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America Got It Right

A few months ago, Olivia and I (being the TV bums that we are) were watching the "audition" episodes of American Idol. These are the episodes that air at the beginning of the season that always include A LOT of bad auditions.

During one episode, a singer came out and performed their audition song. My comments after that performance were something like, "Wow. That was amazing. She's going to win this year." That contestant was none other than Carrie Underwood. In fact, I was so convinced that she was going to win that later that night, I looked to see if the carrieunderwood.com domain was available. Unfortunately, .com, .net, and .org were all taken.

I'm proud that America got it right this year and voted Carrie as the American Idol. I was upset when Diana DiGarmo didn't win last year, but this makes up for it. Carrie's going to be a huge star. I just know it.

A Sheep in Tiger's Clothing

I'm a pretty big Mac fan. If you search my blog for "Mac OS X" you'll probably find plenty of times where I've praised Mac OS X for one reason or another. Maybe for its powerful UNIX underpinnings. Or maybe for its sweet, gooey aqua interface. Admitedly, I'd drank my fair share of the Apple "kool-aid".

But I think someone must have been spiking the "kool-aid" at Apple when they released Mac OS X Tiger. Surely you've heard all of the hype about "200 new features" and "the world's most advanced operating system". Let's take a look at a few of those:

Spotlight - This is one of the big features that Apple has been getting really excited about since the announcement of Tiger last year. What it does is keep a database of all of the files on your computer. Metadata, if you will. Then, whenever you need to find a file on your computer, you can use a handy little search menu in the upper-right of your screen to instantly find any file on your drive. The idea is good...except that plenty of other software companies already have a product that does this. The one I've been using for months (Quicksilver) does just about everything that spotlight does, and much faster. Plus, I don't have this weird search button in my menu bar all the time. I hate cluttering up my menubar. It feels like Apple saw Google coming out with their desktop search tool and said "Oh hey, we can do that, too!" They've probably done a better job than Google, but it's still not anything to write hom about. A blog maybe, but not home.

Dashboard - Dashboard is a feature that when you press a special key on your keyboard, it brings up a layer of mini-programs on top of your desktop. These mini-programs each have different functions (calculator, weather, stock quotes, etc.) and can be written by almost any decent programmer (they're mostly CSS and Javascript). Ok, so it's a neat feature. But for me, it's not at all intuitive to use. Let's say I want to know what the weather is for tomorrow. My brain is trained to click the "Weather" menubar favorite in my web browser. But even if I wanted I use Dashboard, I would have to take my hand off my mouse, press F12, move my hand back to my mouse, then wait a second or two for the weather Dashboard widget to update itself. Calculator? I already have the calculator app icon in my dock. Calendar? Click the calendar icon in Entourage which, by the way, is actually usable - not just widget eye candy. Not to mention that there was a little program called Konfabulator that Dashboard seems an awful lot like. Oh, and it's been out since late 2000. Another case of "me too"?

My other big complaint with Apple this time is that it really seems like they didn't do enough work testing the OS before they shipped it out the door. Sure, they've been working on it for many many months. But there are a ton of bugs and broken stuff. Granted, some problems are as a result of 3rd party software, but I've never seen this many problems when a new OS is released. Not with Panther. Not with Jaguar. Puma and Cheetah don't count - they were basically beta anyway. :D

One thing I will give Apple credit for is Quicktime 7 with its H.264 codec, clearly paving the way for kick ass HD content on computers, cell phones, etc. From what I've seen so far, 2005 is going to be a big year for HD. Too bad I don't have it yet. :(

I upgraded my 1.67ghz PowerBook to Tiger Sunday night. And I wish I would have waited a little while longer. Watching my CPU load (using MenuMeters) over the past fe days, I've noticed my CPU getting thrashed way harder than Panther ever did. And my PowerBook runs noticably hotter than it did before. I've heard my cooling fans turn on more times in the past two days than in the past two months.

For $129, I really feel like Tiger just wasn't ready for prime-time. And even after today's 10.4.1 update, I haven't noticed any significant changes that make me, well, think differently.

At least Longhorn is still more than a year away.

Sliders: On

So since it's popular to blog again it looks like my posts on here may very well be fairly regular again.

I took the day off from work to go up to Fredericksburg to get my sliders welded onto my truck. If you look in the photo above, the part I'm talking about is the color-matched "bar" just below the body of the truck.

By nature, rock sliders are a protective peice of epuipment that off-roaders install on their rigs to protect the body of their truck from rocks and debris when off-road. Since my truck sees more pavement that rocks, I thought it would be a good idea to make them not only functional, but attrative-looking too.

I'm pretty glad this mod is done and over. Even though I got a pretty good deal on the sliders themselves, the rest of it has definitely cost me much more than I was planning for. I guess getting them powdercoated for nothing didn't help.

So there they are. I took the rest of the day to drain and replace the fluid in my transfer case and my rear differential. I decided to spend a little more and put in synthetic fluid. It should last longer and protect the interior working parts better.

Next I should change my transmission and front diff fluids.

The 9-5 Problem

Here's a problem I bet a lot of you can relate to. Or maybe I'm one of the only people that have this issue. Here goes:

My job requires that I work 9:00am to 5:30pm Monday-Friday. Fairly frequently I work a little longer (or even a little shorter) because of work loads, meetings, etc. 9-5:30 to me doesn't necessarily mean 9-5:30. It means I work until my customers' problems are solved.

I left work a little early tonght to stop by and pick up my rock sliders from the body shop (more on that later). The body shop's hours are 8:30am to 5:30pm. Getting to the body shop before work is a difficult task. I have to get up much earlier, and then I usually end up getting in to work late. Likewise, getting to the body shop before they close requires me to leave work early - which is possible, but not not smiled upon if done frequently. But I really needed to pick up my parts tonight, so I asked to leave at 5.

Traffic on 95 and 64 completely sucked and I ended up pulling into the body shop's parking lot right at 5:30, maybe a minute before. I rushed up to the office door only to find it locked. I double-checked the time on my phone. 5:29. I knocked on the door. No response. I knocked again, louder this time. There was no way that my early work exit and crazy driving were going to be wasted.

A lady finally emerged from the office, obviously in a rush to leave. I looked at her is disbelief, pointed at my (non-existant) watch and blurted out, "It isn't 5:30 yet!" She replied with, "Oh yes it is! And I'm late to go pick up my son at the far end of Goochland!"

Ok, so the lady has personal matters that requires her to leave work at 5:30. But don't you think it would be helpful to their customers if (at least) SOMEONE in their office worked a little past 5:30?

My story above is just one example of my frusteration with this. I'm dealing with the exact same problem right now with the sign shop that I order my CustomTacos vinyl through. Their hours are 9am-5:30..even worse! And..they're CLOSED on Saturday and Sunday.

Sure, being open 9-5 is convenient for the employees working those shop hours. But what aboout other people that work? When is it convenient for us to do business with these businesses?

Moving on. Now, enjoy some photos of my sliders. Iron Pig Offroad will be welding them on for me on Monday. And guess what - I'm taking the day off so I can get this done. :)