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• I haven’t seen it in person, but the images of the ROKR just aren’t doing anything for me right now. Motorola has shown some really slick phone designs, going back to the original release of the RAZR and up through newer designs like the PEBL and the SLVR. To my eye, the L6 and L2 models, the low-end offshoots of the SLVR, look nicer than the ROKR. For lack of a better word, the ROKR just looks clunky.

  I know looks aren’t the most important thing when you’re shopping for a new cell phone, but the appearance is one of the first things you notice.

  From the Phone Scoop specs, the three candy-bar phones are all all less than .5″ thick. The RAZR is .54″ thick. The PEBL is .79″ thick (I assume those are the thickness of the phones when closed). According to Engadget, the ROKR is .8″ thick.

  If I’m spending $250 on a subsidized phone, I want something thinner than freebie I got when signing my last contract. Or, failing that, at least give me something thinner than a clamshell phone.

• iPod nano nice. iPod nano shiny. Me like iPod nano. Me like iPod nano more than clunky ROKR. Me not going to buy iPod nano because me poor grad student, but me still like.

  (Can you tell that I’m having trouble re-adjusting to this whole school thing?)

• iTunes’ improved search functionality is nice, but a little inconsistent. Some fields, like Album, are always searched, but others, like Description, are only searched when they are displayed. I was in the library view and decided I wanted to find the episode of Baseball Prospectus Radio with Aaron Schaltz. I typed “Scha” into the search field. Nothing. Selected the Podcast search option. Still nothing.

  I found the episode by switching to the Podcasts list and searching again, but why should this basic piece of metadata be ignored based on a UI setting?

• Getting iTunes for Windows to sync Outlook contacts is nice, but somehow I doubt it’ll let me use my iPod to sync contacts between my Mac and my PC — beyond the whole HFS+ versus FAT32 (or whatever the Windows-formatted iPod uses) thing, I assume the syncing is actually just a one-way copy.

Maybe more later, depending on my time constraints. I wouldn’t bet good money on it, though.

Prior to moving down to Alexandria, my brother’s computer unexpectedly came back from Best Buy, so I had a chance to restore it back to normal instead of dumping the task on a friend.

Before pulling everything off the backup drive, I planned to start by running the Windows XP Professional upgrade. I booted the laptop and discovered the HP had used an updated drive image when they replaced the hard drive. The main difference was that the new image included a 60 day free trial of Norton AntiVirus 2005, whereas the original image hadn’t included any protection.

Sadly, the new drive image also included Windows XP Home SP 2, whereas my XP Professional upgrade was only SP 1. As I learned, Home SP 2 cannot be “upgraded” to Professional SP 1, so I had to wipe out the Windows installation and start from scratch. Bye-bye, virus protection.

I’m so happy Apple doesn’t pull this BS with OS X. There’s just normal OS X and OS X Server, with little reason to upgrade from one to the other. I suppose you could take a machine with 10.4 Client and revert it to 10.3 Server, but Apple’s Clean Install option seems to be better about not breaking programs than the comparable Windows installation option.

Once I got Windows “upgraded” to Professional SP 1 and applied the myriad of Windows updates, I reinstalled all the software. As I suspected, there were no problems with product activation.

Finally, I pulled all the Knoppix-salvaged data off the hard drive. The only catch I discovered during this process is that all the files on the backup drive were flagged as Read Only and this caused a few problems when I tried to access a few data files. Once I figured this out, most things just worked.

I’ve now been in my new apartment for about a week and a half. Between my folks being in town for the first few days and my general dislike for the unpacking (it’s slightly better than packing, but only because unpacking has less of a deadline), I haven’t finished decking out the place. It’s certainly coming along, though.

For the most part, the apartment’s pretty nice. I’m pretty sure I’ve more space here than at my old place. Chris has been bugging me to both post pictures of my new place and resume regular blogging, so I’m combining the two activities.

The living and dining rooms run together, so I’m splitting the two with furniture. I don’t have a problem with the rooms running into one another, but I just don’t have enough space for my couch and chairs if I don’t do this

Originally, I had my TV, stereo, Airport Express and laser printer on the wall next to the door, since the cable jack was also on this wall. During my first night at the apartment, though, I figured out that the electrical outlets on that wall were both controlled by the switch next to the door, so I ended up reversing the layout of the living room the next day.

As you can see, there’s plenty of security on the door, what with three locks. Of course, none of them do a bit of good if you leave them all unlocked, as I did when I was watching a movie last night. This enabled a very confused older lady to wander into my living room. She didn’t respond to any of my queries — I’m not sure if she wasn’t well or if she simply didn’t speak English — but she quickly realized she was in the wrong place.

In retrospect, I probably should’ve called the police in case she was ill and simply wandering the complex, but the thought didn’t occur to me until this morning.

Whatever the case, I’m now going to keep the doorknob locked most of the time.

My bedroom’s spacious enough to setup my bed and desk and keep a chair at my desk at all times (although said chair was elsewhere when I took this photo). In my old apartment, I had to keep the chair at the far end of the room when I wasn’t using the desk, as keeping it at the desk blocked the path from the bed to the door.

The one room that doesn’t thrill me is the kitchen. It’s larger than my old kitchen, which was little more than nook with stove, sink, and dishwasher (I believe my old landlord called it a galley kitchen, but I don’t remember), but the old apartment had more usable counter and shelf space. In the old apartment, I could setup all my kitchen utilities (drying rack, microwave, can opener, toaster, etc) and still have room to do food prep. In my new kitchen, I barely have room to setup the drying rack, microwave, and can opener. It looks like I’ll either have to put stuff away to do food prep or move some of the work in the dining room.

Before moving in, I managed to convince myself that the model apartment I saw back in June had a dishwasher, but that wasn’t the case. Back to doing dishes by hand.

The only other irksome thing about the apartment is the electrical system. The kitchen and bedroom each have only one pair of three-pronged outlets. The living room has two pairs of such outlets, but one pair is the connected to the aforementioned switch. The dining room, where I’ll probably plug in the fewest devices, has two accessible pairs of three-pronged outlets plus a 5th three-pronged outlet that dedicated to the landlord supplied air conditioner (no central air, but the rent includes utilities). The remaining outlets are two-pronged and seem to be located in most of the places where I want to connect things with three-pronged plugs. I’ve already started to run extension cords to get around this shortcoming.

I’ve got most of the big stuff done. My lease requires me to place rugs in the living room, bedroom, and dining area, so I need to find some reasonably-priced options. Although the hardwood floors look nice, I’d probably get rugs even if they weren’t mandated — the floors are extremely slippery and collapsing onto my couch often has the effect of causing the couch to slide several inches. I also need to start hanging stuff on the walls, since they’re looking rather sparse.

Not that I particularly care about the team or the player, but I love the headline:

“Sabres renounce Satan, team’s six-time scoring leader“

Knoppix is freaking brilliant.

There, I’ve said it.

My brother called me last night to say he could no longer launch IE and AIM on his HP laptop last night and he wanted to know whether I could take a look at it. Actually, he said it wasn’t working and he was bringing the laptop over to my apartment, but that’s beside the point. When I started working on the system, my first thought was “Just reboot.”

Blue screen. Uh-oh. Reboot into Safe Mode. Blue Screen. Uh-oh. Run BIOS Hard Drive test. “Read Failure.” Oh, crap.

I figured we were pretty much screwed at that point and I started thinking about how to salvage some of my brother’s content. At first, I was ready to borrow a 2.5″ drive to USB adapter from a friend, but then I remembered a former coworker raving about Knoppix allowed him to salvage somebody’s spyware-ridden PC.

I downloaded the latest ISO onto my PC laptop and burned it using the included burning software. For some reason, that resulted in a blank disc, so I downloaded the Nero 6 demo and followed the instructions for burning ISOs posted on LinuxISO.org — I wasn’t sure if there was anything special you needed to do burn bootable discs for Intel-based machines.

Along those same lines, does anybody know if Toast 6 Titanium will burn a bootable Intel CDs from an ISO? I didn’t feel like taking the time to find out.

Once I burned the CD, I decided to try it out on my PC laptop to get familiar with the environment before booting up the system with the flaky hard drive. I had to reconfigure the boot drive order of the laptop, but once I indicated it should try booting off a CD or DVD before trying the hard drive, pretty much everything worked fine.

When I plugged in my USB2 drive, the single partition just appeared on my desktop. Knoppix, however, didn’t recognize the HFS+ file system — no shock there. Using Disk Utility, I reformatted the drive as Unix Format (UFS, I assume), but Knoppix also failed to recognize this file system. Giving up, I booted back into Windows to reformat the drive as NTFS. I might’ve been able to format the drive from within Knoppix, but I didn’t bother trying. Knoppix was able to mount the drive and recognize the file system. However, I discovered that Knoppix (and apparently Linux in general) has trouble writing to NTFS partitions (don’t know if this is still accurate), so I flipped back to Windows, created a 20 GB partition on the drive, and formatted the partition at FAT32. Boot back into Knoppix, mount the drive, and make it writable.

Once I was satisfied about how to proceed, I shut down my PC and booted up the damaged computer.

I tried pulling a bit over 2 GB off the damaged drive and I was able to salvage all but 14 files of those that seemed important. 7 files were songs that I’ll grab off my brother’s iPod with PodWorks. The other 7 files were digital photos, 6 of which my brother posted to Webshots (think Flickr for college students, I guess).

Since this drive wouldn’t boot when I got it, I consider saving all but 1 file a definite victory.

Getting back to Knoppix, I was extremely impressed. It seemed to recognize everything except my widescreen display (I believe I saw that a standard screen resolution was selected) and the scrolling portion of my trackpad. I didn’t play with much beyond the file management, but I was able to run Konqueror, Mozilla, and OpenOffice. I wasn’t able to access my PowerBook over the network, but I’m not sure if I was doing it properly.

That said, I wouldn’t want to use Knoppix full-time. The UI’s a bit clunky and it eats up your CD/DVD drive (unless you install it on your hard drive, of course). As a rescue environment, though, it’s damn useful. For now, my Knoppix CD has a place in my toolkit. When I get a DVD burner, I plan on replacing my CD with a Knoppix 4.0 DVD — just in case.

There are two things I’d like to do before attempting something like this again, though. I’d rather connect the backup drive via a 4-6 pin FireWire cable because I suspect it’ll be faster than USB2 and because I have three FireWire drive interfaces and only a single USB2 drive interface. Also, I’d have a FAT32 partition ready to go instead of creating one as needed — if I’m trying to repair my only Windows system, it wouldn’t do any good for me to have a bunch of unreadable-by-Knoppix drives.

Fortunately, fixing the laptop doesn’t fall into my domain. When collecting my the assorted goodies that accompanied my brother’s laptop, I found the Best Buy extended warranty. When I dropped the system off and told the tech what I’d already checked, he simply said that he wasn’t going to bother testing it and he’d just send it back for service.

The only catch is the turnaround on service time — 9 days to 3 weeks. By the time the laptop gets back, I’ll probably be down in Virginia, so I’m trying to figure out how to get my brother’s laptop back to “normal.” If this info is accurate, simply replacing the hard drive shouldn’t be enough to cause product activation to fail, so installing the XP Professional upgrade, Office, and Publisher shouldn’t be problematic. My other concern is getting the backed-up data off the backup drive and back onto the laptop. Maybe I’ll try and find somebody around here who can handle it.

Apparently, the NHL and the NHLPA have agreed on a new CBA and there will be professional, major league hockey played in North America this winter.

It’s been a long time since the Montreal Canadiens knocked the Bruins out of the playoffs. (Yes, I’m being Boston-centric. So sue me.) During the ensuing hockey-less winter, there were a handful of times I missed watching the game. I never felt as passionate about its absence as I did about baseball in 1994, though.

The NHL was not a healthy league before it shut down (hence the whole lockout, cancel the season thing) and I can’t imaging the situation with fans being better when the sport returns. There will definitely be some tough going for a number of franchises. I wouldn’t be surprised if the C word — Contraction — is mentioned in the near future.

I thought I had an idea of how bad things were looking for the league the last time I was in Alexandria. I was grabbing some food the the Ballston Common Mall and I saw a large banner hanging over the food court. It read “Future Home Of The Washington Capitals!”

Hmm. I knew things were bad, but I didn’t they were at the point of sharing the home locker room with The Gap and having a Slurpee machine in the penalty box.

OK, so it turns out things aren’t quite that bad — when I got back to my car, I saw that a new rink was being built across the street from mall. I assume the banner meant the Caps will play in this new rink, but I could be wrong.

Update: Ah, the banner was in reference to a new public hockey rink and practice facility that the Capitals and Arlington County are partnering to build. The rink will be open to the public year-round and will be the Caps’ training facility and the home of the team’s administrative offices. So, no Slurpees with your holding penalties and no living 10 minutes from the arena for me.

…till unemployment kicks in…

In the past, I tried to refrain from blogging about my job in anything but the most basic of terms. Yes, I’m a programmer. Yes, I work on the Mac. Yes, I work in the Boston area. I might’ve mentioned one or two other things, but I don’t believe I’ve given away any real info. Keeping my employer out of my weblog seemed like a prudent thing to do — I’m less likely to write something that pisses off the people signing my paycheck and people won’t try to map what or when I post back to my employer.

However, when I walk out of the building on Friday, I’ll no longer be employed. So… for nearly the last three years, I’ve been a software engineer at Avid Technology, working on various video editing products and related tools. That doesn’t include to two stints I worked at Avid while I was at college.

For the most part, it’s been a good time. I’ve worked on some interesting projects and I’ve learned a lot about programming, business, the entertainment industry, and a variety of other topics. The people and the work environment are both top notch and I’ll miss both aspects of the job. If you’re looking for a development job in the Boston area, Avid’s hiring — there are even a handful a Mac-specific jobs.

Now that I’m done raving about the place, you might wonder why I’m leaving. Simply put, I need to get away from commercial development for a while. About a year ago, I got to the point where I wanted nothing to do with computers. This continued for 6-8 months (which coincides largely with most of my months of single-digit postings) before I started breaking out of my funk. I’ve started to enjoy work a bit more, but I’m also looking forward to getting away for a while.

What do I plan to do during my jobless period? Head back to school, of course! On August 1st, I move into my new apartment in Alexandria, VA. Two weeks later, I’ll start the orientation program for George Washington University’s School of Business. Yup, it’s MBA time.

I’m currently undecided about what I’ll choose as my concentration. Originally, I was thinking Finance, but as I’ve emerged from my aforementioned “dark period,” I’ve been leaning towards either Entrepreneurship or Science, Technology and Innovation. In either case, I think I’d like to get back to the Technology industry when I’m done with school.

Well, that about sums my life update. Now, I’ve got two weeks to pack and clean my apartment, which are perhaps two of my least favorite activities in the world Anybody want a 30-year old couch, cheap?

News.com:

Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it’s scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel’s microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned.

Apple has used IBM’s PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased transition to Intel’s chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.

I’ll believe this if it’s announced on Monday.

My fear about such a move is that unless Apple sprinkles some serious pixie dust on this new architecture, certain companies that seem to begrudgingly develop Mac software might use this as an excuse to jump ship.

Looking into my dusty crystal ball, I wonder if the supposed lag between moving low-end and high-end systems to the new architecture means that Apple anticipates it taking longer to port over higher-end, higher-performance products (cough, cough, Photoshop). Or could it be an issue the availability and cost-effectiveness of 32 bit processors and 64 bit processors?

Two quick baseball thoughts on this fine weekend day…

It was fun to see Orlando Cabrera back in Boston last night. I’m trying to remember if he’s the first member of last year’s team to play against the Sox in Fenway. Ramiro Mendoza made a cameo appearance when the Yankees were in town for the ring ceremony, but he wasn’t on the active roster. Pokey Reese’s new team, the Mariners, were in town for early May, but Pokey was on the DL and not with the team that weekend.

On the one hand, it would’ve been nice to see OCab get his ring last night at Fenway, but the Sox already sent somebody out to Anaheim for an individualized presentation. I can understand why the Sox wouldn’t want to take a break to honor an opposing player prior to a game.

Whatever the case, anybody else think it was fitting that Edgar Rentaria made a nice play to get OCab at first following his first at bat?

Octavio Dotel’s having what sounds like Tommy John surgery that’s expected to knock him out of baseball for 2 years. This is after 4 doctors recommended rehab over surgery.

Tough break for the A’s, as Billy Beane likely planned on trading Dotel at some point to some pitching-hungry playoff contender (see Billy Taylor).

This news also makes appreciate the fact that that the Sox were able to get somebody like Curtis Leskanic last year. Leskanic was never really healthy and pitched ineffectively before getting his release from the Royals. The Sox then picked him up and he pitched relatively effectively through the remainder of the regular season and playoffs. It sounded like Leskanic’s shoulder was basically held together by spit and bailing wire by the end, but he pitched when he probably shouldn’t have because he wanted to win.

Granted, there are differences between Leskanic and Dotel. We have no idea how much pain Dotel’s actually experiencing. Dotel’s 5 years younger than Leskanic and probably feels he has a longer career ahead of them. Dotel hasn’t yet made the jump to a contender, but that was probably just a matter of time.

Leskanic’s willingness to pitch through pain was a big factor in the Sox coming back against the Yankees in the ALCS — without Leskanic, the Sox would’ve been forced to either use a lesser pitcher or extend a tired pitcher during Game 4. There’s no guarantee that the Yankees wouldn’t have scored the go-ahead run under one of these scenarios.

I wonder if Dotel’s decision will end up haunting some team that ends up with a shorter bullpen come October.

The June issue of ATPM rolled off the press today, and this month’s issue is pretty packed.

This is the first issue since the release of Tiger, and we’ve got a pair of articles on the topic — Wes Meltzer’s trip around the web with Bloggable and Tom Bridge’s look at what’s new in OS X 10.4.

Ted Goranson takes ATPO in a different direction with an article Outlining and Styles.

From the reviews section, we have Michael Tsai’s review of the iceKey. Michael’s keyboard reviews are always spot-on, so I always consult them whenever I’m considering a new keyboard purchase.

I chipped in a pair of reviews this month — AppleScript: The Missing Manual and NetNewsWire 2.0. It’s the first time I’ve written in the last 3 months (though I had some Desktop Pictures in 11.04) and I’m hoping this is the last such lag for myself for the foreseeable future.

This is just a sampling of what’s in this month’s issue. Stop by and check out the rest of what’s available.