them. It kept me going until about 3am, when my body finally quit out on me.
09 July 2008
Networking
Today I'm thankful for ...
... professionals who know other professionals. My doctor referred me to another person who is pretty awesome.
... professionals who know other professionals. My doctor referred me to another person who is pretty awesome.
08 July 2008
Quick on the draw
Today I'm thankful for ...
... having upgraded to Photoshop CS3. It really is pretty awesome and my boss and I were able to rapidly fix a number of things on an image for marketing within minutes.
... having upgraded to Photoshop CS3. It really is pretty awesome and my boss and I were able to rapidly fix a number of things on an image for marketing within minutes.
07 July 2008
Today I'm thankful for ...
... trying to reinstall iTunes. After doing the Leopard upgrade I noticed the iPhone was not syncing at all. The System Profiler did show the device as being connected, but then looking in the Console log I was seeing:
I searched around for "USBMuxListenerCreate" problems and almost nowhere did I see an appropriate solution. I was just about to give up right now when I decided to try to download iTunes again. And, what do you know? It worked! No problems syncing anymore.
... trying to reinstall iTunes. After doing the Leopard upgrade I noticed the iPhone was not syncing at all. The System Profiler did show the device as being connected, but then looking in the Console log I was seeing:
Jul 7 00:03:48 Xxxxxx [0x0-0x1e01e].com.apple.iTunes[195]: USBMuxListenerCreate: No such file or directoryI searched around for "USBMuxListenerCreate" problems and almost nowhere did I see an appropriate solution. I was just about to give up right now when I decided to try to download iTunes again. And, what do you know? It worked! No problems syncing anymore.
06 July 2008
SuperDuper saves the day ... again
Today I'm thankful for ...
... SuperDuper. This Mac OS X Tiger to Leopard upgrade sucked beyond belief. The problem: my Macbook Pro had an Apple Partition Table on it when Leopard requires a GUID Partition Table.
(I don't know if it was because this is the new 250 GB hard drive I put in recently and it may have been defaulted to the Apple Partition Table.)
So after backing up my drive to an external HDD in a USB enclosure, I went about trying to upgrade the computer. That's when it put up the error message that my computer's HDD did not have a GUID Partition Table. Well, the problem here is that to change the partitioning to the GUID way requires blanking the hard drive. Which means you have to move all the data off, then back again---to my knowledge. What complicated this is that even though SuperDuper made a bootable copy of Tiger on the external HDD, it's a USB 2.0 enclosure! And booting off of the Leopard install disk didn't let me access the USB device.
So I was in trouble yesterday after having switched my Macbook's HDD to the GUID, but my data lived off on the unreachable external drive. I ended up at Best Buy and found a Western Digital MyBook drive. When I finally got home late I was able to use the Leopard install disk to make the MyBook drive the bootable startup disk. Then running that I was able to reinstall SuperDuper and copy everything off the USB external drive back to the Macbook, and then I was able to rerun the Leopard install on the Macbook as an upgrade, not a fresh install.
Whew.
All told the time expenditure went something like this:
Of course, that doesn't include the extra time required to do all the system updates.
I'm exhausted.
... SuperDuper. This Mac OS X Tiger to Leopard upgrade sucked beyond belief. The problem: my Macbook Pro had an Apple Partition Table on it when Leopard requires a GUID Partition Table.
(I don't know if it was because this is the new 250 GB hard drive I put in recently and it may have been defaulted to the Apple Partition Table.)
So after backing up my drive to an external HDD in a USB enclosure, I went about trying to upgrade the computer. That's when it put up the error message that my computer's HDD did not have a GUID Partition Table. Well, the problem here is that to change the partitioning to the GUID way requires blanking the hard drive. Which means you have to move all the data off, then back again---to my knowledge. What complicated this is that even though SuperDuper made a bootable copy of Tiger on the external HDD, it's a USB 2.0 enclosure! And booting off of the Leopard install disk didn't let me access the USB device.
So I was in trouble yesterday after having switched my Macbook's HDD to the GUID, but my data lived off on the unreachable external drive. I ended up at Best Buy and found a Western Digital MyBook drive. When I finally got home late I was able to use the Leopard install disk to make the MyBook drive the bootable startup disk. Then running that I was able to reinstall SuperDuper and copy everything off the USB external drive back to the Macbook, and then I was able to rerun the Leopard install on the Macbook as an upgrade, not a fresh install.
Whew.
All told the time expenditure went something like this:
- Back up the Macbook to the external USB HDD via Super Duper: 5.25 hours
- Install Leopard on the MyBook drive: 35 minutes
- Copy all data back from the external USB HDD to the Macbook HDD: 3.5 hours
- Upgrade the Macbook Tiger to Leopard: 1 hour
Of course, that doesn't include the extra time required to do all the system updates.
I'm exhausted.
05 July 2008
We want to dance like crazy
Today I'm thankful for ...
... being introduced to the Red Elvises band. While almost every song has to do with drinking, they are very fun to listen to and put on a great show. Go see them!
... being introduced to the Red Elvises band. While almost every song has to do with drinking, they are very fun to listen to and put on a great show. Go see them!
04 July 2008
Give it more gas
Today I'm thankful for ...
... B not destroying my car's transmission. He learned how to drive my stickshift MINI today. We did a full hour's worth of lessons in the morning where I taught him about my "coasting" technique. He picked up the shifting thing really quickly and even got to do some extended highway/city driving. He only stalled out a few times, too.
Before he got in my car he had told me that he would never really consider driving a manual. I'm hoping this will change his mind!
... B not destroying my car's transmission. He learned how to drive my stickshift MINI today. We did a full hour's worth of lessons in the morning where I taught him about my "coasting" technique. He picked up the shifting thing really quickly and even got to do some extended highway/city driving. He only stalled out a few times, too.
Before he got in my car he had told me that he would never really consider driving a manual. I'm hoping this will change his mind!
03 July 2008
Dance all night
Today I'm thankful for ...
... another really good after-work jam session with the boss. He and I laid down an hour-long set of good music and it was recorded. I've already listened to a little bit of it and it's actually really good.
... another really good after-work jam session with the boss. He and I laid down an hour-long set of good music and it was recorded. I've already listened to a little bit of it and it's actually really good.
02 July 2008
Don't give up
Today I'm thankful for ...
... not giving up on going to tonight's photography meetup. I was really late getting there because of the baseball game, and there was no parking nearby. But I found a spot a few MUNI stops away and rode the train over. It turned to be an awesome meeting where I got some pointers on how to better photograph the products I'm shooting right now. There's a few pieces of equipment I need to get and that should totally improve the quality of the shots.
... not giving up on going to tonight's photography meetup. I was really late getting there because of the baseball game, and there was no parking nearby. But I found a spot a few MUNI stops away and rode the train over. It turned to be an awesome meeting where I got some pointers on how to better photograph the products I'm shooting right now. There's a few pieces of equipment I need to get and that should totally improve the quality of the shots.
01 July 2008
WALL-E!!!!!!!
Today I'm thankful for ...
... everyone that was able to go to the showing of WALL-E. There must have been at least 9 of us.
... everyone that was able to go to the showing of WALL-E. There must have been at least 9 of us.
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