I know you’re a recluse, you know that’s no excuse

Posted on by grahams

So I applied for my passport back on January 7th. When I applied I was informed that for an additional $100 I could get expedited service of 2-3 weeks, otherwise it would take 4-7 weeks for the passport to arrive. I wasn’t in a rush, so I didn’t pay the extra fee. My sister Aimee told me today that it arrived (in New Jersey), a mere 2.5 weeks after I applied! I’m certainly glad I didn’t pay the expedition fee!

I sold my GBA on eBay today, I had put it up hoping to get rid of it before the Game Boy Advance SP is released in March. I think I asked a fair price, and someone executed the “Buy It Now” deal so I didn’t have to wait as long as I expected. :)

I reinstalled OSX last night in a last ditch effort to fix the problem that was causing me to hate using the Mac. I did another clean slate install, formatting the drive and starting from scratch (again), which is a total pain in the ass. So far, things seem to be going well, I haven’t seen that son-of-satan console message at all, but I am going to err on the side of caution and wait a few days before I feel satisfied. :)

Regardless, I shouldn’t need to reinstall the fucking operating system to fix a problem. I think I am going to return to my C=64, back when things ‘just worked’.

10 thoughts on “I know you’re a recluse, you know that’s no excuse”

    1. I temporarily needed Classic a few weeks ago, so i have a seperate 10G drive with OS9 installed, but I think I might give it the boot soon because it sickens me to have that abomination in my computer.

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  2. I sold my GBA on eBay today, I had put it up hoping to get rid of it before the Game Boy Advance SP is released in March. I think I asked a fair price, and someone executed the “Buy It Now” deal so I didn’t have to wait as long as I expected. :)

    I recently scavanged my old (dead, my fault) iBook for a disk to install on my iopener. Figuring that I might be able to get a few bucks for some of the other parts, I threw them on ebay: the keyboard, CD-ROM, and battery, all with starting prices of $1 and a buy-it-now of $50 – wishful thinking, I thought.

    Within two hours, all three items had sold for the buy-it-now prices. I was amazed, I didn’t think anybody actually used that.

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  4. I’d tried to track down information on your problem a few times, but to no avail. It’s bizarre, because I’ve found for the most part that because the hardware is pretty much standard, if you have a problem, five other people are likely to have the same problem, if not more. The only thing I can think is that perhaps you had a sour install of the operating system. If it pops back up trace the log file to the first occurrence of the message and then see what files have been modified in the past day or so before it popped up. I’m especially interested in case this pops up on any of the machines at work or my personal machines that would be a problem to re-image (like my server).

    Other than this problem, what else have you noticed about using the mac? Has it at least behaved once the applications have started up? How has it served for video work?

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    1. I’d tried to track down information on your problem a few times, but to no avail. It’s bizarre, because I’ve found for the most part that because the hardware is pretty much standard, if you have a problem, five other people are likely to have the same problem, if not more.

      Trust me, I tried to track down info myself too.. I searched everywhere I could think of… I even subscribed to MacFixIt and posted to their forums to no avail.. After a month or so of dealing with this crap I decided to say fuck it and reinstall.. If it didn’t work I was really considering selling the Mac. The problem still seems to be gone, which is good, but I am still reluctant to start cheering yet… :)

      The only thing I can think is that perhaps you had a sour install of the operating system.

      I really don’t understand how that is possible, but it seems to be the case. When I originally installed the OS I did the same thing I did last night (format and install). Who knows.. :)

      If it pops back up trace the log file to the first occurrence of the message and then see what files have been modified in the past day or so before it popped up.

      Heh…. Well, if it pops back up I think this machine might take a trip out the 3rd floor window of my apartment… :) But before I toss it I will take a look at the logs and see if I can figure it out. :)

      Other than this problem, what else have you noticed about using the mac? Has it at least behaved once the applications have started up? How has it served for video work?

      Well, now that it seems to be working well I plan on working on a full review for my journal, but I want to use it without the frustration for a few days before I get cracking on writing that.

      The short version: It’s pretty nice. My needs in an OS are simple:

      • Good Browser – I use Chimera mostly, which works well although I wish I could middle-click on tabs to close them, and I wish there was better pop-up blocking control (something exactly like Phoenix would rule). Safari looks like it has good potential, but until it gets tabbed browsing (which is apparently in Safari CVS) I am not really going to be using it much.. I use Chimera nightlies, so occasionally things get a little wonky, and I sometimes turn to Safari when that happens.
      • Good Terminal – The OSX terminal does a pretty good job, the occasional emulation glitch notwithstanding. I wish it would automatically copy text to the clipboard that was selected (as opposed to right-clicking and selecting “copy”).
      • Vim – Both vim and gVim work like a champ.
      • MP3 Player – Audion does the trick, although I wish there was a complete analog to WinAmp2. That has the perfect feature set for me. iTunes’ catalogging and management stuff gets in my way, but I use it to listen to my Car Talk subscription from Audible

      So that’s all the stuff I need, the stuff that keeps an OS from getting in my way. OSX definately doesn’t get in my way.. I don’t think I could use OSX without a nice mouse, because the suppository mouse doesn’t do it for me. I use my MouseMan Optical ergomouse, which works like a champ.

      I wish window drawing was a little faster, but it’s not that bad… It is a lot nicer to use now that I have 768 vs. 256 megs of ram… There are lots of shareware/freeware/homebrew applications, but my experience so far is that almost all of them have pretty amateurish or overly fruity UIs.. Sometimes I just laugh (but cry inside) at the sight of them.

      Only done a bit of Cocoa programming so far, but it doesn’t seem so bad.. ObjC is a little weird, but I am pretty language agnostic and I don’t think it sucks any more or less than C++.

      I have tried to use the Mac full-time since getting it to give it a fair chance. For the most part I am satisfied, but the jury is still out.. I will post a full review in a week or two (probably cutting/pasting quite a bit of this comment, as I didn’t expect to run on so long.. :P)

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  5. but I use it to listen to my Car Talk subscription from Audible

    Heh thats cool that you listen to Car Talk. I like listening to them Sat. mornings on NPR radio while making/eating pancakes. I assume they’re pretty popular in Boston :)

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    2. Couldn’t tell you if it’s more popular here than anywhere else… I was listening to it when I lived in NJ too, and sometimes Rochester (when I could swing it). Audible has definately made it easier as I can “time shift” the show… :)

      It is pretty cool living a few blocks from the offices of Dewey, Cheetham, & Howe… :)

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