Cracked

I finally cracked and ordered a new, actually a refurb'ed, Intel based mini to replace my hackamac Delac (dell mac) wannabe. The past two months has convinced me that the Intel is a sweet design and the mini will what I need it to do at the office. So I found a nice deal at Apple for a 1.66Ghz refurbed Mini with a gig of RAM and a hundred gig drive for 800 bucks. That is the going rate for ebay queens and this one has a year of support via Apple. That was a no-brainer.

The 17 year old was just given her new MacBook Pro for college and while the notebook is very nice (she almost didnt get back from Dad), we had a failure on the power adapter after just a couple of weeks. Two of the power pins pushed in and would not pop back out so the notebook would rarely charge without alot of effort. Apple made good on the 90 warrenty at the store and replace the brick without a problem. No fan noise that I can but then I'm half deaf from too much rock and roll (or server farms)

I'm a big fan of Mahjong and I found a version that I really like at Bonehead. The registration is something like eight bucks. Cheap entertainment for me :)

I just tried the newest OSX version of Skype and it worked very well. I did a 30 minute Skype to Skype call for a podcast (In the Trenches) and the quality of the call was excellent. Maybe they finally got it right for the Mac.

In Transit

My Intel Mac sound card doesnt work with 10.4 but I hear rumors of a patch that makes it work. But, being lazy and spying an opening to buy yet more hardware, I bought a M-Audio Transit USB sound card. Very spiffy piece of work with 24 bit sampling and fiber out or a mini plug out. The sound quality is outstanding for the 70 bucks it cost me. Used the new Intel drivers off their site and I have tunes!! I celebrated by listening to my favorite NPR station all day and felt that I had finally gotten my news fix under control.

I was able get a visit to the Google campus in Mountain View. Great people and some pretty decent perks and I'm not talking just the free lunches and Naked Juices dotting the landscape. When I see people carting around new Macs and running two or three 20 inch plus LCD monitors, plus the toys, I get geek envy :) According to the world of Google, there never was a dot.com crash, they are still living the dream and looking like they are doing well at it.

I've been playing with Evocam for the past week or so and it's a pretty neat piece of software. It has turned my iSight camera into a real webcam where it can be triggered via motion sensor, timed, streamed, saved and more. This is yet another piece of software that is cheap but reminds why Windows blows. Well written, works right away, no mess and no fuss. And did I mention cheap? And yes, that is one of my Matrix posters in my office :)






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