2008
- Very disappointed that my Mac Pro has the same video problems after they replaced the 2nd card in the shop. despair.
- Anyone know of a good Leopard-happy Mac benchmarking tool? Xbench seems very old.
- At this point my Mac Pro problems seem to HAVE to be the original video card. No other viable explanation. Memtests were clean all night.
- I seriously feel like giving every computer and device in my house a time out. Start behaving better!
- Never even dawned on me to run smcFanControl on my Mac Pro, even though I use it religiously on my MacBook Pro.
- Running memtest on my Mac Pro all night long. See if anything pops up. If not, the old video card is likely culprit.
- Serious debugging of Mac Pro video problem now. Seems that with the other card out it still blows up. Running single user memory tests now.
- Trying smcFanControl to make video stable, probably need to switch do a different card.
- Upped my fans and no artifacts since. So far. Hmmm…
- Left BlackBerry in NY cab. Contacted cabbie but he got taken to JFK. Ugh! Luckily getting it back in a bit.
- Still waiting for BlackBerry return. iPhone is happily safe with me.
- Reunited with BlackBerry!
Big Smith & Blue Mountain at The Bottleneck
(Lawrence, Kansas) Tammy and I are hanging out in Lawrence, Kansas this weekend. We are here to fulfill her New Year resolution to see Big Smith play again. It’s been about 10 years since she saw them last, and I’ve never seen them. After scouring their tour schedule she saw that the best option for us was a weekend trip bookended with 7 hours on the Interstate to Lawrence. As an added treat, they played with Blue Mountain. I’ve got three Blue Mountain albums and really like their music.
We drove down to Lawrence on Friday going through rain the entire way. We made it with an hour to spare to get checked into our hotel and walk over to The Bottleneck where the show was. The venue was great. Nice sound, big open area for dancing.
Blue Mountain is on a reunion. They split up in 2001 and decided to pack it in. However, in November they reunited and put the band back together! They put on a great show. It was almost entirely comprised of their existing catalog of old songs given the bands recent reformation. That was fine with me, it was a great walk through memory lane.
After Blue Mountain’s hourlong set Big Smith started to pile onto the stage. Pile is the correct word since there are 6 of them in the band. Big Smith is a family band. All the members of the band are 1st cousins. As they highlighted for us, that means they all have the same grandparents. Big Smith then proceeded to absolutely tear the place down for 2 hours and 15 minutes.
I’m pretty sure that we had no choice but to travel this far south to see Big Smith. I think the northern nature of Minnesota would have put some mojo on the foot stomping and clapping.
I had an absolutely great time whooping it up with everyone else. Halfway through Big Smith’s set I couldn’t help but get out on the dance floor and start stomping and clapping with everyone else. Hillbilly music at its finest!
If I only had a pair of overalls! Make sure to read Tammy’s write-up from the night as well!
Sonic stop in Missouri on the way to Lawrence, Kansas!
Adding yet another Vista BSOD to the my running count.
Truth Revealed! Fresh dent in MacBook Pro is from wife dropping it!
I sent this tweet four hours ago. Your getting it now, in the future, from me in the past.
One of the tweets highlighted in my MarketWatch Farewell Video.
Threat level is still orange. Be afraid!
Just upgraded all my WordPress plugins. So happy to do that in 2.5 now. Wishing there was an “Upgrade All” button.
TED - Podcast You Should Be Watching
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. TED has an annual conference that in recent years has become a pretty amazing event. Getting into TED is not easy. On top of a very expensive entry fee, you actually have to write an essay expanding on your accomplishments and what you expect to achieve in the coming years.
Fortunately for everyone, TED has also opened up in a very big way. The TED website is pretty amazing and has videos of hundreds, if not thousands, of TED presentations. You should add this to your list of sites to watch and check out. The podcast for TED and my iPhone are musts for me.
Here is a collection of three amazing videos released this year from the TED conference. I watched them in this order, in a row, and that is why I wrote this post. I just felt more people should see this great stuff. It makes you think.
Karen Armstrong
Stephen Hawking
Al Gore
Minneapolis Getting Comcast Love
This rolled by in my newsfeed a few days ago and caught my eye. The New York Times had a short piece on Minneapolis getting some new high-speed options from Comcast. I found the release on Comcast’s website about it as well.
Comcast is rolling out this new DOCSIS 3.0 technology and it promises to give us 50 megabit download speeds. That’s a whopping 10x on what I get now on a regular basis. The service is about 2.5x as expensive as well, but I’d seriously consider the upgrade.
I checked out my service area and this isn’t an option for me yet. Does anyone see this as an option yet? Supposedly it’s available now.
Funny that using OS X still makes me so much happier than any other OS I use on a regular basis.
Mac Pro going into the shop for diagnostics and repair. Apple TV being swapped today.
My computers are turning on me and its ugly!
Wow - if you “Restore to Factory Defaults” an original Apple TV you are left with v 1.0 on it. Eek…
Still thinking about Into the Wild from last night. What a movie. Think I need to read the book.
Anyone know if you can change Time Machine in Leopard to run while on battery power? Only running when plugged in is screwing me up.
Ugh – finally gave up and made an appointment for my Mac Pro. This has to be a hardware issue.