Category: Rant

Back to the Mac. (Sfx: sigh of relief)

My laptop has been in the shop because it couldn’t connect to wireless networks with any sort of consistency. It wasn’t preventing me from doing my work, but considering I have surgery next week and my AppleCare expires in two months, I figured now was the time. So for a week now, I’ve been using Linux as my desktop. I’m extremely glad to be back to the Mac.

But not really because of anything wrong with Linux. As soon as I started using the desktop on the Linux box, it told me I should upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to Ubuntu 10.4 LTS, which was time consuming, but afterwards a persistent problem I’d had booting any kernel newer than the one I’d installed it with went away, and it recognized my Wacom Bamboo which it hadn’t before. I had to struggle a bit to get my VPN set up, and it was a struggle to get it to treat the “Caps Lock” key as a control key. And because my Linux box is a server, I’d originally set it up with XFCE4 instead of KDE or Gnome, so it wasn’t as functional and beautiful as it could have been.

No, the real reasons I was glad to be back on the Mac are because:

  • The Linux box doesn’t have speakers or a microphone, so I had to set up Skype on a netbook, which made for fun when somebody sent me a file or a url.
  • The cut and paste functionality is quite different in Linux, and required some getting used to. It wasn’t very consistent between apps.
  • The RDC client I was using on Linux didn’t translate the local printer so that it appeared as my default printer on my Windows session like the Mac RDC client does.
  • I couldn’t figure out how to switch desktops with a keystroke, especially not when I was RDC’ed into work.
  • Without my Mac, I couldn’t listen to my podcasts, and I couldn’t pay bills.
  • Most importantly: because my laptop has a 17″ 1920×1280 screen, and I also plug it into this 20″ 1080i screen, but with the laptop gone I only had the one screen to use for Linux, I felt very hemmed in.

So I’m glad to be back. But I’m having to retrain my fingers for cutting and pasting with Command instead of Control.

Oh, I give up

I’ve been reading Slashdot since the very late 1990s. But as of today I just unsubscribed from its RSS feed. It is probably long past time. The comments have been unreadable for 4 or 5 year now, but I kept up with it because the articles had some merit, or at least most of them did.

But today was the last straw – first there was an article that was going all hysterical about the changing of the runway numbers at Tampa airport, suggesting it had something to do with the recent bird deaths, and/or with the ridiculous and easily discredited “Pole Shift” rapid magnetic pole shifting hypothesis. Then if that wasn’t too crazy, there was another story, this time asking what equipment would be useful in a ghost investigation. So much for “News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters”.

Sorry, I know a number of people who believe in ghosts, and people who watch those ridiculous “ghost investigation” shows, but it’s neither news nor technology.

Computer problems

My laptop’s Airport (wifi) is kind of flakey. It reports a good connection and gets a proper IP from DHCP, but then stops being able to talk to the rest of the network. I’m able to keep using it because while it’s at my desk I can plug it into the wired network.

But the laptop is still covered by AppleCare, at least for the next 60 days. So I should bring it in to get it fixed soon. But I can’t leave it at Apple because every day it’s away from me is a day I can’t work. So before I can take it in, I have to figure out how to do my work from my old Linux box, or if that doesn’t work, where to borrow a Mac to work on.

Let’s see, to do my work on a Linux computer, I’d need the following things that I don’t currently have:

  • speakers (I think I have some around, I’ve just never configured them)
  • microphone (I’ve never installed one on Linux, that could be tricky)
  • Skype
  • Dropbox
  • Chrome
  • Remote Desktop Client (if such a thing exists and works)
  • VirtualBox and a Windows environment (which might take care of the Remote Desktop Client)

That will probably be enough to get me going. But it’s obviously not as nice as having my own MacBookPro, or even a loaner machine that I’ve cloned my TimeMachine backup onto.

Saying goodbye

I had my last physiotherapy appointment before seeing my doctor again. We discussed my options and it looks more and more like surgery will be my only hope. Even if it isn’t, I’m basically looking at six months before I can paddle again, and then I have to start getting back into shape. So there it is in front of me – I’ve got no season this year. Even if I manage to paddle a few miles, I’m not going to be racing, and I’m damn sure I’m not going to do the 90. I hope Doug and Mike don’t mind having me as pit crew again.

But even though I don’t know anything now that I didn’t know yesterday, last week or last month, even though I haven’t talked to the surgeon, I still find myself feeling very depressed. I suppose I should take solace in the fact that unlike my knee pain, my hip pain and even my elbow pain, this one has a definite cause and a solution.

So, so long kayak season 2011, so long Adirondack Canoe Classic, so long Long Lake Long Boat Regatta. So long Wednesday night time trials and Tuesday evenings out with the team. So long erging in Steven’s garage and Doug’s attic and coaching sessions with Dan. I’ll miss you all, but I’m going to do everything I can to come back stronger for 2012.

Random updates

I’ve been tending to write lots of short updates on Facebook instead of long posts here. So here’s a few updates.

My shoulder hasn’t been improving with physiotherapy, although I have regained my range of motion. Friday, Saturday and Sunday it was so sore I couldn’t even do my physio exercises. Worse still, on Saturday it was both shoulders that hurt. The therapist and I did some stuff on Tuesday to see if we could figure out which of my exercises is doing it, but I suspect it’s none of them – although driving for an hour and 45 minutes seems to make it worse. Oh well, I see the doctor in the first week of January – maybe I can get on the surgery list fast.

A few days ago, my project manager Nikola asked me when I was coming in to work. He didn’t say why, but I figured I knew it was one of two things. It turned out to be the good one of the two – he asked me if I would like to become a permanent employee. As a contract programmer, the permanent offer can either be awful or it can be awesome. On the plus side, permanent employment can have benefits, paid time off, sick leave, 401(k), and a sense of belonging. With Vicki wanting to retire in a few short years, a job with benefits will probably be a good thing. On the other hand, a permanent offer can mean lower wages, no paid over time, pathetically short vacation time allowance (US companies think nothing of offering a 50 year old senior developer 2 weeks paid vacation, or even worse, 15 days “time bank – which means you only get your full vacation if you manage to not get sick or you drag yourself into work and spread germs), putting up with sometimes annoying corporate rules (although that doesn’t appear to be too bad with this company) and if you don’t accept it, they drop your contract. So I’m waiting to see the offer with mixed emotions.

On the other hand, today I was a bug fixing *machine*. I had a ton of bugs assigned to me, some because the guys who normally take care of those areas weren’t around. And today I knocked off 5 of them, which is pretty amazing when you consider that I spent at least an hour filling in the various stuff that’s required to progress the bugs through the horribly inefficient bug reporting system. (I’ve suggested FogBugz, or at least Bugzilla and Jira.)

The drive home kind of sucked – freezing rain/sleet which didn’t stay on the windshield, but which did accumulate on the windshield wipers requiring me to stop a couple of times to clear them off. At least the roads were well sanded and slurried.