In case you are confused…

Thanks!! I didn’t know that!

My parents got this little pre-lit Christmas tree for me while I’m in my temporary apartment so that I don’t have to drag out the big tree from storage. It’s a great little thing and is perfect. So I open it up and start to spread-out the branches and I see these big orange tags…

Gotta love simple instructions. I wonder if they really think someone will put a small 4-ft, 2 piece Christmas tree backwards (keeping in mind there is no way to do so — the top only fits into the base).

K.I.S.S. and Happy Holidays!! 🙂 😉

Thunderstorms! Lightening! Oh My!

Thunderstorm in Seattle! Love it!! woo-hoo! Thunder bouncing off the buildings, it’s great! We never get this. Of course, the lucky bastards in the convergence zone are getting it worse, but still — small hail and lightening here.

Listening to live Air Traffic control and airplanes are going all over the place — trying to get around it — they are getting windshear on approach of +-20kts.

New blog software, again!

Sorry if I ruined your links but I needed to get my blog under control. The old blog software worked well, but was a bit more complex than what I needed or desired and it still had some bugs I hadn’t been able to figure out. And it was kinda slow. And I’m a total technology dweeb, so I like to experiment — nuff said 🙂

I noticed that Ray Camden had made some changes to his BlogCFC program lately, which, of course, is programmed in ColdFusion which is my language of choice for web apps. So I decided to give it a try and viola! It works well, is very much faster than the old site, especially on your first visit. I lost some design control — the other blog had a great built-in rich HTML editor. But the simplicity and ease of BlogCFC captured me. Plus it’s pretty stable — not many bugs — Me likey!

So stay tuned as I tweak the format and design — and back-fill posts from the old system. For the huge masses of people who visit — Let me know how you like/don’t like. I’m sure this software can handle the 3 of you.

The iMac is a better “PC” than a PC

I’m so impressed. I am now a complete Apple fan.

Not that I ever was a detractor of Apple — when they came out with their new operating system, OS X, that was cool. I even bought a Mac Mini to try it out. But as a sysadmin and enterprise technology geek it had limited applications for me other than as a novelty. Well, that has changed.

You might not know that Apple switched processors (the heart of any computer) from the PowerPC chip to modern Intel chips. These are the same processors that any “PC” uses. This was an incredible move on Apple’s part. Now, insofar as all Macs come with OS X, which is very good on its own of course, the new Macs can also run Windows as their operating system! So with that in mind I finally made the plunge. I bought a decent iMac to check it out to see if the hype was worth it.

I am blown away. Apple has always been very good at designing hardware. This is no exception. The iMac is a beauty. The picture you see here is it — that’s it. No big “hard drive” case. It’s all it is. A gorgeous 20 inch widescreen that contains everything. And yes, it could not be easier to install Windows XP onto any computer — I downloaded the software that makes it happen from the Apple website and within 30 miniutes I was in business, completely. And if I so choose I can reboot the computer and go into Mac OS X and do Mac stuff.

And this thing is fast — it’s noticably faster than the PC I just got 3 months ago, by a significant margin even though that PC has, by the statistics, bettter hardware. This is running Windows on Mac hardware, folks. Apple’s software installed all the drivers and things that make the PC work pretty effortlessly. And it just works. I am doing this blog entry on my new iMac, in Windows, staring at the Apple logo just beneath my screen. I have yet to run any of my high performance games, such as flight simulator, on my new iMac. I think this is where some performance may be lost. But hell, for 90% of people this is never an issue.

an interesting side note: I think Microsoft loves that Apple switched to Intel chips. They can sell more copies of Windows to Apple lovers. It’s good for Apple, too, because they can sell hardware (which is where they make their money) and entice people to become Apple-addicted. Shrewd, shrewd move for Apple.

Anyways, my advice: Buy a Mac. And a copy of Windows. You will have the best of both worlds and never look back. I am astonished it was so easy and that I didn’t do this before.

Democrats may I have a word? Thanks…

First of all, we won! We won! We Won!

“in-your-face-Republicans!” celebratory remarks aside, fellow Dems, I gotta say we’ve got work to do and cautions to partake. You do realize that the Evil Empire now has someone to really blame, right? No, we didn’t do it. Our party is not the one to lead a disaster in Iraq and screw around with every last intern, page and others wives out there. Our country is not safe, and those pesky terrorists have a way of seclusion and laying in wait. Something is brewing in those tormented minds. I wish nothing this bad, but timing is everything. We must not squander. We must find a way, but not with complete spinelessness.

But politiks is politiks…and Bushies are masters at spinning their venom into cotton candy. Two more years, hell, 2 months can do a lot of political damage. Dems, you listening? Good. Cause you have more work to do now than if you were still the minority. You have to politic your brains out, stay sterile, follow the centrist line, nudge a bit of progressive reform enough to prove your the big donkey asses you are, and stay off the meds (or on if so doctor prescribed) so that in 2008 we can really do some work.

Sorry for the tough love fellow central-lefties, but I needed to say this. Don’t f**k it up.

XOXO,
Garrett

Fall in its full glory

This morning was great — for the first time in what seems like 30 years (only 3 weeks) there was minimal traffic coming into work. No rain, but many layers of clouds with some clear blue spots. The air is “fresh”. It’s not freezing cold, but crisp enough.

For the first time I got to admire a little bit of scenery — the Fall colors are at a peak. It was gorgeous. Coming across the lake was incredible. And it’s a Friday.

I needed that this morning like nobody’s business…