Chad Things

Ok, so they don’t always suck – they can design kick-ass products, but they’re quality and support need some work. I’ve had several problems recently with both my new macbook pro and my ipod video, and i need to vent a bit.

I took a chance and bought the new intel-based macbook pro. I’ve had it a few weeks now, and for the most part its the same as the powerbook. The main 2 things that are different are the intel chip (vs PowerPC chip in powerbook), and the RAM access (twice as fast on macbook). For the few apps that are compiled as a universal binary (like camino browser), macbook rocks. But most apps are not, and performance is about the same as the powerbook.

Specifically, i was using firefox (powerpc binary) a week ago when my laptop froze up. The mouse would still work, but nothing else would. I let it sit for a while (10 mins), came back, and it was still frozen, so i hard-rebooted. After this, it would not ever boot up again – It would go to the screen where it says “Mac OS X” in small white square window with solid blue background, and then just be completely solid blue, and stay forever. I kept hard-rebooting (by holding down power button till it turns off) and repeating this process for several days. Unable to find any info help online, I went to the “genius bar” at the local apple store. They would not accept drop-offs, and the wait to talk to anyone 1-1.5 hours. Sigh. I had to goto work, so i skipped it. Later I tried a few more things on my own, including the firewire target disk mode (press-T-on-bootup), but nothing worked till i wiped the drive and did a fresh install. So i lost all my data, but at least my laptop works again. I’m not sure exactly what happened, i’m guessing there were bad sectors on the harddrive that could not be read on bootup so it hung .. but not sure. I should prolly run some exhaustive drive checks …

The other problem i have is with my ipod video. I have the 60GB one, bought last december, and 3 times now it has frozen up on me. The screen is lit up, usually during mp3 playback, but the entire unit becomes unresponsive. Normally you can power on/off a device or computer if it freezes up, worst case remove batteries/power and reboot. But ipod video does not have that option. I had to wait till batteries were drained and it powered off. Then i plugged it in and it would reboot. Not annoying enough for me to get rid of if and by a new mp3 player, but annoying enough to piss me off and blog about it. Heh.

Update: Check out the comments for ways to fix..

I’ve been an uncle for almost 5 years. My older sister, Lara, and her husband Bryan, have 2 kids, Addy and Sam, and they are both awesome. But last week my other sister, Leslie, gave birth to her first, Katherine Alice Aiken. Yeah!! And for added bonus, she was born right before midnight on my dads birthday. Even though i’m far away and have yet to see her in person, i know she’s beautiful and feel lucky to have another one in the family. The picture here is from the hospital less than one day old – she had to stay in intensive care for a couple days but now she’s at home with her mommy and daddy, Leslie and Michael Aiken.

Last night there was a huge Pillow Fight in downtown San Francisco. It was awesome. There was about 300 pillow fighters, another 100-200 spectators, tons of feathers and flashes going off, a few kids, a few people dressed up, but mostly peeps fresh outta work with a pillow and a smile.

I was having a slow day at work, so i busted out early to participate. I called my friend Juan, who had not heard of it, but he was down (heh). So i grabbed some $10 pillows from bed bath beyond and we headed over. Unsurprisingly, i ran into lots friends, including Jason and Monica in this awesome pic.

I love that i still have friends that prefer a pillow fight to rushing home for hallmark holidays like valentine’s day.

The cool thing was how it started – online and word of mouth just a couple weeks ago. San Francisco was not the first city, but this was the first time in SF. Wikipedia had info on it, but i think it was Rene’s Craiglist post that got the ball rolling here in SF, also appearing on Laughing Squid. The local news showed up as well, and a story appeared in the SF Chronicle

2/21 Update – It was shipped 2/18 via Federal Express and arrived today. Hurray!!!! Now back to the original post from 2/14:

Just got an email today – my new apple laptop, the intel-based macbook pro, has been delayed and upgraded. Is this good news? Hmm… When i ordered it on Jan 10, 2006, they said it would ship 2/15. Today they said they will begin shipping the macbook pro, but mine will not ship till 2/23. For the record, i ordered the macbook pro the day they were announced – so you would think mine would be the first to ship – think again. I guess its because i got the more expensive 1.83GHz version. However, my 1.83 GHz has been upgraded to 2.0GHz – and for $300 more i can bump it up to 2.16 GHz (yeah right .. maybe for $50 .. but not $300). Anyway, i suppose one week is not that long, and it will be slightly faster …

Here’s the email i received on 2/14 from apple:

                                                         Date: 02/14/2006
To Our Valued Apple Customer:

  Today we announced that this week Apple will begin shipping the new 15.4-inch
  MacBook Pro featuring the Intel Core Duo processor, a built-in iSight, Front
  Row with Apple Remote and more. The reception of the MacBook Pro has been
  tremendous and we are working hard to ship as many units as fast as possible.

  Better still, prior to shipment we've improved the entire MacBook Pro family
  with configurations starting at 1.83Ghz up to 2.16GHz. We have upgraded your
  MacBook Pro from a 1.83GHz processor to a 2.0GHz processor at no additional
  cost! We anticipate shipping your upgraded order by February 23, 2006.

  To learn more about the most recent upgrades to the MacBook Pro family, please
  visit http://www.apple.com/macbookpro. You might be interested to know that
  Apple is offering an even faster processor - the 2.16GHz. This is a custom
  configured option and is available for an additional charge.

  If you decide you'd like to make a change to your upgraded MacBook Pro order,
  we're happy to help. You may reach us at at 1-800-676-2775, Mon-Fri 7 am-10 pm
  and 9 am-6 pm Sat-Sun (Central). Some change requests may extend your shipment
  date slightly. If we do not hear from you by February 18th, we will ship the
  MacBook Pro 2.0Ghz Intel Core Duo.

  Our systems will reflect the change to your order by February 15. Please visit
  http://www.apple.com/orderstatus for the
  most up-to-date information on your upgraded order.  A shipment notification,
  with tracking information, will be emailed to you as soon as your order is
  shipped.

  Thank you very much for shopping at the Apple Store!

  Sincerely,
  The Apple Store Team

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility.”

Edward R. Murrow, from the March 9, 1954, ‘See It Now’ television broadcast on Senator Joe McCarthy.

I just finished watching George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck movie on Murrow and McCarthy. We’ve all heard about McCarthy, but this movie highlights one of america’s best journalist standing up to the fear and helping bring an end to McCarthyism. The reason i write this blog is probably the same reason that Clooney made this movie now – fear of communism is not unlike the fear of terrorism we see today. But also, i will take it further – where are the true leaders today? Why don’t the journalists ask the hard questions, report with accuracy and truth? I’m not saying they all suck, but few are good and fewer are great. Is it because the machine is so finely tuned that more money can be made without real journalists? without hard truth? without a hero? Yes, i think Edward R Murrow was a hero.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, 1905

I’ve finally gone Apple. Ever since i was a kid and my dad worked for IBM, i’ve always been into computers, but some how resisted Apple. First DOS, then OS/2 (i really loved), then NT 4.0, and finally XP. But I’ve never really liked microsoft, and when OS X was released, i started getting excited, mainly because it has BSD underneath (i know how to hack with that), but also because it finally had enough applications that i no longer needed windows for anything. This last one is key – every consumer will have at least one application they love and will tolerate crap as long as they can still have that killer app.

First apple purchase was the 60GB iPod Video. My old mp3 player died, and i wanted a new one with a big drive and quality sound – this fit the bill with a great screen for photos and videos as bonus.

Then I drooled at the powerbook for a while and finally broke down and bought the 15″ one (standard except 1GB RAM) on 12/28/05. It arrived Jan 3, and i loved it ever since i opened it. I’ve been around computers my whole life, always buying lots of gadgets, but i never thought i’d be so happy about a laptop. The whole experience is done right – from the sleek laptop body and backlit keyboard to the vivid screen colors to how easy it was to be up and running. I won’t go much into it, because i have to return it – what you say? read on.

Then today, 1/10/06, Apple officially announced the new intel-based laptops – MacBook Pro. It was not unexpected, there are several reasons apple went intel (price, DRM, etc), but i decided i wanted the better performance that steve jobs professes. I called apple, and luckily i was on day 13 of my 12/28 purchase and still fell under the 14-day refund policy. Hurray!!!. So i got a RMA to return that and then immediately went and purchased the MacBook Pro online (but it won’t ship till February, sigh).

Here’s some key differences if you’re considering an apple laptop:

Halloween is prolly my favorite holiday – everybody dresses up, decorates their house, and eats candy. San Francisco loves halloween almost as much as burningman – if you’ve ever been to the castro for halloween you’d know what i mean – its like mardi gras in New Orleans but EVERYBODY is dressed up. Normally i don’t do much decorating, and i think i’ve only carved like 5 pumpkins in my life, but this year i made my best jack-o-latern ever. My friend steph had people over for dinner and pumpkin carving a week ago, and she bought these carving kits. At first i was like .. lame (i don’t need any help with MY carving! heh) .. but then i flipped thru the book that came with it and saw really cool designs, so i decided to make the wolf. It took me almost 2 hours, but i was going slow and chillin’ with my friends, but it was definitely worth it. You impressed? As a side note, the pumpkin only lasted about 4 days before the mold started going crazy. At least we got pictures. Thanks Steph!!

I love San Francisco, i really do, especially the haight where I live. But i do miss these things called “seasons” that the rest of the country gets to enjoy. A couple weeks ago i finally made it up to visit my friend suzi in seattle, washington, where autumn is just beginning. We both wanted to go hiking/camping, and planned a trip to centail washington – Lake Chelan. It was awesome. It’s about 3-4 hours east of seattle on the dry, other half of washington state. Due to fear of rain, we stayed at a hotel in the town on the southern tip of Lake Chelan. The lake is 55 miles long, and about 2 miles wide – and to get to the northern tip you must take a ferry – no roads. We missed the ferry, and hiked a nice 7-8 mile roundtrip to Pot Peak (google maps). That was perfect. We also did some wine tasting (pretty good wine, and really friendly wine pourers) and had a nice dinner. On the drive back we stopped in this town called leavenworth, WA, which was made to look entirely like a bavarian village. You totally felt like you were in germany – even the starbucks had their sign in a special bavarian font. We only stayed a couple hours and then headed back to seattle, but right when we left we past the most beautiful spot on the side of the road (Hwy 2). Now thats the seasons i’m talking about.

I did get to see a bit of seattle – suzi’s neighborhood, including the Fremont Troll. The troll is basically a carving under the fremont bridge – check out the link for a dope picture. We drove around, she pointed out where dave mathews hangs out, saw her office, the seattle space needle, blah blah blah. But I especially love this lake by her house – green lake. She showed it to me in the evening right after it rained and we got to see the most amazingly beautiful rainbow. In fact, it sprung right out of my head. My mom always told me i was worth more than a pot of gold.

Right before i went to morocco i lost my cell phone, which sux. I quickly scoped out the current offerings, almost went with Motorola RAZR v3, but decided on the VX-8100 from LG. I’m not a big fan of verizon (not as good as ATT/Cingular at yahoo campus), but verizon’s the only one selling it. The 2 main reasons i went with the 8100 were because i previously had the VX6000 from LG, and it ruled (robust – dropped it hundreds of times, and could hack it with custom ringtones, etc using bitpim) and the among the new features of the 8100 was a mp3 player, which gave it lots of potential. At the time i bought it, the mp3 player was disabled, but the hackers were organized around this phone and it wouldn’t be disabled for long. Recently verizon released version 4 of their firmware which enabled the mp3 player. I also ordered a bunch of accessories online, and now i am good to go. Feel free to see my details on the VX8100

On my way to morocco, around August 10, I stopped in New York for a few days to visit the beautiful Shayna Cohen. She’s currently an intern at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, about 2-3 hours north of manhattan. She’s one of 4 6-month interns that are there primarily to work on their own art, but they also get to do lots of chores inside and outside this mini-campus farm-like school. The town is tiny, surrounded by lots of other tiny towns, with some old homes dating back to the 1600’s – way cool. But there are tons of outdoor nature adventures to be had.

We had 2 outdoor adventures – one was tubing down this river, the other was climbing mountains in mohonk preserve. The tubing was super fun – the water was cold at the start, mainly because we just got rained on, but then the sun came out and warmed us right up. Mostly the river was chill, but we had a few rapids that got my adrenaline pumpin’, one of which was too much for shayna and tossed her out. Luckily she survived. Mohonk was much more chill, hiking thru the woods, then climbing rocks to the summit, where we had an amazing view. I LOVE Mountains. Besides the outdoors, We also did lots of chillin’ … saw march of the penguins in rosendale’s only theater, eatin’ sushi in the nearby town, and general tom foolery. Pretty much the most relaxing and possibly the best vacation ever. I wanna go back.