news from a well travelled geek » mac

new mac

sboss — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:21:00 +0000

as most of you know I am a big fan of macs. Well I just like stuff that works and works well!

I prefer EMC storage over others (most of the time). I prefer Macs over Windblows crapola. And the list goes on… So I bought an used iMac off a friend of the family and I know he takes care of his macs. So unlike buying from ebay or craigslist, I dont have to worry about the gear. So far I have turned it on, patched it, and loaded a total of 5 little apps (firefox, ecto, SubEthaEdit, growl, vlc..). Hopefully work will calm down enough that I can load it up and use it as my desktop at home.

damn I love Macs!

Apple (retail) Store experience

sboss — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:37:15 +0000

I have been an Apple fan for years now. Yeah I know that many of you know that already. I have always liked the apple retail stores but after my experience this weekend I am even more so.

So here is the story. I got tired of hearing how my parents’ wireless network wasnt working so I decided to fix it once and for all. So I went over the other day and beat upon it until it would work. Well it didnt get any better. Damn it! So after work friday I went over the the apple store@NorthPoint. I signed up for a time slot to talk to one of the geniuses. Great, I hung out and played with the new macs for a little while until it was my turn. I go up there to the genius bar and talk to Justin. Great and knowledgeable guy. I explain the problem my parents are having, talk to him about what I have tried and so forth. He wanted to show me a few things on the Airport Extreme but the store’s wireless units are locked down by corporate (IT?) and they dont have access to them to even show a customer how to do things. I think it is a mistake but I dont make those decisions. Even if they had a unit that was not hooked up to any network but the geniuses could use it to explain things to customers. But hey I dont work for apple. But Justin was able to explain a few things to me that I can try to help fix the problem. And if they didnt work, for me to come back and they would replace the Extreme unit. He even went into how I can register from home to get a time slot at the bar. Nice guy. Very professional. Very customer oriented.

Well I went to my parents house to see my dog (aka cancer dog) and to try these things. Well none of them worked. Good tries and good effort. Just no dice. So registered to go back today and see Justin (well you can not register for a particular person but I put a note to see Justin in the reservation).

Day two of the apple store. I went in a little early and hung out. Boy was it packed. Sorta like their neighbor when they have the 2 for 1 panty sale. So I was glad I had a reservation. I talked to Justin for a second when he informed me that Kirk would be taking care of me since he was working on the iPod queue. He said that he talked to Kirk about the situation so he was up to speed. Great! that is good customer service. I dont have to repeat the whole story for every person I talk to. Way to go! So Kirk and I talked about the problem and what I tried and what didnt work. He asked some new/different questions about things to do. All but one I had tried before and didnt work. He looked at my mom’s powerbook and the airport express. Then he agreed that it was the Extreme base station. He did ALL the paperwork and did all the work to get me a replacement part. All I have to do is bring paperwork & the old unit back in when they call us when the part comes in. Very easy.

They could have told me to go away about a dozen times or so since it wasnt my stuff. I didnt live at the address where it was registered or anything. But instead of finding reasons to say no. They kept looking for the positive outcome for the customer. All within the bounds of their jobs/policy. Service like that will keep people coming back in over and over again.

Linkin Park @ Apple

sboss — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:09:51 +0000

Last night Linkin Park played at one of the Apple Stores, recording music.

Supposedly Apple recorded them for a “special set” that will be offered in the near future on iTunes. There is rumors that Maroon 5 will be doing the same thing soon.

Apple Insider, Digg, MacRumors, MacNN, Apple Insider (pre-show article)

VIM & Perl tidbit

sboss — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:26:57 +0000

All of us can use tidbits of knowledge or help every now and then.

For all of use that use PERL a lot (which is me!), then any tidbit of help we can get is great!. From this article, we get the tidbit below.

If you’re primarily a Perl hacker and don’t use C much, you might find it annoying when you hit ‘K’ in command mode. That’s because VIM runs something like this:

    nmap K :Map

I’ve just added the following to my .vimrc:

    noremap K :!perldoc   perldoc -f

Now when you type ‘K’ in command mode, it will call up the appropriate perldoc, if possible.

OpenOffice goes Native on Mac

sboss — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:59:09 +0000

The OpenOffice folks just announced that in OOv3 they will got native on the Mac platform.

here are some links about going native.

winandmac.com
digg

here is the v3.0 release schedule.

Mac and VIM

sboss — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:18:35 +0000

the Mac has always had a command line version if vi(m). But now it has a gui version (like Windows does).

MacVIM is it. I am using it now, and WOW! I am soo glad it is here.

here is the screenshot from the homepage (and NO it is not mine!)

Writer’s Tools

sboss — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:05:32 +0000

Dmitri Popov from Tumbling Writer has written a nice plugin/extention for OpenOffice.

Download the latest plugin. It works on Mac, and Windows (and who knows what other platforms).

No Valve for Macs!

sboss — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:37:55 +0000

The rumors are flying on why there is no Valve on Macs.

The rumors say that it is a Apple issue and some say it is a Valve issue. Here is an article that talks about it.

Leopard?

sboss — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:50:16 +0000

The rumors are flying that Apple will release Leopard at the end of Oct.

Mac Rumors states an overview of the rumors. Apple Insider says it will be the during the week of 22-27. Think Secret actually picks Oct 26th as the day. Now I can only hope that it comes out this soon. I have played with the pre-release of it and it rocks! I like the new interface!

Mac Apps updates

sboss — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:48:19 +0000

Microsoft is upgrading some important tools for the Mac.

Microshaft has updated Remote Desktop to v2.0 which is actually v6 in the Windows world. This is good news. It brings them to equal pairings (or at least on paper it is). It is Beta still but that shouldnt be too bad The other thing deals with the converting tool for OOXML on the Mac.