Stupid Keyboard!

So I have found my first gripe about work. We use Windows. LoL - it’s not that bad, but being on Mac as a primary for so long, I haven’t used Windows keystrokes for a while, I have gotten used to the command+c vs. ctrl+c for copy and such, tonight back at home and not passed out from my day, I have been working on the computer a bit and I keep using the wrong keystrokes! Silliness indeed.

I have been considering asking work for a Windows Laptop, be nice to have for various reasons, one of which is to use at a workstation, or take offsite to some of the administration’s homes where I do some work on their “work” stations, but we’ll see - after this next week we move to Google Apps, so one step at a time I suppose, looking forward to 25GB of storage, plus I hope to migrate folks to the mail interface online vs. @#%! Netscape 7.2 (replace special characters with angry/nasty/obscene words) - they use it for Mail & Browsing, my goal is to do some streamline work across the board and replace Netscape 7.x with Firefox 2.x (none of them use IE!), and instead of Netscape Mail put in Thunderbird or Outlook, at this point I am game for ANYTHING more modern than 2004!

All in all the first full week went well, survived my first meeting, fixed some problems, made some calls, did various things to lay some more groundwork across the board for improvement, Monday I am going to start experimenting with a backup solution for all the workstations, only going to need 2TB of data storage, shouldn’t be too hard but I am getting there, balance of TN/FH is going fair, haven’t been on top of reps, but over the next week or so things should really start to level out.

Anywhoo - again, I can’t say it enough - big thanks to everyone for their prayers & support, and I ask that you say some extra prayers for my good friends Dan and Val as they are expecting their first child this next week! (Feb 18th is the Due Date!) so keep them lifted up to as they prepare for some new excitement in their life but as for me, I am going to wind down this week with a Cheese Pizza, some mindless TV, and a long nap into Saturday - which I get $300, some time on a computer (Re-Install XP for Matt) and of course if time and management allows, a walk-thru of an apartment! So much to do, so little time Have a great weekend folks!

Full Day + Barfing = Classy!

So today I started it a tad rough, woke up feeling a lot better, but a little queasy, got up at 6:45, got in the shower, and warm water relaxed my shoulders and back which have been hurting, and then - whammo - puke city. Not a fun thing by any means, but at least it wasn’t at the new job So I showered, brushed the teeth, got dressed, headed out and got to the office a whole 5 minutes late - which still beat most folks in it seemed.

A full day though, been a while, at FHS when I was working with Ray Juhl I started early, rode my bike into the office, and changed, and got to work, not going home till sometimes 5pm after the last student finished a project, and the same with Masscom, sometimes we’d be there all night - though granted sometimes that was to play Quake 3 with the boss - but the bottom line is, I survived. I got my app filled out, copy of my resume in, a copy of my drivers license, have to bring in my social security card too - but it was not too shabby - even one of the guys who interviewed me walked by and saw the MacBook Pro and said “A MAC!? What?” - thinking I was going to get some fan boy speech either for or against, he said “I’ll have to have a look at that, I’ve been considering getting a mac for my office” - he uses PC, but is getting tired of M$ licensing fees, so he may have me help him make the leap if we can keep his access to some apps (ala Parallels) - in other words, the equation must be balanced.

So after work I took my usual quick route home, however, tonight everyone else, their cousin, their pet hamster, and their friend Joey who lived down the street from your cousin Ted in 3rd grade, ALSO took that route, and in turn I played the “Alternate Street!” game, which let me test my knowledge of the roads, and find myself a round-about, backwards way to get to the right freeway to wait another hour to get to my bank to only beat the manager from locking the door by 3 minutes, to put money in the bank to help combat the overcharge issues, so I was excited that I really had gotten there but I didn’t know *breath* - that my bank was fine. The two credits cleared this morning at the same time as the initial transaction from them, so I was ahead, and then some, adding an extra $400 from PayPal.

But anywhoo - I think it’s time to find food, and I might just be ordering a pizza, or cooking one, or thinking about cooking one - something though, as I realized around 3pm that I didn’t goto lunch, and I really didn’t feel like walking / driving anywhere except home, so it didn’t seem wise to tempt fate. So for now I’ll say farewell, may put down more thoughts later tonight, but I fear once the full belly hits, there will be little stopping me from the pillow. Thanks for the continued prayers and well wishes via IM - I’ll keep ya all updated!

T-Mobile Hotspots + 802.1x + WPA2 Enterprise (10.5.1)

So I posted to a few sites about the common problem of the instructions for 802.1x auth over WPA2 Enterprise at Starbucks Hotspots (Provided by T-Mobile) - there were instructions but as of 10.5.1 it seems they were broken - so the other day I fiddled around and found the proper path - I’m posting parts of jayrcole’s instructions from MacOSX Hints and seeding in my tweaks:

1. Open Network Preferences, select AirPort, click Advanced.
2. In the Advanced section, click on the 802.1X pane, then click the “Domain” dropdown and choose “User”
3. Click the + and add in “T-Mobile” - really it can be anything.
4. In the username traditionally it’s your phone number, so fill that in and your password, on Network put in “tmobile1x”.
5. Under Authentication, check these: TTLS, PEAP, EAP-FAST, LEAP, and MD5.
6. Now click on TTLS, and choose “Configure…” and choose “PAP” and under Identity put in “anonymous”.
7. Under Network name, select Join Other Network; in Network Name enter tmobile1x, and under Security, select WPA2 Enterprise.
8. Finally, for 802.1X, select T-Mobile. And you’ll most likely need to re-enter your password (Didn’t save on my MBP).
9. Enjoy Hotspot goodness, and no more login pages, plus your browsing a tad more secure over WPA2, firewall is still a good idea.

So there you have it, if I get really energetic later I’ll install Skitch on the MBP and do some screen shots to go with the walk thru, but all in all this should get you rolling, I used it again today, just did “Join Network” and the tmobile1x was there put in my password and I was off on WPA2 Enterprise fun YMMV, who knows what 10.5.2 will do to us, but if it does change anything I’ll see what I can come up with.

Clean Desktop

Getting things all cleaned up for the move, including my desktop:

The other screen is more or less IM and Terminal Windows

Woohoo!

I have some great friends (of which also happens to be a client) - this morning I got the note from my good friend BdG that he had snagged me a copy of the MacHeist Bundle - so this morning I have 8 (9 soon, all 11 within a week I’d imagine)! Very cool thing to do, gave me some great tools like TaskPaper which I’d been wanting to get ahold of, and if, but more like when the other apps get unlocked, it also gives me some great tools for the business as well adding in Snapz Pro and Pixelmator - so very jazzed indeed.

BdG if I could hug you in person, I would, and I wouldn’t care who saw it. Thank you my friend, a very awesome gesture indeed, and a nice pick me up to my day! Let’s hope it all flows as well! Happy Friday Folks!

Update

MacHeist II: Return of the Mac Faithful

So it begins another year of MacHeist, I am in #macheist right now watching the slow release of all the apps in this year’s bundle - and obvious some folks are impatient, not everyone is hip to the whole “Web Events” - I remember when Greg did his awards show via IRC, some loved it, some hated it - but in the end, I think it went off well.

Now each time a bundle like this goes out, there is a crowd on both side of the tracks, that see the good, and then the other side see’s the bad, honestly I think it’s good and good some more, some developers may not want to get on the bargain bandwagon, but so be-it, it is their code, their time, their choice - but this is a fun yearly even, and so far some decent apps, out of the 3 announced thus far I own Cha-Ching, but the version 2 looks good for Leopard, and with job options / rent / etc. all about to go nuts, a finances app sounds good.

The big perk I think to MH each year is the donation, granted it’s not the places folks would choose, but I think it’s some decent places and it’s well rounded, trying to get some from each area things like hunger, disease, and the big hitter lately “Earth” type options, MH sums it up as such:

Last year, our members were offered a choice of charities to have 25% of their purchase donated to. This initiative became a spectacular success, with $200,000 raised by the end of the event. This year, we’re hoping to shatter last year’s record numbers, and show how generous the Mac community can be.

Granted I know not all my readers are Mac users, and I myself am no 100% sold to any one OS (though Mac is 90% range) this is a great deal, and to any Mac Convert it’s a great way to get the ball rolling with some already wonderful apps for Mac.

Anywhoo - there’s my shameless plug Check it out.

Faster, Cleaner, Fun-er

So, you guessed it, I am still awake, working away here, getting things all lined up to bring the iMac back to full production status, I am about 1/2 way transferring back over from the Linux box 47.3GB of “Music” which includes iTunes purchases and such, slow going, but it’s going the big one to worry about is Pictures, lots of digital negatives there.

I have been playing with Leopard for about a day now, like most folks out there toying with new features, though unlike a group of folks out there, I can’t really say I have found any “quirks” that are show stoppers. Granted while copying from a NFS mount I can’t seem to unmount disk images of installs, so I have a LOT on the desktop right now waiting for the data to get copied over but so far everything is running smoothly, all my common apps like Textmate which I am blogging from, Transmit for FTP works fine, I have honestly yet to find a application that gives me any problems, and most folks report that CS3 is working fine, so when that bridge comes up here, I’ll cross it without fear!

New features are nice

• Spaces - It is pretty spiff, I enjoyed it on the MBP however on dual monitors, each “Space” is split into 2 sections (one for each monitor) so if I have 4, there are 8 windows to drag apps into, it’s pretty clever
• Stacks - Some people are finding this very troublesome, but I think its just another feature you can take or leave, and for me, I enjoy it, for downloads and documents (the defaults) it works great, but for me I also have my stock photo purchases, projects folder, and “Desktop” as files get dropped/saved there all the time, it’s pretty handy.
• Time Machine - While I don’t “hate” it, I am not 100% in love with it, the use of a NFS mount would of been better, but just means I need to get a good sized drive to use on my iMac, and I need to clean off the portable drive for the MBP.
• Mail - Lovely - the new features aren’t a “MUST” for me, granted the To-Do’s will most likely sync into the Dash via Missing Sync (or so is my hope) but it’s speed has greatly increased, so much so that I imported my Thunderbird email, and have 1 less app to install.
• Frontrow - Looks good, apparently it shares the layout of the AppleTV device, but it’s workable - not that I use it that much, as I tend to use VLC and full screen it on the secondary monitor, but its a nice touch up none the less.
• Overall UI- Seen a number of complaints about this, folks upset about the transparent menu bar, or the dock, “blah blah blah” people are entitled to their opinion, don’t get me wrong, but at the same time aren’t Mac folk supposed to be this super “progressive” thinkers I mean come on the ad is “Think Different” but instead some folks have been spooked by the new look - all I can say is, deep breath people, it’ll be okay.

But so far so good, I am sure there’s a slew of features I could go on about, and in time, maybe I will, currently doing Software Updates for iLife06, just finished the last one, but it all is looking super good, more later I am sure, more to do while the copy continues it’s long journey of copying