gottahavacuppamocha

This last paycheck, I ordered a Mr. Bento jar/box/thing and a rice cooker. At work, I normally get food from the Riley cafeteria or McDonalds, neither of which is very cheap. The least expensive thing I sometimes get is a grilled cheese and fries from the cafeteria, which costs around $3.00. A wrap from the cafeteria costs about $4.50. On a day-in/day-out basis, this gets to be sort of expensive, and the variety is sort of limited, which is why I wanted to try something different.

In Japan, a bento box is a bit like a lunch box or a box lunch in the US. Bento boxes can be bought in stores or from some restaurants as ready-made meals, like a box lunch in the US. However, you can also buy the empty boxes themselves, which are essentially lunch boxes with compartments. Mr. Bento is a model made by Zojirushi. It’s an insulated stainless steel container that holds four microwaveable bowls in a stack. In theory, the bowls on the bottom of the stack will stay hot, while the bowls at the top will be room temperature.

The main downside I can see is that the bowls don’t look that large, so I won’t be able to fit a sandwich in one. However, if I’m planning on eating a sandwich, then a bento box probably isn’t necessary. The main upside is having a variety of food for lunch, which means a sandwich isn’t necessary. When it arrives, I guess the thing will be to figure out what to make for lunch. The challenge for me personally will be to remember to prepare something ahead of time.

I also ordered a rice cooker. My only previous experience with one was a former roommate from Japan who brought one with him. I could never figure it out because all the buttons were in Japanese, but he ate a lot of rice and swore by it. Looking on Amazon on a lark, I found a) there was a variety to choose from, and b) many were reasonably priced. I sort of wondered about the quality, but the one I ordered is from a Japanese company (Zojirushi, as it happens), and had many good reviews from Amazon customers. Strangely, most of the people who gave it high marks said to ignore the instructions that come with it. While the principles of cooking rice are the same, American rice is usually longer grain compared with Japanese rice, so needs more water…or something like that. It may take some experimentation to get it right. It can also be used as a steamer, so that will be nice.

Since boneless, skinless chicken breasts were on sale at the grocery store today, they will probably end up in most of my lunches this week. I need to figure out some good bento sized lunches :-)

I don’t know about this, but it seems strange/odd. Maybe it’s the economy or something.

At work, I ordered an HP LaserJet printer from a vendor a couple of weeks ago. Shipments from this vendor usually arrive in a few days, so yesterday I sent them an email asking where they expected to ship the printer. Two weeks is a long time for this vendor, so sending an inquiry seemed appropriate. Their reply was received a few hours later, saying there were supply problems and HP notified them it would be 6 – 8 weeks before the printer shipped. That’s a lifetime, so I’ll be shopping around at other vendors for something that isn’t HP. The annoyance factor is their website doesn’t mention if something is in stock or not. It just has the “Add to cart” button.

Last week, I ordered a replacement video card for my MacPro. A day or two later, the company sent me an email saying it would be a few extra days because they had it on backorder with the supplier. Yesterday, they sent me an email saying they were having a hard time finding a source for this card.

If each order was late separately, it wouldn’t seem so strange. This makes me wonder if there is a shortage of something going on. Shipping? Silicon? Simple coincidence?

I’ve never been that big on warranty repairs until becoming an LSP (IU-speak for a computer tech). There are rare occasions where a part fails and I have to call up a computer company for a replacement. Once or twice they even sent a technician out to do the job, mainly because they were laptops and not easily repairable.

Last January I got an Apple MacBook Pro for my own personal use. Over the past several months I noticed a smudge or something on the screen, but it wouldn’t come out when I cleaned it. It’s easily seen against light backgrounds (like word processors and spreadsheets). Also, over the last few weeks, I noticed the lid was getting a bit more floppy, so today I took the laptop in to the local Apple Store to get it repaired before the warranty expires. After reading some stories in a few online forums, I was secretly hoping they would just give me a new laptop, since they didn’t have the part in stock, but it wasn’t the case. They said it would take 5 – 7 days for the repair, though that puts it into Christmas territory. They will be replacing the whole lid apparently, not just the screen. I’m hoping it will be done by the 24th, since I want to take off from the 23rd to the 25th. I’ve got a lot of work on the 26th, 29th, and 30th.

A few years ago, I posted some 3D models of mine to TurboSquid. While they take a cut, they pay every so often. However, my stuff has sold so infrequently I never got paid, because it was the amount was too small to make it worthwhile cutting a check. On Friday, I got my first check from TurboSquid.

For sales going back to 2006, I got paid a whopping $26.50. I get to set the price of my models, which aren’t that expensive, but it since the selection I have to offer is fairly small, it takes awhile to sell stuff. However, now that I’ve been paid, I guess that makes me a professional 3D modeller.

Coincidentally, perhaps serendipitously, a week ago I bought a Cintiq. I bought a regular tablet a month ago, and after I bought it I started reading about the Cintiq, which I had never heard of before. After a lot of thought back and forth, I broke down and bought one. Started doing some basic work with it this weekend, and was amazed at how good it works. Drawing with it in Photoshop worked great, though I probably didn’t tax Photoshop’s capabilities. However, zooming in or out a few times led to a delayed refresh, so it took the screen a few seconds to catch up with where I was. I’ll be working with t some more this week, between studying, work, and classes.

I bought a bike in January with the intention of riding to work everyday. It seemed like a good idea until the snow and ice started. Snow isn’t so much of a problem. Neither are rain or cold temps. Ice can be a problem, though one that can be dealt with by careful riding. The big problem is ice covered by snow. With snow covering the streets and sidewalks, I don’t know what’s underneath. I’ve had a few wrecks in the past where I slid on ice I didn’t know was there. Even with a helmet, it’s still a pain. Bike wrecks are no fun :-( though they make for some pretty cool scars.

Since the weather has been nicer, I’ve been trying to ride my bike more often, though the general hassle of getting the bicycle in and out of my fifth floor apartment has made walking an easier choice. Still, I’m trying to ride more. It’s not much use having a bike if I don’t ride it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been on a mini-shopping spree for bike accessories. A rack for the back was first because it can keep the water off my ass when riding in the rain. I also got a small pack for the rack to hold my workout clothes for the gym. Today, I got some clipless pedals and a pair of Pearl Izumi shoes. Today, I ordered a new rechargeable light for it, because I lost the battery pack to my NiteRider system this morning. The mini-bungee system on the top of the pack didn’t do a good job of keeping the battery pack in place. However, there are lots of rechargeable lights to choose from now, so the prices are more reasonable than they were 15 – 20 years ago (though NiteRider systems are still expensive). I also ordered a cycling jersey and some “waterproof” panniers. In a few months I may buy some more stuff like cold weather gear, but that’s all I plan to buy for the moment.

My cell phone just proved its worth. Coming back home after work, I took the elevator, as usual, to my fifth floor apartment, but this time the elevator got stuck. The only light was the emergency light, which wasn’t much. Luckily, I stopped off for Chinese take-out on the way home, so I was set for food just in case.

My impression has been that the elevator seems to act up in the heat, and while it is hot out at the moment, I’ve never been in the elevator when it’s gotten stuck before. I pressed all the buttons and nothing happened, when it dawned on me to use my cell phone to call the management company. They sent someone over and had me out in about 10 minutes. I’m glad I caught them before they took off for the day. The maintenance guy said it was a heck of a time for a power outage, which I thought was odd since the lights in the hall were on. My DSL modem still seems to be on, but the air conditioning isn’t working. I wonder if we’re having a brown-out or something. Maybe it’s a sign for me to trudge up five flights to get in shape :-/

*** edit ***

That was weird. Something was up with the electricity. The outlet next to the computer desk was fine, but the HVAC unit on the other side of the same wall wasn’t working. The lights in the kitchen would go on (didn’t test anything else in there), but the lights in the hallway, the bathroom, and the great room wouldn’t. (BTW, “great room” is probably a better term than “living/dining/bedroom.”) The power came back on a little bit ago.

I didn’t trust doing any computing for fear of taxing the building’s power grid, so I took the time to do some cleaning up. That’s still an ongoing project, but it is probably 60% – 75% finished :-) Then it will be a matter of keeping it clean afterward. *sigh*

I finally succumbed and got a cell phone. Actually, I got two cell phones. While I’m pretty good with computers, when it comes to mobile phones, I’m a bit of a noob. I’ve been looking at plans for awhile, comparing features and what not, and I wasn’t totally pleased. Plus, I kept reading about customer service horror stories at the Consumerist, so I wasn’t in any rush to make a decision.

All of the plans I looked at came with phones, but the selection of phones weren’t what I was looking for. I like the Motorola Razrs, but the plans I looked at only had a limited selection of colors, and they would come locked to the provider, which I didn’t want. I got a green Razr from the Motorola website, then looked at plans again. The Razr I got was unlocked, but came with no SIM card. When you sign up for a plan, you get a SIM card from the provider, and all of the plans came with phones. However, I noticed that a lot of the plans came with free phones. I ended up getting a plan from AT&T that came with a black Razr locked to AT&T. The phone was $50, but there was a $50 mail-in rebate (which I still have to mail in).

The Razr from Motorola arrived last week, and the Razr from AT&T arrived today with the SIM card already inside. I pulled the SIM card out of that and stuck it in the other Razr, (I figure I can use the AT&T Razr as a backup) then spent most of the day learning about how to do things with it. The sad thing is that the day flew by. I suppose it was because I was active, even though the phone didn’t seem that complicated. I tested t out by calling my office phone, then used the office phone to call the cell. I sent a text message from the phone to one of my email addresses. The phone was able to talk to the Mac and synchronize, but connecting it to the Dell laptop with Vista was problematic, because Vista couldn’t find the drivers. I could probably try it harder to make it work, but it’s not that important. I may try it again at some point.

Figuring out how to take photos with the phone was easy, but the screens are so small it’s hard to tell if they are any good. I will have to transfer them to a PC to get an idea of the quality.

So far, it’s an interesting toy.

I need to study more. Today we had an oral exam in French, while we had a regular exam last week. While we were on break in class this week the teacher handed out our graded exams from last week, and I am a bit disappointed in myself. I got a 79. Since I missed a week where we started a new chapter, I missed some information, but I thought I had it covered by reading the pages that were covered. To my thinking the grade is a high C or a low B, but it reminds me that I should have spent more time studying.

This week was probably slightly better. For one part we just had to read/record a short poem in French and we were given the text we had to read. For the next section, we had were paired up with another student and we had to have a short conversation in French. We were given English instructions for what the conversation was supposed to cover, e.g. “Find out the last time he/she went out.” One student asked questions while the other student answered. We can write out our questions and answers ahead of time, but we cannot have them in front of us when we are doing the recording (it’s a computerized language lab). Though it’s not too surprising, I had a hard time remembering what I came up with, and I also suck at spontaneous conversation in French. I do okay writing it out, as long as I have a book in front of me so I can check my work, but speaking French spontaneously is something I have to work on.

In Second Language Acquisition last semester, there was a lengthy discussion (that kept popping up throughout) about using the L1 in the L2 classroom. At early levels it is needed, but at some point it becomes a crutch for the student. In the second semester of Beginning French we are to the point where we should be able to have some simple conversations, but have problems expressing ourselves because we still don’t have a large vocabulary and don’t know all of the rules of grammar. I need to hit the books a bit harder.

Also, since I got Poser last week, it has proven to be big time waster. I was never very interested in gaming, but I think this is a similar situation. To create props, clothes, morphs, etc for Poser, you have to export the model from Poser as a generic file (I used .obj) and import it in a different 3D editing program. I used Blender in this case. Surprisingly, even for a speedy computer like my Mac, Blender takes a long time to import .obj files – like 1/2 hour or more. Once it is imported, I save the file as a .blend file so it will load quicker next time.

After the post about battery life, I found myself making sticky notes with the time I unplugged the laptops to see how long it takes for the error messages to pop up. I also started doing that with Blender importing .obj files. I thought it was strange that I did that, because it seems a bit anal in retrospect. Although if I actually compiled the data in a spreadsheet and graphed the data, that would be a bit too much, so I guess I’m okay for now.

I’ve had the MacBook Pro for over a month now and since I have more experience with it, it’s probably ime for a progress report or something. As an aside, I keep wanting to call it a Powerbook because it reminds me of the Apple G4-era Powerbooks from a few years ago.

Typing still sucks. I’m not sure why, but I must hit some keys lighter then others when typing and the letters don’t show up. On other computers I get a lot of typos from pressing the adjacent keys, but with the MacBook the problem is random letters are missing because I didn’t press a given key hard enough. Also, Apple advertised it as having a full-sized keyboard, but they probably meant a full-sized laptop keyboard. I’ll talk about that more in a bit.

Horsepower. For most of the past month I’ve used the computer mainly for listening to music and watching DVDs. Hardly taxing for a capable machine, so I decided to put the CPU to use and installed the BOINC client for SETI. A few years ago SETI had the SETI@home project which harnessed the collective CPU power of the machines with clients installed. It was a well-known example of distributed computing. However, some people felt the idea of looking for aliens was idiotic and came up with their own distributed computing clients that worked at protein folding or gene mapping, with the hope of finding a cure for some disease. Eventually BOINC came about as a standardized client for these projects, so a person only needs to install the BOINC client, then they can choose between dozens of different projects for their computers to work on. Since I work with a lot of computers that often it idle, I installed clients on them too, but the MacBook is second fastest of them, following a quad-core Xeon server.

Sound and video are great. For a laptop, the speakers are surprisingly good, while the screen has higher resolution than my Linux PC at home. The screens at work aren’t worth mentioning. The screen is capable of HD, but the DVD will only play regular DVDs, not HD-DVD or Blu-ray. I don’t know if they can be bought as external peripherals.

The battery life doesn’t seem that good. I have Dell D630 laptop at work that was bought in September. The Dell has a smaller screen, but it also has a Centrino Duo CPU as opposed to the Core2 Duo in the Apple. Overall, they are about the same though, with only minor differences, IMHO. With both of the fully charged, I unplugged both at the same time. The Dell lasted 56 minutes before the warning LED came on and an error message popped up. The MacBook lasted 71 minutes before an error message popped up. To be fair though, I should have waited until each shut off from lack of power. I had a previous laptop that would keep goin 30 minutes after it showed a similar error message.

I said in a previous post that the Mac seems pretty worthless for web development and I stand by that for now. For the way I do web development work (i.e. with a text editor) Linux is far better. Plus, the tools in Linux are free.

I recently bought Poser after not using it for years – they don’t make a Linux version. I’m trying to rebuild a rusty skill set there. I used Poser 3 or 4 years ago and now they are on Poser 7, which came out last year. It also seems like it’s changed hands a lot over the past several years. It almost seems as if every time they come out with a new version, the company gets sold. Some company called e-frontier developed Poser 7, then the company got bought by Smith Micro for something like 6 million dollars last autumn. Sounds like a drop in the bucket for Silicon Valley prices. Poser and the Mac seem to go well together, though it helps to have a two-button mouse attached rather than using the trackpad with one button. Also, I’ve only had Poser for a few days, so the impression may change later.

It’s so-so for Blender. Using Blender it best to use one hand for the mouse and one hand for the keyboard, because Blender has a lot of hot keys or key sequences that control actions. One of the biggest reasons for using the keyboard is to use the number pad to go between alternate views, but the MacBook, with it’s full-sized laptop keyboard, the number pad is an alternate function of the main keypad. This is common with laptops, but it makes using Blender very difficult. I’ll probably try plugging in a full-sized USB keyboard and see how that works.

So far so good, but after a month I’m only giving it 3.5 of 5 stars (I’m a tough grader), because it seems mostly average.

It’s almost a personal heresy, but I bought a Mac.

I’m enough of a geek to build my own PC and get it running well, but laptops are another story. Where PC hardware is pretty much standardized and it’s easy to swap out parts, laptops are mostly proprietary hardware. If the motherboard on my PC fails, I can replace it cheaply and easily. If a motherboard fails on a laptop out of warranty, it might be cheaper to buy a new laptop. At the very least it would involve sending the laptop back to the company to get fixed.

At work there are only a few Macs, and I don’t support them. The people who get them know they are on their own because I know very little about Macs. I actually encourage people not to buy them for work because many of the systems we deal with are tied to Windows or IE in one way or another. Still, I got a copy of Parallels and installed it, which allowed me to install XP (IU has some sort of bulk license with Microsoft for most of their products).

The laptop was delivered on Tuesday, but I haven’t had much time to play around with it. I installed anti-virus, Office 2004 for Mac, Blender (hooray), GIMP :-) and a few other programs. It was pretty easy to get the wired and wireless connections at work, but getting them to work at home was problematic. I thought it was funny because of the whole idea that “Macs just work”. Ubuntu was easier to setup at home than the Mac was. I hit some forums and found a peculiar issue with 2Wire routers/DSL modems used by AT&T/SBC and Leopard. I hit Google and found a forum where somebody suggested typing sudo dscacheutil -flushcache which worked. After I typed that, and entered the WEP password, I was able to get wired and wireless Internet connections.

First impressions:
When it was delivered, I wished I had a camera with me. The box and packaging are beautiful (I’m not a fanboy yet). The box looked like a black (cardboard) attache case with some spiffy graphics on the sides. Opening the box, there was some very decorative styrofoam padding with the words Mac Book Pro on it. Removing the top piece of foam, the laptop itself is wrapped by a large non-static envelope. In a pocket in the foam are the accessories like the AC adapter, iRemote, DVI-to-VGA adapter, and one or two other things. Pulling the laptop out of the box reveals a small black box underneath it that holds a small manual and Leopard CDs. Everything regarding the packaging was impressive and well thought out. I plugged it in and started it up.

When I install Windows on PCs I usually have to fill in some basic information on time zone and such, and the Mac was no different. By default, Macs automatically login the user, so I had to do some configuration to get it to display a login screen. The main difference here is the Mac will not join Active Directory at work when I login. I think there is some sort of work around for that since AD and Mac both support LDAP, but it’s not a big enough issue for me to bother with it at the moment. The laptop is mine, as opposed to the Dell laptop I use for work, which is owned by IU, so getting it to join ADS isn’t an issue.

Aside from the overall look, when I looked at the keyboard a few differences became apparent. Where a PC keyboard has the backspace key, the Mac has a delete key. The kicker is that it acts like a backspace key instead of a delete key. On a PC, pressing backspace will remove stuff to the left of the cursor, which is what delete does on the Mac. On a PC, delete will remove stuff to the right of the cursor. I can’t find anything that does that on the Mac. I saw Apple has a web page called Switch 101 which I should go through.

Another thing I noticed was that the M key looks an awful lot like an upside-down W. I thought it was Apple being cheap, using the same key but turning it upside-down to represent another letter. Then I noticed the W key has a small 0 on it because it’s also part of the laptop number pad, so they’re different after all.

Probably the strangest thing of all on the keyboard is the extra enter key, wedged between the Apple/Command key and the left arrow key. Why they put an extra one there is beyond me, but it’s an Apple, so it’s just another curious item.

Apple is big on the idea of the one-button mouse/trackpad, so I knew that was coming. I bought a wireless two-button scroll mouse to use with it, but I’m trying to use the trackpad as much as possible to get used to it. Aside from the single button, the pad behaves much different than on the Dell and other Windows based laptops I’ve dealt with. On those, you can slide your finger along the right side of pad to scroll down the window. On the Mac, you have to use two fingers to scroll, and it doesn’t matter where on the pad you use them.

Annoyances
One of the things I would have liked to have ordered is a built-in fingerprint reader. I have one on the Dell laptop for work and it’s setup so I have to swipe my fingerprint before it will boot. Apple doesn’t have that as an option, though it is possible to buy a USB fingerprint reader that will work. However, Having one built in, I wouldn’t have to worry about carrying around another accessory or worry about losing it. I think that’s one of the various issues that will keep their laptops from being widely used in the enterprise.

The keyboard seems to require a heavy touch, or maybe it’s just me. This post is the longest time I’ve had to type with the Mac and I keep noticing that it misses a lot of my keystroke, especially those in the upper row. I suspect that is mainly a matter of getting used to the keyboard. I can’t touch type, but after I get used to using a keyboard, I can type with a little less looking. Since this is new, it will take me a while to get used to it.

One big annoyance I’ve already noticed is the keyboard shortcuts I’m used to don’t work. In Windows and Linux, pressing CTRL + A will select everything n a window, while CTRL + Shift + A will deselect everything. Neither of those works. Since I’ve been taking French classes, I found a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to type accented letters so I don’t have to insert special characters (as often). None of those ones I’m used to works, but I did find out that ALT + c will produce ç. I wasn’t able to do that in Windows or Linux. Playing around with it now, I find that using the ALT key with most any other key will produce some special character. Even more strangely, pressing CTRL with some keys seems to do interesting things with WordPress.

I’ll have to check out the Switch 101 tutorial and play around some more, so that’s it for now.