I bought this computer as a replacement for my main work machine. Previously, I had been a full time employee at a start up, with no company provided computer and needed the mobility to have a computer for school, consulting, and my main day job. In December, I joined a larger software development corporation in town and was provided a PC to work off of. Having always wanting the desktop iMac, and being out of school, I purchased one for a casual computer at home and my consulting machine.

This morning I went in to check email and noticed that the computer had frozen up and would not respond, and also noticed that the fans were going full blast. I did a hard reset of the hardware and walked away, assuming all was fine. Coming back some time later, the iMac had booted to the terrifying missing system icon folder. After using the restore disk to run some quick tests, Disk Utility confirmed that the iMac could not find a hard drive at all.

I pulled out the trusty iPad, now serving as my only computer device (an iPhone does not count, no matter how productive you might be on yours, I am not) and made a reservation at the concierge desk for later this afternoon. Upon arriving at the local Apple Store, an employee promptly greeted me and took the very heavy 27″ iMac from me to the genius bar, much to my delight.

A few minutes after arriving and checking in, I was talking to the genius. A few questions and a diagnostic test later, the genius confirmed that the hard drive had failed in the unit. Much to my relief, he said that the repair could be easily performed in house and wouldn’t take but a few minutes. Up until this point I was convinced the unit we be shipped off, as the front glass & display has to be removed to get to the hard drive.

The genius looked up the serial number of my iMac and confirmed, that yes I had only had the unit for 7 weeks and it was still under warranty. I had even purchased Apple Care on the product. At this point however, I was told that the store did not stock that hard drive, and the part would have to be ordered. I conveyed my dismay at this decision, as this was only a hard dive replacement, and not a more specified part, such as a logic board, display, or graphics board. And, that I use this machine for my consulting work – so having to wait for the part & repairs was going to cost me several hundred dollars.

The genius did offer me a list of three other authorized Apple service providers in town which could provide the warranty work on the machine, possibly faster than the Apple Store. Being a Sunday afternoon, none of these places were open, so I opted to leave the massive machine at the store and await for the part to come in.

Obviously the best experience would have been to have the computer serviced while I waited, but I am rather bummed that I did not have the option of using a loaner machine or having the unit simply swapped out for another one in store right then. For this experience, I rate the Apple Store at 7/10 stars for helping me with a problem after purchase. The employees seemed very understanding and helpful, but I simply did not receive the service I expect for paying two thousands dollars less than two months ago on a machine.

What are your experiences with the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store?

Tip Counter lets you easily track your tips earned per shift, across multiple jobs. With this app, never wonder what you’re bringing home. Tip Counter has powerful, yet simplistic views for showing your average hourly income or total income for the current week, current month, 7 days, 30 days, current year or all time.

To be the first using this fun new app, sign up for the beta on testflightapp. You can also check out the teaser website at http://www.tipcounterapp.com!

Overview

I create custom web applications for a living and found myself needing a common toolset across projects.  I looked into existing frameworks such as Kohana, CakePHP, and CodeIgnitor – but ultimately found they were still slightly too complex for my needs and the level of understanding I needed to create robust and reliable applications time and again.  In addition to that, I am responsible for maintaining roughly 6 years worth of prior development work based upon an in-house framework and wanted to carry over as much of the old framework as possible to help myself and future developers in the company.

PharosPHP

Unfortunately, my original goal of maintaining as much of the previous code base became less and less achievable as the framework matured under my care due to the inflexibility and poor-foresight when the framework was developed several years prior.  Currently, there is roughly 20% original code/concept in the framework, but much of the philosophy for simple web application development has been preserved and improved upon.

Ruby on Rails and CodeIgnitor were both huge inspirations for this framework.  RoR has a very elegant, simple, “convention over configuration” approach to application development and PharosPHP adopted this approach 100%.  The framework is lightweight and transparent enough to allow developers to understand what is going on deep inside the core, but encourages developers to leave it alone and just use the defaults – application development will be faster and uniform across projects with this approach.

Features

The PharosPHP framework focuses on providing a core set of functionality to developers, upon which most web applications can be built quickly and reliably.  A list of the included technologies, methodologies and projects include:

• PHP Active Record
• jQuery
• SWFUpload
• PHP Quick Profiler
• RMail
• YAML
• MSFT Excel support
• Apple PLIST support
• TinyMCE

These projects bring several features to PharosPHP, and in addition PharosPHP provides:

• MVC architecture
• RoR style models, via PHP Active Record (requires PHP 5.3+)
• View rendering, buffering, partials, layouts
• Fully configurable Routing API
• Core System Actions (Hooks) API
• framework / application code separation
• Authentication framework
• Robust caching framework
• Modules API for distributing plugins

Open Source Project

PharosPHP is an open source project hosted on GitHub.  If you are interested in contributing or using PharosPHP for your next application development project, please go grab yourself a copy or get started contributing today!

Get Started

To get started with PharosPHP today, head on over to http://www.PharosPHP.com for more information, code examples, and documentation!

News sites and tech blogs especially will be providing tons of coverage of the new device and macfanatic is no exception here. I just purchased a 32GB model from my local Apple Store earlier this morning. In fact, I’m typing this review in the updated WordPress application for iPad.

I had not actually planned on purchasing an iPad on launch day, and had not taken the time to pre order or reserve one at the apple store. However, after making my way through a crowd to get to a device and play with it for a few minutes, there was no question in my mind about purchasing one.

First Impressions

My first reaction when picking up the gorgeous device was how heavy it was. Apple lists the device at over a pound, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But when picking an iPad up, the weight is more than one would expect. Not that this is a bad thing. Actually, it gives the device a very expensive and secure feeling. I wouldn’t intentionally harm the device, but i think it could take a pretty good beating before giving up the ghost.

The aluminum back is simply superb. The feel of the device in your hands is what the whole experience is all about. Just holding such a huge touch screen device and having the content be your entire focus and “experience”.

The keyboard is quite easy to get used to, in landscape mode. It’s very close to a real life macbook keyboard, but just off enough to make me keeping making a few typos. I’m having to train myself to think where the key would be on a normal keyboard and not on my iPhone keyboard after all these years of typing on an iPhone.

Conclusion

Overall, the device is absolutely stellar so far. I highly encourage everyone to pick up a $40 Apple branded case. It’s actually quite a wonderful case and all the positions it allows you use the device in makes it an absolute must. My local apple store was actually about out of this accessory already. I picked up one of the last 5.

You still might have time to pick yourself up an iPad if you didn’t pre order or reserve one like me. This is a purchase that I’m looking forward to playing with for time to come. If you are one of the lucky ones to already have yourself one, I’d love to hear your first impressions!

v1.0.2 brings:

• NEW: Comments/Ratings are now instantly displayed in application. No longer waiting on moderation.
• NEW: About & Support areas under the “Share” tab
• NEW: Smart date & time display throughout application, such as “3 minutes ago” & “4 hours ago” on reviews and jokes
• NEW: When browsing jokes in the detail view, shows “1 of 74″ instead of the joke name for clarity
• NEW: User is prompted to leave a rating on iTunes App Store after installing application (maximum of 3 times)
• FIXED: When writing a review, the stars rating control is now reset to 0 every time
• FIXED: Submitting a review with no text is now accepted
• FIXED: When browsing jokes, and selecting an item, the scroll position is saved. Previously the list would be at the top when the user returned to the listing
• FIXED: Application crashed when tapping on a joke from searching, and then going back to search results
• FIXED: The up/down navigation buttons in the joke detail view now correctly take you through search results
• FIXED: Fixed bug that didn’t pass user information along when submitting a new joke
• FIXED: Users are no longer prompted to register after being asked 3 times
• FIXED: Several user interface refinements

This release brings several nice “tweaks” to the app, such as relative times when browsing jokes and reviews.  Previously, you were presented with static times like “Mar 02, 2010 3:10pm”.  Now, times are converted in facebook style (using the exact code from the open source facebook project three20 actually) to achieve times such as “3 hours ago” or “just a moment ago”.

As always, if you run into any bugs, be sure to shoot me an email and let me know!  If you haven’t gotten a copy of the only application delivering That’s What She Said Jokes to your iPhone & iPod Touch, be sure to check it out in the iTunes App Store now!

Links

That’s What She Said Jokes [iTunes Store Link]

Three20 Project

Be sure to check out all the features of the only application for iPhone and iPod Touch delivering Thats What She Said Jokes to your device on the official site at http://twss.macfanatic.net

For more information about the application and to sign up to be emailed once the application is live on the store, visit the That’s What She Said Jokes site at: http://twss.macfanatic.net/

I’d love to hear some feedback on the site design and can’t wait to get this application into your hands!

From the App Store description:

That’s What She Said Jokes is the perfect companion for your iPhone or iPod Touch. Browse both user submitted and featured scenarios focusing on That’s What She Said! Get involved by submitting your own That’s What She Said funnies and commenting and rating hilarious entries submitted by others just like you!

I’ll be submitting the application for review later today and then the wait is on the App Store review team. Hopefully the app will be for sale later this week, at $0.99USD.

You can tweak the infection time and speed the zombies travel.  Then let the simulator go and listen to the screams and moans as your city becomes overrun with zombies!

Start playing now!

I’d welcome any critique of the design!

From MTV:

The rapper stormed the stage just after the first award, for Best Female Video, was presented to Taylor Swift. He cut the teen singer off, grabbing the mic and protesting in support of Beyoncé.

“I’m sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time,” he proclaimed as B looked on from the crowd, stunned.

I just can’t get over this. The young performer walks out on stage to accept an award (no idea if it’s her first) and he has the balls to get up on stage and take the microphone FROM HER HANDS and take that opportunity to share the love for Beyonce. There are only two explanations for his actions in my mind: he’s strung out on drugs, or he is as stupid as rocks and has no perception of human decency and public relations.

VMA video footage

MTV article

I’m sure there is better footage available, but the first two videos I found were removed from YouTube before I could finish writing this blog post.  Who knows if this one will stick for more than 10 minutes.

My favorite band by far has to be Three Days Grace. I connect with their music in so many ways and just love the sound. The previous album, One-X, was a pretty nice success compared to the ones before it and I have been eagerly awaiting another album since 2005.

September 22 is the date to remember for the new album titled “Life Starts Now”. I’m hoping it turns out to be as amazing as I hope. Let me know if you’re a 3DG fan as well!

http://www.threedaysgrace.com/

Digital Media Graphix

First and foremost, I’ve been hired doing software development with a design firm here in town, called Digital Media Graphix. It has been fairly exciting so far and I’m looking forward to projects that are about to pushed onto my plate here in the next week. So far I dived head first into writing native installers for Windows and Mac, and that was actually a good bit of fun. I’ve done some troubleshooting with Ajax and PHP bugs and meddled with helping the other designers in house organize a project so it will be easier to code and maintain. 

Overall, it seems like a great fit for my personality, as the staff is relaxed and talented. There is one full time programmer specializing in Flash, AIR, Javascript, etc and I’m the apprentice, bringing useful C, C++, and Cocoa skills to the table. It’s a great first time job and I’m loving the experience and the challenge.

MacBook

I sold my trusty first generation black MacBook to a friend after the launch of the newest aluminum ones in mid October and haven’t looked back.  I absolutely love this computer and it is more than I’ve ever expected from a Mac.  The solid and sexy all aluminum enclosure, beautiful and bright glass covered display, and the sexy backlit keyboard all remind me why I love using Macs.  I highly recommend this for anyone debating whether to get a previous generation MacBook for a discounted price.  The newer versions are so much better and worth the extra 300USD.

Podcasting

It hit me today that it has been 14 months since I last produced a podcast episode. I never acknowledged the fact that I was finished with podcasting and I wanted to take the quick moment here to thank everyone who made the podcast such a success. I truly enjoyed working on it and all the listeners are what helped propel this site into the position it is in today.

If you truly miss it that much, get in contact with me. I’m looking at ways of reviving the podcast, and would love to have suggestions, or better yet, a helping hand in the project.

Facade

I’m impatiently awaiting the debut of a new theming application for Leopard, called Facade.  It looks very promising, integrating full theme management and application, along with an innovative “Theme Store” for content delivery (still have some free themes).  Definitely worth taking a look at.

Cappuccino

I can’t stress enough how amazing this framework is.  Seriously, I put my full weight behind Cappuccino and I’m working hard on a few demo applications and tutorials to hopefully publish before New Years.  I think SproutCore is certainly a viable competitor and love the competition between the two.  However, Cappuccino has changed how I approach large web development projects.

Certainly take a look at my introductory article on Cappuccino here (June 2008).

Obama

I’m both relieved and disappointed that the presidential elections are over.  I rather enjoyed the useless news coverage, and later in the campaign, the wonderfully amusing Palin.  However, I hope the American people can unite behind Obama and ultimately bring change.  Rather cliche´, but I’m okay with it.

If you’re looking for help with a Cocoa, iPhone, or web project, or have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.  I have a few ideas myself and have one in development, but I’m still up for more to take on.  Look forward to hearing from everyone!

The Lambda Student Union of the University of Tennessee is holding an event in Market Square, on Sunday April 6th, from 1-10pm. Women bands will perform all afternoon and evening, benefiting local charities and organizations. The event is free and open to the public.

Hope to see you there!

Please educate yourself on the candidates and vote!

For more information, visit the World AIDS Day Campaign website.

1 week early I gave the guy the files and the site went live. Overall it was an awesome experience. Was my first time working with a client and working under a time restraint. I was given a featureset and I had to implement all that. In the end I was able to throw in a trick or two and get it done early, all of which pleased the guy to no end.

If you’re interested in taking a look at the work, you can check the site out over here. The site is for a new podcast with multiple shows, called MacLive. There is a teaser episode right now which you can listen to from the homepage. Be sure to read up a little on each episode and browse around.

NOTE: At the time of writing this, the site owner still hasn’t edited some text on a few pages or got the online store working yet. He wanted the site as it was to at least have something up and will edit the other pages as the information comes available. Just saving myself a little embarassment there.

A lot has happened with the Mac community in the last month or so, I don’t have the time or memory to accurately recall everything that has transpired. Of note, however, is that the AppleTVs have shipped and Leopard should be ready for a release within the next few months. Something worth getting excited over!

School and just life in general has been pretty insane these last few weeks. Everything is starting to die down a bit, but I’m trying to take some more personal time to just enjoy life than I have in the past, and that tends to be very time consuming in itself. I have had some time to tie up a lot of loose ends and get started in a few other areas, and I’d like to share that.

Photos
I’m working through a basic photography book and looking to book a class this summer on photography. I have also been using Aperture for several months now and it has been in the queue for a review. Since it will still be several weeks before I get around to reviewing it, I just thought I would say that it is an incredible piece of software and I especially love the vaults feature. More to come on that topic later. I have posted a gallery of my favorite pictures from my trip to Charleston, SC as well as some other general photos I like online. You can view those here. Paul, I’d especially like any comments as you have a photography blog of your own.

Software
Let me just start out by saying that my current computer class has been a real challenge. Computer Organization is the name of the game and the class focuses on digital logic, processor performance and pipelining, memory management, and the ARM assembly language. Just to say up front, I despise writing in assembly. Read in between the lines. HATE it. However, I have learned a lot and the class has been a real challenge.

Also of note here is that I have stopped development on Viewer and removed it from the site. I put a lot of work into the project, but in the end it was very sloppy and poorly written. Without the time or motivation to rework my previous work and with a lack of general interest, I’ve put it on the back burner and left it to die. On a rainy day with time on my hands and an interest in revising and revisiting past projects, I might take it up again, but I doubt it.

So the good news here, I’ve started a new project! I’ve worked through the general game-play logic and written my base code or a Phase 10-like game. I love the card game and just went through and realized that I could create almost everything needed on my own, except for the interface. So, in a few weeks I should have basic Terminal-based game play down and then I will embark on an adventure of learning all about custom drawing in Cocoa!

You’re more than welcome to leave comments or send email and I’ll make a valiant effort to respond. Peace out, I hope to start writing more by mid-April if not earlier.

Thanks to all of the regular listeners and contributers to the site. It’s great to get emails from everyone and feedback, so keep that coming. I also hope to be posting a few articles from listeners that have wrote in with awesome ideas, applescripts, automator actions, etc. Those will be going up once I type and edit some more, asking for approval of my changes, etc.

Of further note, if anyone is a member of a student organzation on any campus that is Mac oriented or if you have been involved in any MUG (Mac User Group) before, please send me an email so we can talk. I have contacted my campus’s Apple Representative and finally receieved a response that there is no such group available on my campus and we’ve been talking a bit, with the possibility of me heading one up. I’d just like to get some feedback and ideas from anyone else if they have went through anything similar before.

If anyone knows of any other way to accomplish this, I’d love to hear it. I need to use an interactive website for one of my classes and this method sucks since I have to quit and change settings just to use it and the browser eats up a lot of memory and is slower under Rosetta.

The book is entitled Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’m really excited about the release and can’t wait to get my hands on a copy. Let me know if you are a Harry Potter fan as well and what you’d like to see in the last installment of this amazing series.

Press Announcement here.

The awesome TV show Heroes returns with new episodes tonight on NBC. If you haven’t been watching this show, you need to find some reruns and watch the beginning episodes. I believe that they play on the Sci-Fi channel on Friday nights sometime. This show has an awesome plot line with tons of shrouded motives and mystery, always keeping you on the edge of your seat and waiting for next week.

Read more about this awesome show at NBC here.

First off, the site has been online for one year now. We haven’t been with this domain for a year yet, that’s in February if I’m not mistaken, but I’ve been working on the site for a year. That’s a big accomplishment, I was excited and enthusiastic, but never quite thought that I would be renewing my hosting and domain name with such success and a loyal following as everyone has allowed. I truly appreciate it.

I have finally torn myself away from a few other ongoing projects, as well as my vacation, to finish the last of the site changes that I started at the beginning of December. The site has an updated favicon, new podcast icon, and the Downloads page is once again in business. I believe that about wraps up all of the stuff that I needed to get accomplished.

I am working on a podcast shortly, I should have lots of announcements and cool stuff this week, if everything pans out as I hope, so stay tuned. Of note is this next podcast I will be reviewing the first product that I haven’t personally purchased. I will be reviewing a piece of software because the company contacted me and requested that I review it, so this is a very big step for us!

Apple filed a bunch of financial reports because it’s the end of the year and it still looks like Jobs is in the clear. I have to wonder who is going down for this, surely there will have to be some criminal charges brought against someone, it wasn’t an accident that this was allowed to continue for nine years.

iTunes and iPods did very well this holiday season. My brother had several friends which received iPods this year and I know several others as well. This is easily confirmed by the fact that there were millions of hits on the Apple site on Christmas day because people were trying to download iTunes and setup their iPods. The iTunes store is still feeling the effects as downloads are downright slow as of this writing.

For those that remember, my Macbook battery issue has been resolved with a replacement. I bought this black Macbook within a week of the initial launch and started having issues about two months ago with a four month old battery. The computer would die with about one hour of battery life remaining (according to the OS), making me curse several times as I lost data on the shutdowns. There was a discussion in the Apple Discussions about this issue and several other users reported receiving a new battery fixed the issue. This was true for me as well.

Finally, I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and have a very safe New Years Eve as we look forward to 2007. May 2007 see the safe return of our troops.

Great. So you hate reading about Apple stories, yet you take the time to leave comments on one. Makes complete sense in a way, but aren’t you complaining to the wrong group of people at that point?

There were other comments in between these two, but basically it’s a back and forth anti-Microsoft, anti-Apple related stuff. I mean, I dislike using a PC, but I don’t go around using foul language and talking bad about their products. I’m intelligent enough to have an informed conversation with someone over the pros/cons of both platforms and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether MSFTdaBomb38 thinks that Apple products are horrible or not.

Bottom line? Just how childish is this? If the hardcore Windows users are so fed up with the amount of Apple-related content that is on digg (and there is enough to keep me reading, otherwise I would move on) why don’t they create their own Windows-centric kinda place and be happy there together? Just my thoughts…

You can read the comments and digg the article I’m referring to here.

YouTube Link

Please provide feedback. The final decision is still up to me and the artwork is subject to evolve a bit before I hit the final version of the code. However, I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on the artwork. My major concern is whether or not the pom-pom really looks like one….

The Version I’m most serious about is directly below.

This last image is one that I played around with before adding the pennant to the image. Just looking for thoughts.

Anything that I am doing wrong? My Macbook isn’t 6 months old, but I suppose the 94 load cycles is pretty close to what it should be. However, just last night I was at 83% battery capactiy and this morning I’m at 58%. That leaves me with an estimate usage (from the menu bar) of a grand total of 1 hour and 40 minutes. That’s even if I get past the one hour mark before it dies.

“UMG refused to license its music to the Zune unless it could receive a percentage of each device sold, in addition to standard music licensing fees for downloads and subscriptions.”

That right there has some issues because evidently the music groups are getting even greedier than before. Are they going to start boycotting their customers? Let’s not sell music because we don’t get enough money from it….

Then the punch line, “These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”

This just infuriates me and makes me wonder who in the world put this guy in charge of a company. I’m not a business owner, but I’m pretty sure that you aren’t supposed to nationally upset your current customers, let alone any potential ones. I admit to having music that I haven’t purchased in my library. However, that is a very small percentage. I wasn’t in the whole Napter/mp3 thing way back, I just bought the CDs that I liked and ripped them on my computer. Then iTunes came around and for the ease/quality/price, I was hooked. Heck, I even PAY to get most of my TV shows from the iTunes Store. Don’t even get me started on the amount of money I’ve spent on Law and Order: SVU, Bones, or various other music singles and albums. Evidently I’m a thief because I own an iPod however.

I don’t want to make anyone else angry, but I could justify this a bit if we were talking strictly about Windows using iPod owners. To generalize, Windows users aren’t as excited about their computer and don’t have as much offense about downloading anything, ie, pirating software. However, I don’t know of any Mac users that pirate software. The software on the Mac is great and I, for one, am more than happy to pay the shareware developers when they have done a good job.

All in point though, it is just horribly business practice to publicly come out and say that your past buyers are theives. I’m not going to boycott the label simply because I don’t wanna make the effort. I’ll continue to make my purchases from the iTunes Store. However, I sure as hell won’t be buying any CDs ever again and if I do happen to notice that UMG is the group behind that hot single I want, well, I might just take them up it and become a statistic of theirs.

Found via digg | Read Article

Getting back to my short story though, when I was younger my Dad purchased a AMT/ERTL model from the second movie. We moved around several times (my Dad is a retired US Marine) and it took forever to get the thing built, but I love it so much because it’s something that we did together and just brings back fond memories. All that said the car itself looks like crap and is literally falling apart. So, since I have time to do as I wish for the next bit as how I’m in between jobs, I thought that I would pick up the hobby from my younger years and look for another model to do. Easier said than done.

As it turns out, you can easily find a diecast model made by Sun Star or Wellys straight off the DeLorean website. Finding a true model kit is a lot harder. The only one currently produced is made by Polar Lights and this kit is one of those snap-together, no paint, no glue, no fun required models for the kids of today that have no patience. Don’t even get me started. So, to find a kit that was worth putting together, I ended up looking to eBay to either find a Japanese made kit that were supposedly made up until a few years back, or maybe to find an original AMT/ERTL kit.

I ran across the Back to the Future: Trilogy Pack on eBay giving me all three models in one box. One from the first movie, the one from the second that has the flying wheels and the Mr. Fusion, and the last one being the wild-west fitted DeLorean. I can’t wait for my shipment to arrive in the mail. Now I have to go out and buy all of my supplies again as my paint, etc has went bad years ago. The joy of being a kid again! Below are a few pics from the eBay post just to get everyone excited.

The model from the second movie (and the original one that I put together so many years ago) will look like this:

Links: DeLorean Website

I ask that you please not laugh. However, I think the colors turned out nicely and it’s actually kinda pretty. What you would use if for is beyond me, but this is my own work and I’m proud of it!

I was using my Macbook Friday night when it suddenly just froze up. I waited awhile and couldn’t get any response from the unit, so I held the power button down until it turned off and then tried to restart it. I waited for what seemed forever and didn’t get past the white startup screen (before the Apple logo however) so I powered off and tried again. No luck. I tried one more time, but this time left the unit alone for about 5 minutes. When I came back I had the blinking question mark over the folder. No System folder found. Just great.

I read around on the internet some for suggestions. I tried resetting the PRAM. I tried resetting the PMU. I meditated. Finally I booted off my Restore DVD and went into Disk Utility. The harddrive didn’t even show up there at all, so I couldn’t verify or repair the disk. I used Terminal and didn’t see it mounted at all in /dev, so I was getting wary about the actual health of the disc by then.

I finally got fed up and just went and booted into Leopard off of my external hard drive and messed around more in there. I was hoping to find a way to grab some data off of the drive because I had been coding an application for a class and was at about 600 lines of code when the thing died. I was out of luck as I couldn’t even mount the drive. I was going to try and hook it up some other way (I have a IDE to USB and laptop IDE to USB cable tucked away for just the emergencies) but I forgot that this is a serial drive. So, I just decided to work off of Leopard for the rest of the night and pray I didn’t have a power outage and then go to the Apple Store in the morning.

The guy at the counter was really nice and let me talk first before interrupting me and asking me questions that I was telling him the answers to begin with. He was very knowledgeable and made me feel respected and that is a big thing for me. I spent a lot of time Friday night trying to work the problem out myself. If I had went into the store and the guy had cut me off short and then did all the stuff that I did to come back 45 minutes later and inform me that the drive was physically bad, I would have been upset. Not the case however. The nice Mac Genius listened and then said, “Sure sounds like the drive is bad.” He then offered to try to get the drive to mount in another laptop just to make sure it wasn’t my laptop’s serial connection or anything internally, which pleased me because he wasn’t taking any shortcuts.

After affirming the drive was indeed dead, he offered to replace it if he had one in stock. I was about to get upset at this point because I needed my Macbook back ASAP so I could code that afternoon and couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Thankfully he had another hard drive in stock and replaced it quickly. We then booted the Mac off of a firewire drive with Tiger installed just to make sure my Macbook read the drive okay, I signed a warranty paper, and I was out the door.

Overall this had potential to be a very nasty experience. I wished that I could have retrieved some data off of the drive (I had made a backup of stuff on Monday of that week, so I wasn’t out that much) but the time to get the drive processed wasn’t worth the effort as I wouldn’t need anything off of it by then. I’m also not sure if there would have been a fee involved or not. I wonder…

I’m glad to have my Macbook back up and running and I have to say that I’m very pleased with the service I received at the Apple Store. Too bad I they turned me down for a Mac Specialist position, I would have been very happy working there!

I was at the local Apple Store this past weekend and ran across a great deal on an older iMac. I have been in other stores before and seen stuff available for clearance, but I had no idea that Apple did such a thing. I was in the store getting my Macbook repaired at the Genius bar and my brother just happened to spot the box under a table with some other marked down batteries and such.

We walked over and took a look at it as I experienced sticker shock, but because it was so cheap. This computer was originally the 1299 model and here it was several hundred dollars less, almost 50% off. I’ve never seen discounts like that on products. So, after sitting at the bar a little longer, I decided that it might be a good replacement for the aging eMac or the Dell tower that my mom has and add another Mac to the family.

For that amazing price I ended up taking home a 17″ 1.83Ghz Core Duo iMac with the ATI X1600 graphics card, 160Gb hard drive and 1G of ram. It’s in beautiful shape without any scratches or anything you would expect from the unit being a demo model at the store. Plus I still have a one year warranty on it.

All that said we did have one or two small issues with the computer when we first set it up. It was my first time using the Transfer Assistant and we just used that to setup the iMac. I’m assuming that some of the issues we had were because of this. The one or two that were pretty major, the iSight not working and the wireless dying every 5 minutes and not working until after a restart, were solved by applying a boot rom update back from April. Someone had updated the SMC firmware to the latest, but hadn’t done the boot rom and that seems to have fixed the unit and all is well. Looks like a great deal and I hope that we have a good experience with it.

All that being said I’ve got an episode about 1/2 way recorded when I find time to polish and release it. I’m having issues getting up with the Cha-Ching developer, Juan Alvarez and getting him to talk with me, so I’m not sure if that interview will be pulled off or not. I’m hoping to get that interview out to everyone this upcoming weekend, but I’ll have to play it by ear. Once again, sorry for the lack of everything and I’ll try to make a few posts a bit later in the week after I get some school stuff done. Thanks for bearing with me.

Download your free 21 day demo of PathFinder 4 here.

I’ve lost a bit of data because of this and it’s getting on my nerves.  As long as I watch the battery and don’t let it get below the 1 hour mark, I seem to be just fine.  However, I’d like to know what has made the computer just recently start this.  I guess it’s time to try and maybe reset the PMU and if that doesn’t work, off to the Apple Store and my local Genius Bar.  Yeah (sarcasm).

Other problem that is aggravating me is my upgrade to XCode 2.4.  I was able to use the app just fine for one night, then the computer died because of low battery life, and now I can’t get the app to run at all.  The only thing that I can find that won’t hang the app is using the “About” box, everything else, opening projects, reading text files, just messing with the Preferences, locks it up cold turkey.  I installed this release off of my September Developer DVD, so right now I’m at the library using the campus bandwidth to download the almost 1 gig disk image and see if a reinstall with this one helps.

Last little bit of complaining is totally unrelated to my Mac, but we’ve been without power since about 7pm last night when a storm took out our side of the street (about 7 houses total).  I went to bed early and didn’t get anything accomplished, so I came down to school early this morning to get some work done.  Haven’t heard anything from the power company and no one has showed up as of 10:15 this morning.  I know the people have lives, so I wasn’t really upset when they didn’t show up during the night or anything, but at 10:15 in the morning, the work day has already started a few hours ago.  Only thing I can assume is that there must be other places that lost power that were a larger area than us.  I hope it’s on when I go home today, or I’m never going to get anything accomplished.

The author goes on to vent and rant about how bad this guy has it.  He has a few kids and a beatup Chevy van with 130,000 on it.  However, he also had the money to attend all the Panther’s games, buy other season related stuff, and manufacture a few thousand custom bobble-head dolls based on himself.  Sounds like he could have went out and bought himself a Ford Focus if he wanted to.  So, while it was wrong for Fox Sports to treat a guy like that, I still don’t think that he should get a new car just to make the public happy.

 Read the artcile here.

The controversy this week has been over a new feature added that allows you to easily see what has been going on in your social network.  I’m going to take the time to argue against that here.

There have been groups formed and angry words already thrown over this feature that was just implemented about 2 days ago at most.  I for one really like it though.  It’s based on a cool web technology (RSS) and lets me see when my friends add some photos to their page, make comments, leave messages, etc.  I’m not exactly sure why this is stalking because I could get the same information if I just went to their page directly and took the time to look around and see what had changed and what had been added.  However, having several friends, I don’t have the time to do this.  I don’t know when someone gets around to finally posting pictures from their summer trip, etc.

I like this feature, I think it’s very cool and lets me keep up with what is going on with people that aren’t in my immediate “talk-on-the-phone” everyday kinda thing.  Some of these people I don’t have classes with anymore and this is about the only way that I get to stay in touch.  Any little thing to help that along is appreciated by me.

With all that said, I was going to post some pictures of what it looks like.  But then I got to thinking how long it would take me to blur out alll the names, so I’m skipping on that.  What angers me is that people argue that this is an invasion of privacy.  All the users have posted this information so that people can see it.  Only people that are labeled as your “friends” are going to be able to see the information, and it’s information that was already available, if not just a bit more obscure to see the changes.  So, long story short, I’m imagining this feature will probably be deactivated here shortly as I haven’t met anyone else that likes it and the groups online have mustered up thousands of members for destroying the new feature as soon as possible.  If you’re on facebook, be sure to search for the one group titled “I love the new mini-feed” as that’s the only one (with a riveting 53 members) that is in support of the mini-feed.  Alas, sometimes I just want to slap people instead of debate….

1. Don’t drive 1 in 5. This means that one day out of the week… carpool, bike, or ride public transportation to work. C’mon, just one day… you can do it. If it works out well, add more days.

2. Keep your fridge full. An empty refrigerator uses more energy. If you’re not keeping it full with food, keep it full with gallon-jugs of water.

3. Turn stuff off. It’s easy to remember to turn big things off, like lights or TVs , but don’t forget about the small stuff… like VCR, DVD, computer speakers, and printers. If they’re on, they’re using energy, even if you aren’t actively using them.

4. Stop that Junk Mail. Junk mail wastes tons of paper every day, and you don’t want it anyway. Here’s some info about having your name removed from junk mail lists.

5. Take your own bags to the grocery store. Canvas tote bags work great, but you can also take back the plastic bags that your got from your last trip to the store. Reuse them over and over, and then recycle them. Many stores give you a small discount for bringing your own bags.

6. Water at night. If you water your lawn and other outdoor plants at night, or early in the morning, you’ll lose less water to evaporation, so you’ll be able to water less.

7. Run appliances at night. Many electric companies actually lower their rates during off-peak hours. Running your dishwasher or washer/dryer at night, can save you some money, and reduce the amount of electricity that the power-plant needs to generate. Check with your power company for a list of off-peak hours.

8. Do full loads. When you do run your dishwasher or washer/dryer, make sure they’re full. running a half-full dishwasher is very wasteful.

9. Maximize trash bags. Wait till your trash is full before taking it out. The less bags you put into a landfill, the better.

10. Recycle! Most cities offer recycling programs. Recycle everything you can… at home, and at work. There’s no sense filling up a landfill with items that can be recycled. If your work doesn’t offer a recycling program, start one.

Like I said, these are things everyone can do. You don’t have to go out and buy a new hybrid car, or energy efficient appliances to make a difference. Although, those things are good too.

You can check out Paul’s new blog, called A Green Idea here.

The season finale was awesome and I’ll be missing it until it comes back on next summer.  Be sure to check it out in the iTMS.  Also wanted to let everyone know that the season premiere for L&O SVU is going to be September 19th.  I can’t wait.

Apple is constantly recalling batteries from previous generation laptops, with the FCC just clearing the 15″ Macbook Pro batteries today.  Dell is constantly recalling batteries and reports of one burning down a guy’s house circulated the net a few days back.

So, how hard is it to build a battery that doesn’t explode?  Just food for thought.

However, I wanted to format the drive to get two partions and just get rid of all the junk that was on it.  This is where the problem comes in.  The mac wouldn’t even recognize the disk, so I had to “initialize” it in Windows.  Then Disk Utility sees the disk and it just needs to be partitioned.  Leaving that alone, it will hang up in about 5 seconds and never does a thing, and I’ve left it alone for about 12 hours at the longest stretch.  Nothing.

I’ve read all over the net about problems like this with Firewire enclousures and can’t find a firmware update or anything to my case (Vantec NexStar GX).  So, just wondering if anyone has any suggestions, possibly another partitioning program available for the Mac?  I want an HFS+ partition, but just can’t get it.  Also, I read that a couple people got it working simply by using the version of Disk Utility that comes with Panther instead of Tiger.  Any truth to that?

I have some big news to share with everyone. I was asked to join the staff over at macCompanion a few days ago and the process is pretty much complete. So, it looks like I’ll be writing a techy-column for the monthly web based magazine, with the occasional review thrown in. I should have my first appearance in the September issue. If you haven’t heard of the site, it’s a pretty big deal. Head on over here and check it out for yourself. The articles are great and you might actually laugh of learn something.

The fact that Jobs, as well as several other influential Apple Execs, are supposedly involved in this scandal and are named in the investigation, makes me furious.  I look up to Steve as a person, mentor, and idol.  He has accomlished much with his life, started my favorite company, and brought it back into it’s prime.  However, I can’t and won’t overlook moral wrongs.  I just hope that this all gets settled out and I can be assured that he wasn’t involved.  We’ll see.

You can read more about this from AppleInsider.  While I’m wary about some articles posted on this site, the fact that there was an Apple issued Press Release helps assure me that there is some truth to this claim.

There were Apple employees all over the place. They were walking around in jeans and t-shirts with their little tags hanging around their neck. They were handing out sweepstakes entry forms, pens, and just laughing and chatting with the group of people that had gathered to enter this store. Several people passed us in line asking, “What are they giving away?” I simply said, “Nothing, we’re all just excited to have one of these stores in Knoxville and wanted to be here when it opened.” That got many confused looks, but I got a lot of agreement from people standing around me in line.

I wore my Tiger shirt with a big Tiger DVD on the back and fit right in with the crowd. I saw little kids from about 3 years old wearing colorful Apple logo shirts all the way up to this old couple in their 70s (I asked and they graciously replied). People from all walks of life, most of them wearing some assortment of Apple gear. I saw system 7 shirts, OS 8 shirts “Hands on experience”, original OS X shirts (the aqua style X) as well as all kinds of stuff in between.

Just standing in line was a blast. There was a guy wearing a “Campus Representative” shirt and sure enough, he was the rep for UT. So, I got to talk with him for awhile while we were in line, talking about the projects that he was dealing with for orientation and a Mac introduction week at the beginning of the fall semester. We’re also supposed to be having a few developer sessions for the computer science minded people (yay!) in the fall, with a preview of Leopard as well. Sounds very cool to me indeed.

The store was great, little larger than what I expected. The place was packed, people were so happy, smiling faces everywhere. The employees were having a blast having so many enthusiastic people in there. My brother walked up to a Nano and there were literally four or five other customers there and they just started talking about specs, the U2 edition and all that, which was right up my brother’s alley, since he is an iPod freak .

All in all, I’m still dealing with the experience as it was so awesome and I’m ready to go right back down there. Plus, I got a free t-shirt out of the deal. Just as a note, I think that Apple assumes all people in the world to be an XL, as my Developer Connection shirt was the same size. I understand the whole mass production thing, but couldn’t we get a few choices? This thing is huge!

So, I didn’t really get a chance to talk to anyone that might have had hiring power at the store. I plan on making another trip down there very soon to make some connections and hopefully get my foot in the door. As it looks right now, it seems they have a fully trained and enthusiastic staff and they won’t be needing people anytime soon. Hopefully that’s wrong, as I’m dying to work there!

Sorry I don’t have any pictures to show, but it was an awesome experience! Also got to enter to win an iMac, digital camera, printer, and digital camcorder, so we’ll see how that pans out. The summer is looking better than ever with a local Apple store so close!

If anyone is going from Ktown, I’ll be there from around 10 until 11, as I have to run off to work soon after since I hadn’t planned on the store opening this early. Maybe I’ll meet someone who can pull some strings and get me a position there soon. Be on the lookout for me and I hope to grab myself a t-shirt!

First, object oriented programming is the ‘bomb’, for lack of better words. This just makes sense. While I learned a lot about working through problems and all that while learning C, an OOP just makes so much more sense.

Second, Cocoa is heaven. This is the way programming should be. There are probably thousands of well documented and easily searchable classes, objects, methods, etc, all at your fingertips. It’s extremely easy to add functionality to an application because it’s so well documented and right there for you.

Third, there was no third. I love XCode, I love my Mac, I love OOP. Cocoa is the best. Nothing more to say.

With that in mind, head on over to the updated info to learn a bit more about me, and if you would like to hire me, let me know! You can view my resume here.

So, my good friend in his wise wisdom of the net found this page where someone owns up to the work. This guy is an amazing artist and sculptor and the creator of the Genpets. Read up on it for more interesting info.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

This beats anything that I have ever seen in my entire life. I thought that people were responsible with messing with DNA and that the government had some kind of restriction on it. This proves that whole theory wrong.

A friend pointed out this website where the company is getting ready to launch a full lineup of 7 bioengineered “buddies” for kids to have as a pet. You can pick their color that corresponds with it’s personality, as well as a few other features. The poor things are actually ALIVE in a package. Yep, alive, on a shelf in a retail store. They are “hibernating”, bound to the package, strapped in with a feeding tube, a heart monitor and a “freshness strip” just so you don’t buy one that has been on the shelf for too long.

This is wrong on several levels. I find it deeply disturbing that parents would even think about buying one of these creatures and give it to a child just because it is “low maintenance” and would save some time. Oh, and it won’t shed on the couch because it’s hairless. If I saw one of these things in real life I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t get sick or scream.

These might be engineered pets, but they are still living, breathing animals (according to the site). Please help raise awareness of this issue is all I ask. And if they actually make it to market, I’d like to see the videos on YouTube and pictures of the things, in “flesh” of course.

(*Genpet™ life may vary depending on temperature and Genpet ™ freshness)

Technorati Tags: GenPets

They are “Gargle” boxers. They resemble a Google search page with twists on common buttons and links. For a geek like me, this is just too much. Below are a few pictures for your amusement.

Note: No actual cat was harmed in the making of these photos…

I saw the iTunes Essentials collection for Gay Pride Month and decided to read more up on the matter. It’s sort of embarrassing to not even know what it’s all about when I try to consider myself a well rounded person and I’d like to consider myself an activist for gay rights.

So, it turns out that June is gay pride month. You can read a complete history of events and the movement itself from Wikipeida here. Be proud of whatever you are.

I like the fact that the man feels passionate enough about something to leave the company that he cofounded. I have mixed feelings for the tech industry though. I’m a very strong Apple supporter. However, I feel slightly nostalgic that some of the big men that have essentially created the industry as I know, are starting to leave. With Bill Gates on the way out, there are just a handful left in the business. Just makes you think just how much longer Jobs will be with us. I have only been a devout Apple fan since the return of Jobs, so I can’t imagine and Apple without him. Just food for thought.

Read article from AppleInsider.

I went to see Cars this past weekend with high hopes that it would be a good movie. I’ve got used to seeing top notch stuff come out of Pixar Studio here in the last few years. This movie was no let down.

I won’t go into all the details of the movie, but I absolutely LOVED it. That’s saying a lot since I was the oldest person there (that wasn’t a parent with screaming kids..from excitement). The plot was wonderfully crafted, the characters were well rounded, Tow-mater (Larry the Cable Guy) added tons and tons of comedy and it was just a great movie. I highly recommend seeing it.

As Pixar does with it’s movies though, they have a short film at the beginning. So, I was almost as excited about the short film (I’ve bought all of them from the iTMS already) as I was about the picture itself. Sure enough, I wasn’t let down.

One Man Band is a short film where these two hilarious paupers are playing instruments to get the one coin from this little girl. I just like her facial expression once she drops her coin and demands that the paupers pay her back. (The picture above…hint hint).

You can buy this short film from the iTMS already, so be sure to head on over here and check it out. And go see Cars in theaters now, it’s worth it!

I have some super news to report, everyone. I just received an email from Apple saying that I’d been selected as a recipient of a 2006 Student E-ticket to the WWDC this summer!

I applied never thinking that I’d get the opportunity to go to this event, but it seems that luck is on my side. I’m really excited about this and looking forward to it so much. I have to raise money for the flight (think $500 round trip) and then cash for food, a motel, etc, so I’m going to be in a very tight squeeze.

Ultimately I think I’ll end up going (I have yet to accept, can wait until June 26) but I have to have money for tuition first.

If anyone wants to send a penny my way, I’d greatly appreciate it. If not, then just think of me, I’ll be having a blast at a major Apple event getting experience that will benefit me for a lifetime.

I played around on the website some last night and ran across a few more cool things. Best of all, they’re free!

First off, there is a simple page that lets you generate useless business titles. Stuff like “Intra Departmental Associate” wouldn’t be hard to come across. I find this immensly amusing because all the titles sound important, yet don’t mean a thing. You can view that page here

The other really cool thing is that you can download some icons for your Mac. It’s a small little set of them. You can grab them from our downloads page

My favorite icon is the stapler.

Hard drive size.

There are more options, including getting a drive up to 120Gb with the new Macbooks. I opted for the stock 80Gb with my black one because I didn’t wanna wait for a custom built one and I figured that since I didn’t run out of room with 80Gb on my iBook G4, that I’d be all set. Major mistake.

There is so much more to do with an Intel Mac that you need the extra space. If you fall into the Parallels Workstation category, you’ll most likely have a couple virtual machines. We’re talking around 5gigs per one no most cases and that is just basic stuff in the OS, not storing any files, etc.

If you opt for Bootcamp, that’s 10Gb gone from the start. No getting it back.

With all the horsepower at your fingertips (I also highly recommend maxing out a 2Gb of ram, the perfomance is amazing and you’ll love the 2Gb if you want to run Parallels and still use your Mac like you’ve become accustomed to) you are more likely to do stuff that you wouldn’t have done with a PPC Mac.

Some examples of that are go crazy with video. Having a built-in iSight and all this power enables me to play around with iMovie a lot more than I ever thought I would in the past. Result? I now have around 20Gb of video footage, and that’s growing fast.

More power means more fun with Garageband. Simple as that. This holds true for several other apps as well.

Bottom line here? Take the time and think about how you’re going to use your new computer. If you even have a small thought that you might like to use Parallels or try out Bootcamp, then I strongly recommend going with at least the 80Gb, if not something higher. I only wish now that I’d chosen the 120Gb. My only hope is that upgrading the HDD seems to be fairly simple now. Now just to get up the money and do it.

I was working on a computer earlier this afternoon and just happened to notice this box sitting on the user’s desk. Being the inquisitive person that I am (while waiting for WIndows to reboot on a lovely PII tower) I investigated.

What I found caught my attention and made me laugh out loud. And the more I thought about it, I thought “Why not?!” It was a box that had pictures of Lego like figures on it. The whole idea behind the scheme is that you buy these little boxed sets (for 12.95, I already checked) and in the box you get a cubicle, computer, phone, chair, the person, and some other stuff to make their cubicle as home-like as possible.

So, as the advertising on the box suggests, “You can make their lives a living hell, be their best pal, or just let them get along”. I found the whole thing immensely hilarious and I’m seriously thinking about buying up a few of these as some gifts for older friends who are in the dreaded “corporate world” already.

You can view the site to learn more information and make a purchase here.

All the songs were fine, except for one that was horribly encoded with tons of skips. It was a bad experience. What made it all worse was the hassle of trying to find out how to contact Apple about the issue. It took me awhile, but you can use the link below to submit a form with the track if you have had any similar issues with a song from the iTMS.

The band mentioned above, that has an incredible sound, is “Falling Up”. Rest assured that you will hear some of their songs in future podcasts.

Submit a complaint to iTMS Staff here.

The University of Tennessee has a system for viewing grades, paying fees, all that sorta thing, called CPO. For the past year, I’ve been using Safari to view CPO without any problems.

However, as I went to check my grades for my Mini Term last night, I wasn’t able to log in. After some starting at the screen, I noticed a little comment saying that Safari isn’t supported.

So, I have to wonder just what they’re doing at UT that makes Safari (yet FF is) unsupported. Just food for thought…

I recently inquired about the progress and thought that I would share in case there are any other Knoxvillians out there.

The store is going to be in the West Town Mall and is slated to open in late July. You’re supposed to apply online somewhere. Believe me, I’ll be checking into this here shortly, as I can’t wait to apply!

If you’re reading this post, thanks for purchasing the computer. It’s been my passion for the past year and I’ve enjoyed it. May it serve you well. It ends an era in Mac computing and for me, as my first Mac and my last PPC Mac leaves my house tomorrow morning. Amen.

Click here to view the eBay auction for my iBook. Happy Bidding!

I have to say, this is quite a nice surprise.  I was even debating driving the 3.5 hours one way to an Apple Store this weekend if they had one in stock and would hold it for me.  Looks like I won’t have to go to that extreme now.

Tracking info on my order isn’t as promising.  Says of 2:35pm later today (maybe time zone differences) that FedEx has received my package data, nothing about the package itself.  We’ll see if it actually ships out today or not.

Thanks for sharing in my excitement!

See the photos of the black Macbook over on AppleInsider here.

I live in a fairly nice community, a subdivision, with my parents and younger brother. I’ve had problems in the past with someone getting into my car overnight and stealing all my CDs (I wasn’t locking it back then) and then a few weeks later egging the cars. We’ve dealt with that okay and haven’t had any more problems in the last few months.

However, I was studying tonight and heard some strange noises from across the hall, in the bathroom (plumbing noises, don’t get any ideas). Just about that time I heard a shout from the kitchen and then more from the laundry area. Turns out our plumbing just suddenly decided to stop working, with water backing up from the dish washer, washing machine, and water coming up in the tubs and toilets and sinks.

I’ve dealt with clogged toilets and a slow draining sink in my life (my brother once poured hot wax down the sink since he wanted to clean the candle, however, the was solidified and clogged up the sink). However, with so much going on, we were left no choice but to call in some professionals since this was clearly a big issue if every drain in the house was having a problem.

So, after calling around for about 45 minutes, we finally found some poor soul (There are tons of 24/7 plumbers in the yellow pages, but turns out 9 pm is aweful late to answer your phone) to come out and take a look. 450 dollars later he tells us that it’s a big problem. Uh-oh. After fiddling around under the house and then in our backyard, the plumber has some interesting news: The access cap to the line leading to the sewers (in our backyard) was completely busted, with some of the line busted. To top all that off, there are large chunks of concrete in the line now. Guess were that came from? Looks like the top of the bird bath in our backyard is missing….and there are chunks of it in our pipes now.

So, how does a bird bath mysteriously end up in a PVC pipe in our back yard causing us hundreds, if not a thousand dollars (it’s still not fixed, they have to bring a backhole out here tomorrow and dig up the pipe and replace it all)? Well, my only conclusion is that someone got into our yard and did the damage. It was all fine when I mowed the yard and trimmed yesterday evening, so sometime in the past 24 hours someone has destroyed a bird bath and our plumbing.

So, in conclusion, how does anyone find the time (or the inspiration for that matter) to take a bird bath and smash in some PVC pipe in someone’s yard? I really want to understand. I’d write a book about it (or at least blog about it ). Now that I’ve got all of that out of my system, let me know if you have any interesting stories you’d like to share. Bad experiences make everyone else feel better.

Check out the new episode at 10pm on NBC tonight (EST).

Right now there seems to be a slew of documentation, sample code, and more to explore. Plus, there is an awesome discount on hardware that I plan to take advantage of later on. And finally I’m working on my application for the ADC Student Scholarship that selects some 300-400 students to go to WWDC for a week.

Conclusion: Good web software (not MySpace)!

This particular short film touched me in a way that I can’t express. I don’t usually post about my personal life or feelings, but this film brings up a part of me that I can’t ignore, and was amazed at how well this piece was put together, and just how much feeling was behind it.

Please take the 30 seconds to a minute to watch this.

That’s all I have to say.

I’ve been looking around for compatible drives, and I found the Pioneer 110d for 50 bucks off of Macmall. This is a DVD burner and I don’t need it because I don’t think iDVD will work with a 700mhz processor. However, I don’t want to buy an older drive that evidently is defective…a lot of people are having this problem. So, now I have to decide if he gets a new drive or not. If anyone has any feedback, I’d appreciate it. I’ve zapped the PRAM, repaired permissions, verified the disk (couldn’t use the install dvd, so had to do that while running) and put a cleaner disk in the drive. Any other thoughts are welcome!

I’m not sure what my feelings are about this new movie right now. I think I’ll have to think long and hard about it before I can come up with a clear decision. Flight 93 is a movie about flight 93, in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I just can’t believe that they’re doing this in such a short time after the event. (Click image to view trailer)

Best wishes and may everyone be blessed in 2006!

Matt