Du Hast -- As done by a 3 year old

Brandi and Clint should be proud!

Chuck waits... You wait...

A week into the whole Mac transition and it's been way more painless then I thought. I've had more consternation about what to do with my music and photo's more then anything else. (two copies at the moment). It has not been all smooth sailing I have run into issues getting some web apps work. Don't worry it's all related to my work and that is why Steve Jobs gave us BootCamp.

Of course what Steve giveth Bill really fouls up....

I of course loaded boot camp and windows on to the Mac. And Windows runs great, I just have to boot into the Windows side to use it. I'm going to be honest I've never been big on booting between operating systems. So I've been checking out virtualization for OS X. The good news is there are some really excellent options out there. The bad news is that Microsoft has some really fucked up licensing.

This one has me a little ticked off so if you don't want to read about Microsoft and Apple for the rest of this post I would just go some place else if I were you.

I decided to load XP, you know since it's stable been out for forever and a day, and way cheaper then Vista. See now you can get two versions of XP full... OEM and Retail. The difference is OEM instantly gets tied to your hardware set. Meanwhile retail has some flexibility built in to help with those pesky hardware upgrades. Turns out that you can virtualize a retail version of XP but not a OEM copy unless you install the OEM copy directly into the VM. (This is really good info for anyone thinking about doing this).

So where does this leave me? Well for the time being I don't know I haven't landed on a virtualization setup that I really like. I would like to just do it and move on. At the same time though I still have my work laptop that I bring home and my desktop that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Honestly for me the best solution would be a VM type appliance that contained I.E. and access to Java in the VM. After that I could really care less about Windows.

So other then the whole I need I.E. to do some legacy web stuff for work that I can do on another computer just as easily I think I could recommend a Mac as your next computer.

Unless you Curtis or Clint... there is just no talking any sense into those two.

Just not right...

Any one else slighty disturbed by this?

Reflections in F.U.D. and you

Being a I.T. guy from time to time I get asked by certain indviduals for help for things that fall outside of my normal day to day duties.

I like to call these individuals Doctors.

So I get a call today from a doctor who wants to use his shiny new MAC to work from home with... I feel his pain. I agree to help him.

So as I'm talking to him I ask if he has made a boot camp partion for his MAC. You know since running windows in a virtulized environment is the least painful way to get 99.9% of windows only apps (read as active X or require IE) to work in MAC.

"I don't want to load windows on to the MAC and have to deal with anti-virus"

Wait, you don't want to deal with Anti virus in Windows on your MAC?

Ok on one side I can see the point... I mean that is why you bought a MAC isn't it? So you didn't have to deal with all of those stupid Windows viruses... On the other hand...

What on earth are you bitching about? Antivirus programs are so dirt simple that they should be the first or second thing you load up on your computer! And you don't want to deal with them?

My god man...

For the record I do have Anti virus on all of my boxes (Norton and AVG mainly) Windows/Linux/Mac

Just because Lord Steve says it's secure doesn't mean it's true kids...

And they called it the "Aluminum Falcon"??

Simple pleasures in life for me really....

Weekends on call that don't have many calls...

Playing video games... seeing movies that any other time of the year wouldn't make 20 million make 57 million in a weekend.

Selling a house and finally being back to one house payment... (<--- honestly how often does that happen?)

Yes it's been a good weekend.

Of course the first thing I did when I sold the house was to buy a new laptop.... and not just any laptop a Macbook Pro...

Wait why did he buy a Macbook Pro? He is the "PC' in those commercials!

Yes I know... honestly though this thing rocks.

It has everything that my Linux boxes have but with the stupid ease of Windows!

It doesn't help that I've wanted a high end Mac Laptop since I laid my hands on the first PowerPC G3 Powerbooks almost 10 years ago.

I do have a few comments that are just apart of the learning curve but I thought I would share with the reading public that doesn't get to see me at least once a week.

1. When I bought the Mac the sales guy at the Apple store was chatting with me (you know sales guy chat) wondering why I wanted such a beast of a computer... I told him I was a gamer and IT guy next words out of the sales guy mouth "Please tell me you aren't going to install Windows"

Windows wasn't the first thing I installed (that honor went to Firefox) but it was the first project. So far I haven't booted into Windows unless I'm playing a game and since I've only got two installed it's not much that I've been in Windows.

2. What is up with these keyboard short cuts?

Honestly what is up with these keyboard short cuts? It looks like a gate address from a episode of Stargate.

With the exception of the first symbol I have found all of the corresponding keys.

Also for future refrence the up arrow is "Shift" no the up arrow key...

3. And I thought Linux programs were tounge in cheek....

OK I'm a I.T. guy... And their are certain programs that I just always use one of them is "VNC" it's small, stable, very robust, and about as close to a universal application is it comes to for systems management.

There are a few others but VNC is the only that I always load up. My first couple of searche kept turning up commercial applications that are VNC compatiable. That's nice folks but along with being a I.T. guy I'm also a tightwad (except in matters of hardware). It took a little bit of doing but I found "Chicken of the VNC"

Come on how could you not like a platform that has a application name like that?

And the name of this computer? The "Aluminum Falcon" of course! (click on the link to get the joke)

They call it fire water...

Providence math

For the record....

My PACS Vendor + Open Bar = Tom out of shell...


Thank you and good night I will be out of my shell again the second tuesday of next week.

Providence Dogs

Hmmm time to get ready for the trip to Providence for my confrence....

15 Episodes of Star Trek DS9 ripped from DVD and ready to be transferred to laptop?

Check!

Clothes washed and to a point of being able to be packed?

Check!

Cell phone updated with latest PRL?

Check!

Requisite freak out and anxiety attack over every little detail that is not with in my control?

Check and still in progress!

yep I'm gonna have fun with this one...