…I recently upgraded my Blackberry from the 8703e to the 8130 Pearl. I've been a huge fan of the Blackberry since I first received my 8703e a couple years ago, and I really liked the 8703e because of it's large screen and full QWERTY keyboard, so when the opportunity to upgrade came about I wasn't sure if I should go with the straight upgrade to my 8703e which is the 8830 or the smaller and more media oriented 8130. There were two downsides to the 8130 which I'll address one at a time; first the smaller screen, and this issue was definitely a big one.

Finally, a new version of ecto, well a beta at least. I'm currently typing this on the new beta 3 of ecto. Some of the new features? 3rd party add-ons which should allow for highly customized posting. A new Leopard UI that really follows the Apple human interface guidelines, or at least attempts to (the older versions didn't at all).

…wow, let me count the ways! I could actually go on and on all day about IE and why I hate it. The lack of features is enough to really turn me off the product, but when I was admiring the new theme for the site today, using Safari 3 of course, I noticed how really nice the site looks. The theme itself validates XHTML 1.0 Strict, although my site doesn't because of some poor programming in a few of the modules I use (I hope to rectify this soon). So it should look basically the same on all browsers, but of course it doesn't. Why does it look good in Safari?

…and when you think you have enough get more. I'm not exactly sure why, I'm guessing it has something to do with the way that OS X uses and manages virtual memory vs. Windows, but it's very obvious to me that OS X performs much better when running multiple programs (usually 5 or more) when you have 1GB of RAM or more. Add in even another 512MB and you can run almost twice the number of programs at once without much slowdown. I bought my MacBook Pro with 1GB of RAM initially, and if you read past posts you'll know that at first I had completely thought to myself “why did I just spend this money on a new computer, it's running like a snail”, I thought well let's just try a little RAM upgrade and then we'll see. And the 1.5GB did make a lot of difference in performance, and as the number of programs that run natively or as Universal applications increased, so did the performance of my computer, to a point.

…so, if you're a reader from the NMSU community, please stop reading NOW! Just kidding, actually, I wanted to say that if you are from NMSU you've probably been aware that we are in the process of moving from just the standard ID Card to an Enhanced ID card which is actually a Wells Fargo Visa Check-Card as well as your NMSU ID. It's an extremely good idea and will be beneficial to both students and staff, the University as a while and Wells Fargo. I'm really all for it, and I can't wait until we go-live with the project hopefully sometime in early August.

That said, I'm about to practice the ancient Japanese art of Seppuku, more commonly known as hari kari. Yes, I'm half a bubble away from sliding a razor sharp blade through my gut and letting my intestines, blood, and all that fills the bowel drop on to the floor of my office. And no, this isn't a cry for help, it's a joke. So if you're (still) reading this it's my attempt to say, I'm about ready to kill myself over the project we're working on. And really Seppuku isn't the real thing I want to do, I really want to bash my own head with a hammer.

Yes, I'm a bit of a theme well for the lack of a better word, whore. I switch themes so much that I can't keep track of all the different versions of my website. I tend to like the newer Web 2.0'ish looking sites, nice rounded corners and other fancy CSS, but I really think I'm liking this theme I've applied today. It's called Marvin, after Drupal's Marvin, and it's quite plain but has everything that I think is necessary for a good page, a nice layout, easy navigation and it's easy on the eyes.

From now on, I think I'm going to try my hand at theme customization, and/or building my own theme. I'm sick of having a website that literally any geek with a little time can duplicate. I want something more my own, well OUR own as this site belongs to my wife and I both. I need to practice theme generation anyway as I'm hosting my friend Kyle's site and it's going to take quite a bit of work to get it looking the way he wants it. He had a site that was homegrown and extremely difficult to maintain and edit (I'm sure) and wants the new site I've setup to have a similar look/feel to his old one. The only problem is there is no way to move his old theme that was all done with HTML and Javascript to a modern CSS, XHTML compliant page.

Now with work settling down, and that's really probably not factually consistent with my actual workload (I'm busy as hell with the start of the school year). However, I do find myself with a few moments to actually sit down and express some opinion in my Blog.

First off, Blackboard support. Jeez where do I start here. They are excellent in most cases, and I do like the TSM's that I've dealt with, but the current problem that we're just in the process of resolving started on February 9, 2006. Resolved, hopefully, by the end of this week. That's 6 months. SIX FRIGGIN' MONTHS! During this time, I have jumped through several hoops, and performed several other feats of mental contortion to arrive back at the root of the problem that I (and Sam Hammond to be fair) said was the problem in late February, IT IS indeed the DATABASE that's the root of the problem. Not our network, not software running on the server, not virtual memory on the server, not any other of the 500 things that Blackboard tried to pin on US as the root of the problem. No it is in fact as we originally contended Blackboard's issue and only one that they can fix.

So I have had sleepless nights, put up with people telling me I was wrong and having to ask other departments to check and recheck things that had absolutely nothing to do with the actual problem, looking like an ass most of the way. I've endured pissed off customers, pissed off supervisors and all for what? A problem that I could have never fixed on my own.

Yes, when I wrote my entry last night, I had just installed my new 1GB of RAM (PC5300 667GHz DDR2) and I was still used to the delays of the original 512 that came with my system. I do have a suggestion for Apple (I doubt they will listen but here goes anyway) put at LEAST 1GB of memory in your base MacBooks, at least until you have all Universal software available. Right now, if you only have 512 and you're running only a few Universal apps, there's no problem. If you add in even ONE app that's using Rosetta you are going to suffer through a really slow startup, and a completely unusable system until that startup is complete.

Don't get me wrong, with universal apps, it was running OK, at least as well as I was expecting. And yes, I am spoiled, I don't even remember the time where I've used less than 1GB of memory in my Mac PB. I remember a good performance increase when I added the extra 512 to my old PB, but it was way more useable than my MB was with the default memory, and it should be quite a bit faster with a higher clock speed processor with dual cores as well as having a 667MHz FSB as opposed to 100MHz and RAM that runs at that speed as well. It really doesn't make much sense to me, but I couldn't see the 4x (actually more than that because that's based on the 1.67GHz PowerPC chip) increase in speed, for the most part.

Well, it came a lot quicker than I thought it would, but I now have my MacBook Pro. I opted for the lower price and slightly slower 1.86GHz model, I had to upgrade the amount of RAM to 1.5GB but left the HDD at the 80GB 5400 rpm drive. This is the most powerful (not the fastest, I have a 2.4GHz P4) computer I own, and all in all I'm really impressed.

I will say that before I upgraded the RAM the performance was good, with the exception of large scale multi-tasking, compiling code (DarwinPorts or Fink), or virtualization (Running/Installing WinXP in Parallels), or when a Rosetta app is starting up. During these operations, the performance could get painfully slow, at times quite a bit slower than my PowerBook G4 which would always be responsive in one way or another while doing almost anything. And there are still times when you have to wait, but I'm hopeful that the performance will increase as they get more apps re-compiled as Universal binaries so they natively support the Core Duo processors.

As far as the straight OS X performance, and all the native apps, it's a blazingly fast machine. The performance while running Safari is almost amazing when compared with my old PowerBook, as is iMovie HD, iDVD and all the other iApps. All in all I'm pretty happy on the performance front.

I was really not sure if I should go ahead and get the new Mac Book Pro, or wait until the second generation of Mactel laptops, but with this weeks release of BootCamp (Apple's Windows multi-booting software) which allows you to re-partition your drive, and install Windows XP as well as allowing you to boot to Windows from the Apple Control panel and including drivers for all the Apple hardware, it's pretty much a sure thing that I'm going to upgrade my old and tired PowerBook G4 Titanium.

I've been wanting to upgrade for a while, really since the faster Aluminum G4's came out, but it just wasn't feasible a year ago. And with the release of the new Intel Macs I wasn't sure if I should go with the first generation or wait until all the bugs are worked out and all or most of the software I use is released in the Universal format. If you take into account that my PowerBook is still a good machine and I can get some good money for it on E-bay or elsewhere, there's one compelling reason to upgrade. Add in the ability to use Windows so I can do most of the things at work that require a windows machine (Visual Studio for Development, Blackboard's Envision for system administration) and I'm pretty much sold. I have known for a while that XP was bootable on the machines but Apple has now made it something that doesn't take hours and a lot of hacking to accomplish.