The Sad Story of Zimbabwe

Yet another example of what Robert Mugabe has done to this country.

I'm not sure how history will deal with the way other African leaders have handled this situation, but I hope it is harshly. The leaders have watched from the sidelines as a single person has financially ruined a country at the expense of it's citizens. Mugabe should be taken out of office and forced to live the way he has forced his people to live. Forget sentencing him to death, sentence him to the same life he has created for everyone but his friends. I'm sure it would be a lot more harsh.

The Apple Mystique (Part Deux)

So I haven't had a whole lot more time with the Mac so I can't really update my impressions on the OS after having used it for a while. However I am going to comment on the hardware. Just an FYI; as an IT manager I've used notebooks from IBM/Lenovo, Acer, HP, and Dell within the last two years so I'm not just comparing this to a Thinkpad T62 or something.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am running a Macbook Pro. This one has the 15.4" screen. It is a nice looking laptop, as I would expect from Apple. The screen is nice and bright and sharp (not sharp, ouch, as in the Air). The aluminum case is nice and will probably wear better than most of the plastic ones widely used these days. It is slippery though and I really liked my IBM Thinkpads because they have a non-slip coating on them that make them much nicer to handle. Of course it has the illuminated keyboard which is a really nice touch and I wish every other notebook manufacturer would catch on to this one (or has Apple patented it?). However the Mac logo is definitely a "Look at me, I'm an Apple user!" piece of bling that follows the form over function school of thought. Speed wise, it's on par with what you would expect from a dual core machine with 1 GB of RAM. Another GB would take it up a notch and allow more applications to be run at the same time; but really, how many apps do you need running at once? The performance is certainly as good as (if not better than) my Vista Ultimate notebook that has 2GB of RAM. The iSight is pretty amazing in that it has such a tiny lens and sensor and does some reasonable video.

So, the not so good? Well, it has the worst keyboard I've encountered on a notebook computer. Nothing compares to a Thinkpad keyboard, however this one isn't even close to as nice as either my current Dell D830 or my home Acer notebook. It feels like I'm typing on a marshmallow; there's very little feedback and it's tough too know if I've pressed a key or not. The touch pad also drives me crazy for two reasons. 1) Why can't Apple just join the club and have two mouse buttons? I've never realized how much of a timesaver the context sensitive menus are from a right-click in Windows or Linux. No wonder Mac users spend so much time memorizing keyboard shortcuts. Also I went for about a week before I found something on the web that explained how to use two fingers to scroll using the touch pad. Why can't they have a specified scroll area, or at least tell you somewhere that you need to use two fingers? 2) There is such a small difference in feel between the touch pad and the wrist rest that I often find my finger has drifted off the touch pad and I can't figure out why the cursor isn't moving. This seems like another form over function thing to me. Sure it looks sleek, but couldn't they have made a slightly larger indentation in the wrist rest for the pad? And what is with Apple and their battery technology? This is the only notebook I've seen where if you leave it unplugged and shutdown for a couple of days the battery is dead when I go to use it again. Is this like my iPod in that it never really actually turns off? I expect that when I use the shutdown option from the OS it is actually shutting down. I wonder though if that is the case.

Oh how I wish Apple would make OS X available for other hardware. Also, why, with so many negatives do I still find this notebook intriguing? It has that Apple "thing" to it. I want to like it, I really do. However, this morning I saw something that woke me up to reality again. One of our big box retailers is selling an HP notebook with a Core 2 Duo T5550, 4GB of RAM, 250 GB HDD, 14.1" screen, Wireless N, Webcam, 5-in-1 card reader, dual layer DVD, and Windows Vista for $799. The same retailer is selling a Macbook with the same T5550 processor, 2GB of RAM, 120GB HDD, 13.3" screen, Airport Extreme, iSight, and of course OS X 10.5 for $1,349 (sale price). I'm going to have to spend more time with the OS to see if there is any way I could justify that kind of price difference. At this point I don't think I ever will, but I'm not going to give up yet.

Idol Confession

Those of you who read my post a long time ago regarding American Idol will be surprised to hear that this season I watched the entire thing from start to finish. Well almost, I didn't record it if I was going to be out, but I always watched some of it if I was home.

Why the change of heart? I'm not sure, but I do have a couple of theories.
1. I normally watch until the final 12 and this year the final 12 was a truly talented bunch of musicians.
2. I usually get frustrated when the top talent gets voted off because they aren't popular. This year that didn't happen (with the exception of Michael Johns, that was a bit of a shocker and the Castro guy should have been one of the first to go).

The format was dry and some of the guest mentors they brought in were lame, but overall I thought the talent (which is the whole reason I watch it) was first rate and there were a number of people who had a chance.

A couple of predictions...
1. There will be more successful musicians produced from this group than any other season.
2. David Archuleta will follow Clay Aiken into obscurity.

The first is because of the talent that these people have. The second is because the kid doesn't have the package. The only thing that could make him popular is if he does the Josh Groban or Michael Buble thing. Right now he doesn't have the charisma or stage presence to pull that type of music off, but his voice doesn't lend itself to any other style. So he either needs to reinvent himself or he needs to go to Dale Carnegie.

Of course, I thought this whole thing was going to die after the first season, so my predictions are likely to be the exact opposite.

The Apple Mystique (Part 1)

What is it about Apple products? How have they achieved such a lofty reputation and rabid following? Why don't people just view the products as over-priced, form-over-function devices? Are they really that much better? Well, here is my opinion (note, I said opinion).

I am currently typing this on a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5 and MS Office 2008 (although I'm using ScribeFire in Firefox to create this post...). I started a new job a few months ago and as an IT manager in a company where there are a significant number of Mac's in use (significant being less than 5%), I decided it was time to learn it so that I was prepared for the inevitable, "will it work on my Mac?" questions. So for the last week or so I've been upgrading it and playing with it a bit to figure out how it all works. As I started using it I really started to wonder if I was being seduced. So, hence these two (I suspect it will be two) posts. And with that disclaimer/intro out of the way, here it goes.

My very first computer (well my family's first) was an Apple II+. It was pretty fancy with a monochrome green monitor, 48k of RAM, a 360k single-sided floppy, and a 1200 baud modem. I seem to recall that it cost about $4,000.00 back in the day. It was really nothing special. It's design wasn't particularly cutting edge (not like the IIc which I coveted). I remember a conversation with a friend of mine where he told me that we should have gotten one of the new IBM PC's because they were going to be the way of the future for home computers. I really didn't know what he was talking about and as far as I was concerned the fact that there were way more games for the Apple meant it was all I was going to want.

Fast forward 20 some years and my, how things have changed. That was the last Apple computer I ever owned, even though I always wanted a Mac. I have been an iPod owner for about 5 years, but I still have my 5-year old iPod. It's all I need really, even though it has pathetic battery life and a somewhat dim monochrome display. On the computer front though it's been all "IBM". While I prefer Linux on my desktop there are just too many Microsoft apps that I need to survive in my world to use it 100% of the time (if only Evolution didn't suck so much I'd use Linux even more). So I have XP, Vista, and Linux machines at home and XP and Linux at work. Games for my kids? Windows XP is the only way to go (ironically opposite of my childhood). And now I've bravely waded into the Mac waters to see if I really need to have one of these things or if it is just all about the image.

So today it's software. Keep in mind these are pretty much first impressions, but I think they are as valid, if not more so, than comments from people who have been using the OS since it came out. To me, in order to be successful, this computer and OS have to pretty much be easy to use and to get up to speed. That's the Apple mantra isn't it? Everything just works. That being said, I've discovered that while everything might work, it doesn't always work the way I would expect and therefore is taking a fair bit of getting used to.

I started out by doing a version upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5. This machine is used for our internal support folks so it needed to have the latest version of the software. This was the source of my first big surprise; it took 3 hours from the time the upgrade started to the time I was done installing the latest batch of updates. That is about 3 times longer than upgrading a Linux desktop and about on par with a Windows upgrade. There were almost 400MB worth of updates after I did the upgrade. That's pretty hefty for an OS that's only been out for 6 months. So I played with it a bit and discovered that the person who had used it before me had removed a lot of the standard stuff and I decided to do a complete new install. This took much less time, about 2 hours, but would have been even faster if it hadn't taken 40 minutes to verify the DVD. That's closer to a typical Ubuntu install.

So what about the actual user experience? Well I'm a bit undecided at this point. I'm all for an uncluttered computer desktop and the long row of big application icons along the bottom doesn't do it for me. I need to go through and decide what I want there and what I don''t want before I pass judgment on it. I've made it pretty small, but it still steals a significant chunk of screen real estate. I may even try hiding it but I don't like to do that in Windows so I'm not so sure I want to do it on the Mac either. As a Windows user I'm also having a hard time with the fact that the menu items for applications are on the top menu bar rather than on the app window itself as well as the fact that when I click the 'x' on the window the application doesn't close. If I'm going to use another app I usually just open it, I don't get rid of the first one and then open the next. If I do that I'll just minimize it. For some reason I can minimize application windows in OS X as well; so why would I want to close it but still have it running when I can minimize it and quickly access it from the dock when I want it again? While it has a silly name, I also really miss the Start menu (or the application menu in Gnome). When there is an application that I want to run that isn't on the dock, it takes a lot of steps to get to the applications folder in finder.


I could nit-pick for a while but I won't. Partly because I'm sure I'll learn all the shortcuts (command+tab to sift through running apps is a new innovation in 10.5!? Windows has had that since 95) and so I'll see how the learning goes. The good? I think this is the best implementation of Linux for the desktop so far. I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 on one of my machines and while it is great, it is no OS X. And that is one of the reasons it interests me so much. As a Linux user this level of integration really has me impressed and the apps themselves have some pretty cool features. The fact that so many audio and video codecs have sketchy patents means that for an open source desktop like Ubuntu there is a lot of work required to have a/v work "out-of-the-box". OS X has it all there and that may be worth paying the money for the OS, unfortunately you have to run it on Apple's hardware but that is another post. The only app that I really think falls flat is Safari. It may be fast (although I haven' noticed it) it doesn't fit in from a look and feel point and it really doesn't come close to Firefox for expandability. Otherwise I'm enjoying playing with the other applications.

So, at this point the OS wouldn't convince me to switch, although (and this is the "is it seducing me" part of the article) I have to try Entourage because if it has good Exchange integration and doesn't crash all the time like Evolution, that might be the killer app to convince me. However, the problem there is that it is Microsoft. I suppose that is also why it is likely to work better than the open source alternative. I'll post more on the OS when I've gotten more comfortable, but up next will be the hardware.

This is Cool

I haven't tried this yet, but I'm going to. It looks like creating your own Outlook Today page is easier than I would have thought.

Tech Recipes Blog

Back again, can I make it stick?

So here I am, a year and a half later. I have a new job, the Liberals didn't get elected and there is an upcoming election in the US of A. Should be some good blog fodder.

It's election time up here and...

...I will be voting "Liberal". Here are my reasons:

Because I believe in the extent to which the Official Languages Act is carried out and enforced; that every public servant even in the most remote part of B.C. should be fluent in the French language, but that government business in Quebec should be in unilingual French.

Because I believe that only lawyers from the province of Quebec are qualified to be prime minister of Canada.

Because I believe that the federal government should be completely controlled by the province of Quebec.

Because I believe that all criminals are just poor misunderstood victims of society and can all be easily rehabilitated in a very short period of time; and that only they have "rights"; not the victims of their crimes.

Because I believe that hardened criminals like Karla Homolka should be pampered by living in a "cottage" with her own key and be allowed to have pyjama parties and go out on shopping trips; and that killers in prison "resorts" on the Pacific coast should eat filet mignon, have barbecues, go whale watching and have their own golf course, while our senior citizens have to eat left over Kraft Dinner.

Because I believe that mass murderers under that age of 18 should be protected by the Young Offenders Act and the rest of us law-abiding citizens do not have the right to know who they are.

Because I believe in bringing hundreds of thousands of unskilled people into Canada from third world countries every year so we can support them on welfare and so that they will vote Liberal; and that this number should be increased every year.

Because I believe that it is fair that the province of Quebec is the sole province allowed to be in charge of its immigration policy; that they receive 5 times the amount of federal immigration money than does Ontario, even though Ontario has to teach those people how to speak English whereas Quebec only allows immigrants to enter who already know the French language.

Because I believe that we do not have a right to own land in Canada, as it is under Liberal law.

Because I believe it is only fair that Liberals steal as much tax money as they can from us; through every conceivable means from the HRDC boondoggle to the 2 billion dollar gun registry that does not work.

Because I believe that if my family is the victim of a home invasion I should not have the right to protect them in our own home.

Because I believe in huge government bureaucracy and extremely high taxes, as I believe that the government knows how to spend my money better than I do.

Because I believe in having essentially no military because everyone loves us and we will never be called upon to protect our country.

Because Jack Layton is not a lawyer from Quebec so he is not qualified to be prime minister; besides, he smiles too much.

Because Stephen Harper is not a lawyer from Quebec and he and the Conservative Party of Canada have a hidden agenda and they are very scary people.

Because I believe that we should alienate our neighbours to the South because all Americans are morons and know nothing about Canada; and that we should continue to align ourselves more closely with our true friends, France, China and Russia.

Because I believe everything that the Liberal controlled media tells me, especially the CBC.

Because I believe that no one should ever be held responsible or accountable for their own actions in today's society. It is always someone else's fault.

Because I believe that we should not expect newcomers to our country to accept or adapt to our culture and traditions and customs; and that we should not wish each other "Merry Christmas" in case it might be offensive to some.

Because I have the IQ of a doorknob and am easily sucked in by Liberal scare tactics and propaganda; and am easily bought off with my own tax money.

Two more rings discovered around Uranus - Space News - MSNBC.com

Two more rings discovered around Uranus - Space News - MSNBC.com: "Astronomers aided by the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two more rings encircling Uranus"

Well, you'd better get that checked then.

Sorry, couldn't resist a little childish humour there.

Oil Found in Antartica - Bush Sends in Military

The Spoof - Oil Found in Antartica - Bush Sends in Military: "'We know those penguins are hiding Weapons of Mass Destruction. ' says President George W. Bush, "

What more needs to be said...

The Politics of Playtime - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com

The Politics of Playtime - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com: "'Girls Inc.,' one mother warned, 'is pro-abortion and pro-contraception and pro all the other lies the secular world wants our girls to believe.' "

All I can do is shake my head.

Florida begins long, costly cleanup after Wilma - Hurricane Wilma - MSNBC.com

Florida begins long, costly cleanup after Wilma - Hurricane Wilma - MSNBC.com: "“I wasn’t prepared for anything. I never thought it would be this bad,” said Virginia Davila, 29, as she waited at the stadium."

You have got to be kidding! People! Listen to the hurricane forecasters, they are pretty good at what they do. Anyone who says they weren't prepared should have to stand at the back of the line for supplies. I guess 5 or 6 days of warning just isn't enough for some people.

Pregnant woman allegedly beaten for fetus - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com

Pregnant woman allegedly beaten for fetus - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com: "Peggy Jo Conner, 38, of Ford City, was arraigned Thursday on charges of attempted homicide, aggravated assault and aggravated assault of an unborn child."

This kind of story really gets me into the "What's this world coming to?" mood. Really, this is absolutely sick. If it wasn't for the fact that Peggy Jo is obviously mentally sick, I'd say drag her into the woods and cut open her stomach. As it is she'll probably be free in a couple of years after spending time in a mental institution. What is this world coming to?

Here's a reason to go visit Florida.

Attention: testy visitors risk being shot in Florida - Yahoo! News: "Supporters call it the 'Stand Your Ground' law, while opponents call it the 'Shoot First' law."

Sounds like it should be called the, " Hey we've all been given an excuse to shoot people!" law. How is this going to protect people? All a criminal has to say is, "I was robbing his house when he came in and looked like he was going to shoot me. So I shot him first, it was self-defense.".

And said as only a Bush could... "Governor
Jeb Bush described it as a "good, common sense, anti-crime issue" when he signed it into law." Uh huh.

I'll bet gun stores are wringing their hands at the thought of all the guns they're going to sell this holiday season.

Ex-Tyco executives get up to 25 years in prison

Ex-Tyco executives get up to 25 years in prison - Corporate Scandals - MSNBC.com: "He’s a good man. He’s a decent person and his reputation has been tarnished but his life should not be destroyed.”"

Right, aside from the fact that he and his buddy stole $600,000,000.00 so that they could throw huge parties and have fancy houses. Thanks goodness the juries in these trials aren't falling for any of the exceuses these guys are dishing out. Good riddance to both of them.

Massachusetts' Move to Open Format is Close-minded

Massachusetts' Move to Open Format is Close-minded: "Opinion: The State of Massachusetts should not forsake Microsoft file formats, which are 'open enough' for many users. "

There are so many things wrong with this column, I'm not sure I even know where to start. The whole reason MS is what it is today is because it's products are good enough, or open enough, or stable enough. I think what MA is doing is saying good enough isn't good enough. We want something that is better than that, something that anyone can use, not just those that can buy Microsoft's products. That's the opinion part out of the way, now some facts:

While OpenOffice isn't widely supported yet, it has support for MS formats. You can take any OpenOffice spreadsheet and save it as an Excel spreadsheet. Same for all other OpenOffice apps.

OpenOffice hasn't caught on because of people like Coursey telling them that it doesn't do what they need. Anyone who can use MS Office could turn around and use OpenOffice and be able to do almost everything within a day.

Where does switching to Linux figure into this whole argument? Instead of, as Coursey states, taking choice away from people, by choosing an open format he's actually giving them more choice. If they choose OpenOffice they can run it on Windows, Linux, and Mac. If you stipulate that everyone must use MS Office, you are taking away the Linux option (and most Mac users won't touch MS Office unless they are forced).

"...but in the end the state could potentially save a lot of money. It seems, however, that if Microsoft adds OpenDocument support to Office then Mr. Quinn would be satisfied." And what would be so bad about that? The state could save money and people could choose to use MS Office if they wanted. Sounds like a win-win to me. Although I'm not so convinced that MS will ever adopt the open doc format. Why should they? After all, the closed MS doc format is good-enough.

Calgary Herald - canada.com network

Calgary Herald - canada.com network: "The majority of crops in Alberta are in good or excellent condition."

Once again, the media dooms the farmers to another year of crop failures. Now that those words have been printed something has to go wrong. I'm going to place my bets on an early snowfall.

Check back in a month or see to see if I'm right.

Gretzky 'excited' about coaching the Coyotes - Yahoo! News

Gretzky 'excited' about coaching the Coyotes - Yahoo! News: "By no means am I (Hall of Fame coach) Scotty Bowman"

The "Great Question" about "The Great One". Can he coach?
Lots of people are saying that he was such a natural talent that he won't be able to explain what he wants from his payers. I tend to disagree though. He's worked with at least one excellent coach in his career (Glen Sather), he's smart, and he is well liked by basically everyone in the business. While there is certainly no way he'll create a team of Gretzky's, he knows the strategies and the nuance of the game. There are very few players who were able to see the entire rink like he did when he was on the ice. That's not natural talent, that's practice and intelligence.
I'm looking forward to this and hopefully the people of Phoenix will give him a chance to prove that he can help their team more than just financially.

Copy-protected CDs iPod-incompatible but sell well - Yahoo! News

Copy-protected CDs iPod-incompatible but sell well - Yahoo! News: "Meanwhile, record industry officials said the Dave Matthews and Foo Fighters CDs are selling well."

Of course they're selling well, people want the CD's. If they put out a non-copywrite version of it, I'll bet it would sell even better. Why can't the recording industry just wait until the technology is there? This type of thing just makes them and the labels hated even more by the exact people they're trying keep from copying CD's. In Canada we've had some copy protected CD's for a while now and I refuse to buy any. I don't pirate, but I want to be able to listen to the music when I want to listen to it, not just when I'm in front of my stereo.
Until the trade groups and labels get their act together they're going to continue to lose sales.

Sports | Hockey | canada.com

Sports | Hockey | canada.com

If I was the player's union I'd be getting ready to turf Bob Goodenow. All he did was screw the players out of playing for part of a year. It was obvious from the beginning that the owners weren't going to cave, obviously Goodenow thought they were bluffing. Now he has a bunch of union member who've just had there salaries cut waaaay back, I bet some players will lose close to 50%.
I supported the owners from the very beginning on this, but if I was a player, I'd be really steamed today.

WorldCom's Ebbers Sentenced to 25 Years

WorldCom's Ebbers Sentenced to 25 Years

Justice is served. I'm sure every one of the people who lost their pensions and life-savings will be a little happier today.