Another Word for Nerd

I’ve updated the Essential Mac Software page with changes for Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”.

I’ve given up on the Apple Mighty Mouse, having gone through two of them since 2005. I finally got fed up with having to completely dissasemble it to properly clean the ball rollers every couple of months, and then either glue or tape the “retaining ring” back onto the bottom of the mouse.

In my opinion, Apple really should have made the scroll ball optical instead of mechanical rollers and Hall-effect sensors, and they should have designed it to be easily cleanable. Apple’s suggestion to “Roll the ball vigorously while cleaning with water” while holding the mouse upside down” is NOT an acceptable solution. More than once, I had to completely take apart the Mighty Mouse, unscrew the “ball module” from the top shell, and then take THAT module apart to be able to clean the gunk from the tiny rollers with magnetic ends.

I tried every solution in the book to avoid dissasembly, but none of them worked for long. Saliva, Windex, tiny adhesive tape strips wrapped around the ball, etc. I had moderate success with Hoppe’s #9 gun-cleaning solvent, but even that only worked for a week or two before the rollers started gunking up again.

If the Mighty Mouse wasn’t $49, it might be a different story - I’d just go buy a new one every six months. For now, I’ve replaced it with a $25 Logitech LX3 optical mouse. The only problems I’ve ever had with Logitech mice were their microswitches wearing out after four or five years of heavy use.

As a final note, I’ll say that the Mighty Mouse is only the second piece of Apple hardware that I’ve “given up” on - the first was the original FireWire iSight camera. I bought one in 2004, and returned it for a refund the next day - for $150, I expected much better audio and video quality than I got from the camera.

From the April 1993 cover of UnixWorld Magazine: “Does Steve Jobs have a future in software?” and it refers to NextStep for Intel.

(click for a bigger version)

14 years later, I’d say he definitely does.

… with a bonus.

I sent it off to get a dead hard drive and a discolored top-half fixed.

It came back with a new hard drive (OSX 10.4 preloaded of course), new top-half (still with the protective plastic cover on it), and a couple of other minor recall issues fixed.

However, I sent the machine off with a single 512M SODIMM installed.
It came back with that 512M SODIMM *and* a 256M SODIMM installed.

Would be a nice free bonus, if I didn’t already have two 1G SODIMMs here waiting on it - I just put the “official Apple” 512M SODIMM in it when I sent it in for service, as Apple gets really picky about third-party memory and my 1G SODIMMs are Crucial-brand.

Someone from the Apple Store called this afternoon and said that my iMac was repaired and ready for pickup.
Both the 20″ LCD panel and the SuperDrive were replaced (under warranty).

Thanks to Aaron and the other hardware techs at the Houston Galleria Apple Store (just no thanks to the particular Genius I dealt with on Sunday afternoon when I dropped the machine off).

Interesting fact: LG makes the LCDs for the 20″ Core Duo iMac systems.

I called the Galleria Apple Store today and spoke to the head of the tech department (who will be doing the actual work on my machine) and described the bad experience I had yesterday.

He apologized for the behavior of the Apple Genius (who had diagnosed all of the machine’s problems as being due to cigarette smoke before he even unpacked it out of the box) and said “Hey, you’re under warranty, plus you have AppleCare, don’t worry we’ll take care of you.”

It seems that I just had the bad luck yesterday of encountering a rabid anti-smoker.

Anyway, I’m expecting a call later today from the actual tech to tell me the status of my machine. After speaking with him, I feel better about any future dealings with that particular Apple Store; it was nice to be able to talk to someone who didn’t act like a condescending know-it-all.

My “real” christmas present for myself this year is my MacBook, which I paid off today.

A good friend of mine returned a favor that I did him early in the year and sold me his barely-used white 2Ghz MacBook (60G, 1.5G RAM, SuperDrive, AppleCare, etc) four months ago for a lot less than he could have sold it to someone else for, and under the same terms in place when I sold him my iMac G5 back in January (”pay what you can, when you can”).

I sent him the final payment today, got a bill of sale, and now I can feel like the awesome little system is actually mine.

I don’t normally talk about politics here, but this made me laugh.
(by Brian Topping, via Boing Boing):

I turned 32 on Sunday the 5th.

Made out decently when it comes to birthday gifts.

Amy got me a pocket watch, and my mother got me a new iPod Shuffle and a sleeve for my MacBook.

No socks and underwear though.

I’m testing out Qumana, a new weblog client for OSX and Windows.  It’s a Universal Binary, so I can use it natively on the Intel-based Mac at home.

So far, my main comment is "takes way too long to start up", compared to MarsEdit (on the 1.25Ghz G4) or even Ecto under Rosetta emulation on the Core Duo iMac at home.

It has a good user interface so far, so we’ll see how things go.