Always working... SOHO, NYC

Always working... SOHO, NYC,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Arriving ... New York City

Arriving ... New York City,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

The exact bday moment

The exact bday moment,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Exact minute of the day, with Ilana, at the Apple store in Vegas. Can
it get any better than this? Well, if the kids were here.

CAPTCHA gone bad

CAPTCHA gone bad,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Waiting for Taxi

Waiting for Taxi,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

I'm starting to see a theme here...

Automatic update has been completed

Automatic update has been completed,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Now you can get back to losing luggage with me. Grand Rapids, MI.

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Well, my luggage, actually. Chicago O'Hare tarmac, light drizzle but
pleasant.

Floorplanning in the Miquelrius

Floorplanning in the Miquelrius,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

IMG00214.JPG

IMG00214.JPG,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Waiting on the Red Carpet to board. Ooh, so impressive. How long until
the airlines stop using trinkets to try to cover for bad service? Oh,
right, as soon as passengers are willing to go with someone other than
the lowest provider.

Waiting for his boys

Waiting for his boys,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

OS X 10.5 kicked my ass

There's common sense, and then there's technolust. Common sense dictates that you don't upgrade your production laptop to a relatively untested operating system, but technolust says "ooooh, yea, heh huh huh, do it!" And so began the journey into darkness, so innocently begun with the simple act of slipping a DVD into the drive.

A list of the problems encountered, in case I get the urge to reinstall anytime soon:
• Blue screen upon install - yes, the Haxie kind, and yes, I thought I had deleted all the right things. Solved.
• Forgot my printers when upgrading. Reinstalled.
• Periodically dropping WiFi connection with my 2wire DSL modem. Never solved.
• Frequent broadband link errors with 2wire DSL, which then eats the URL, and requires restarting the browser. Never solved.
• iDisk didn't sync right, needed to delete and re-sync. But then iDisk (incorrectly) expands to fill every last byte of my HD ... with an honest-to-goodness 0 bytes free ... and then takes five or six attempts to get it to stop trying to sync.
• Back to My Mac didn't work outside of my house, more or less rendering it useless except for playing pranks on my kids
• New menubar has deleted the rounded corners, one of my favorite things about the whole OS X experience. Yes, there are third-party apps to put them back, but see Haxie above.
• New dock is shiny, shiny, shiny. And annoying. Fixed with the SoftGlass app from VersionTracker.
• Stacks can only show a few icons before they switch to a less-interesting grid mode.
• Sudden, overwhelming nostalgia for the all-white menu bar.

And the kicker? The whole reason I installed it (other than that pesky technolust thing) was to check out how CalDAV would work for syncing iCal with a mail server. Which didn't work with three flavors of mail server that we tried out.

So I grabbed my 10.4 install disks that came with the MacBook Pro, and started the reinstall. And then found out that they were actually the 10.4 install disks for my wife's MacBook Pro, and wouldn't work on my laptop. Panic set in. Was I destined to stay in Leopardland forever? I tore apart the house ... it was a grueling, nasty whirlwind through the place, white fluffy puppy sensing my panic and follwing me around, 6 inches from my heels, panting and whining. Found a long-lost video camera, a couple of dust bunnies, but no CDs.

Screwed?

Never! I eventually ended up getting 10.4 reinstalled, through the following scary scenario:
• Back up entire Home folder onto FireWire 800 drive
• Boot my laptop in FireWire target mode
• Plug my laptop into my wife's laptop, as an external FireWire drive
• Boot wife's laptop using her 10.4 install disks
• Very, very, very carefully choose the external FireWire drive as the target for an Erase & Install
• Have visitor check that I did, indeed, choose the right drive
• Double-check the drive onto which the install was going to be happening
• Kick off the install, which included a heart-stopping reboot and DVD-change halfway through
• Shut down and disconnect everything
• Hold breath and boot wife's laptop ... to find everything just like she left it (woot!)
• Boot my laptop, download updates, restore everything off of FireWire 800 drive
• Reinstall several dozen apps, re-enter serial numbers, and generally tidy up

Phew. Back to where I was five days ago. What a ride.

Sidekick convert?

Sidekick convert?,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

She's seriously considering it ... will I have created a convert?

Too damn tall

Too damn tall,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Apple and grammar

Every once in a while, something about grammar will just pop out at you. Testing OS X 10.5 Leopard recently, a window popped up with the statement "none of your preferred networks are available". Now, as I understand it, the word none is equivalent to "no one" or "no single instance of", which is a singular term - and should therefore be paired with "is", as in "none is". So wouldn't that be "none of your preferred networks is available" instead?

Doubting myself, I turned to Google and found this document, which says that "conservative speakers insist that it should always be singular" but the other 99.95% of the population uses both singular and plural depending on the circumstance. I love their use of the term "insist", by the way. Adds a bit of color to their true feelings about the matter.

The upshot? I would have copped out with "none of your preferred networks can be found".

Dinner out

Dinner out,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Every once in a while, circumstances end up giving you a free night with
just one child. It's a whole new dynamic.

Why her machine can be slow at times

Why her machine can be slow at times,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Yup, we're in LA

Yup, we're in LA,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

Unlimited tanning, $50 a month.

An inauspicious beginning

An inauspicious beginning,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

to a long road trip. Our GPS has rebooted about 10 times.

Filling the truck

Filling the truck,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

For 10-12 years I was on the road, week in and week out, for my
consulting job. One of the things I always missed, for some strange
reason, was pumping my own gas. It just wasn't the same, pumping gas
into someone else's car. It's been 5-6 years since I was on the road so
frequenty, but I still get an odd pleasure at the pump.