ReindeerFlotilla
Around 2 weeks ago, something bad happened to the password storage on my 667 MHz PowerBook, and I couldn’t even log into my own account. I tried various Mac/Unix fixes for this that I found Googling, but it was a wash. (One of them claimed that a second admin account would have made it easy. raininva made sure to tease me about that, since her account is a simple user.)
Luckily, any FireWire-equipped Mac can be made to pretend it’s nothing more than an expensive external drive, and all files were easily backed up to the desktop Mac. Last week, I found time to wipe and re-install, and this morning I got around to running Software update for all the OS patches. (Busy much? You don’t know the half of it.) Hopefully, I’ll find the time soon to copy all my documents back over and re-install any vital apps. (Nice thing about a wipe – you get rid of a lot of apps you weren’t really using.)
Interestingly enough, and saving me a lot of download time to boot, the wired Ethernet port on the machine has suddenly started working again. I had suspected software issues, not hardware ones, when it failed a few months ago.
The house is freezing. We switched to electric space heaters from the hot water radiators, since the oil costs for the latter were killing our bank account. Electric heat is much cheaper, but very very localized – especially when it hit 31 Farenheit outdoors the night before.
Steve Jobs is calling
I really don’t want to sound like an Apple fanatic, but frankly the iPhone is exactly what I’ve been waiting to hang on my belt.
Putting aside the widescreen iPod thing for a moment (I have a nice video iPod, thanks), what I’ve been looking for is a handheld cell network / Internet terminal, and this thing appears to have the goods. Voice calls, voice mail, text messaging, POP3, IMAP, and HTML. I further suspect that, depending on the sophistication of the web browser in the thing, there’s a lot of potential for useful or fun Flash and JavaScript applications. Imagine being able to access the office suite Google’s supposed to be working on – from your cell phone.
Two issues for me; Cingular (I have good reasons to stick with Sprint for the moment) and $499 for the base model. Not to mention that it’s a v1.0, and we all know the fun that can happen there.
Still, this is the device that might finally get my Newton fully retired.
