I don’t normally curse (ok, ok, when writing) but fuck!
Update: I ended up nuking and paving the laptop after grabbing data via target mode. The effort late last year to finally organize my apps, data, and such is paying off. The FileVault image works, and I was able to mount it elsewhere (so I expect to drop it back in the laptop after I finish reinstalling). Eating my own sysadmin dog food: anytime!
Update: Really, a little thinking about the chain of events that may have caused this. Just before the Finder bent itself into oblivion, I just attached my video camera and (gasp!) poked around its file system from the CLI. I had attached the camera before without problems (but this was the first time I sniffed around). I’m not sure this has anything to do, other than folks seem to think this issue is related to external disks.
The optimist thinks the glass is half full. The pessimist thinks the glass is half empty. The engineer knows the real truth: that the glass is twice as large as it should be for optimum utilization of resources.
Exchange support in Snow Leopard has so far worked really well, including iPhone syncing with MobileMe. Good-bye Outlook running under VMware. Really, good-bye to about the only reason I ran some flavor of Windows anymore.
When I nuked and paved the laptop, I cleaned up the virtual machine stable I had been hauling around for some time.
About two years ago I switched from Parallels (which had been working relatively well for me and was, for a while, the only option for the Mac) and went back to VMware (so that I could run VMs elsewhere if I needed to). Parallels 5 came out recently, and they had sent out an offer for a cheap update, so I decided to give them a try. I used their Virtual Machine Transporter to convert a Win7 beta VMware virtual machine, but Parallels ended up choking on it (it went into this loop where it wants to log the user in and out for the changes to the Shared Profile to take effect). I’m on the road, so I gave up quickly: I dislike getting beachballed into oblivion and having my laptop rendered into a hot molten pile of silicon (solid 100% CPU utilization). I uninstalled Parallels, wiped the virtual machine, installed VMware back and started the old VMware-based machine. For whatever reason, now VMware chokes on it too: the endless beachballing, CPU slaughtering… the works.
That’s almost five minutes humanity won’t be able to get back. No Logo comes to mind. I love the bit when they all mumble (chant?) “Microsoft!” (about 1:50 into the video). I once had dinner at a crab restaurant (I think it was Joe’s Crab Shack) in Colorado Springs where the servers did a similar thing. I actually enjoyed it, primarily because I had a beer and some really good food in front of me, and it fit the moment. Not so much at the Microsoft store. Really. Unless they have a beer dispenser somewhere. And it event then…
This landed on my spam folder this morning. I actually had to double check, because this one is actually polished style-wise: header, theme, language, grammar. Two things stood out: the wrong mailto address (blurred to protect the innocent) and the funky from address. SpamAssassin: thanks!
Back in July, I was lamenting that I missed Atlassian’s Stimulus Package. It’s back (thanks Brian!) and with a vengeance: their Starter “program” provides $10 licenses for full blown Atlassian awesomeness (JIRA, Confluence, Crowd, Bamboo, FishEye and GreenHopper), and you can also purchase support. Additionally, JIRA 4 is out.
I have no idea how I came across this (the whole concept sort of turned my brain to mush momentarily):Ars Technica reports on some global homelyWindows launch party event where folks host Windows 7 launch parties at their house (I picked the Ars article because they’re a talented crew, but there are many more out there). Like Dave Rosenberg, I’m still not sure about the “reality measurement” associated with all this, particularly given the introductory hosting video (there are others for each of the related fun activities proposed for the party). In the spirit of full disclosure, having recently read Naomi Klein’s No Logo, being a Mac/Solaris/Linux user, and failing to understand the logic behind the Windows so-called interface (yep, I have tried Windows 7 on a virtual machine) my perception is admittedly probably biased. Yet I cannot fathom the thought of pimping Windows on my friends and acquaintances, much less in the setting depicted in the videos (“hey, to wrap up, let’s burn a music CD!”). Redmond strikes again, and words escape me to describe the concept and execution.
So you’ve got your trusty laptop warmed up with a fresh copy of Windows 7, decked the halls with balloons and streamers, and sent invitations to an exhaustively multicultural clutch of friends for a single night of red-hot OS release revelry.
