Bill Gates on Tiger:

As quoted in this Business Week article:

"You can always tell if you're working on a Mac or a PC. Just take your applications and stick them in there and see if they run,"

You're a hoot, Bill. All those copies of Sobig I get in my e-mail inbox every day? Let me expand them and run them on my Mac...

Oh, wait. They didn't work. You're right, Bill. All my Windows viruses are not, in fact, compatible with my Mac. Darn it. And you can't get programs like Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, or even Microsoft Anti-Spyware for the Mac, either. How unfair!

Of course, that may be because there's no such thing as Mac spyware, but why confuse things with facts?

To be slightly serious, there are a few places where Mac software selection is an issue. Besides gaming. And there are legitimate uses for ActiveX applications (though they should all be written in Java instead). But for the most part, the Mac platform has at least 2-3 high-quality products in most software categories. Windows typically has more - but you aren't going to install every competitive office suite on the market - you are going to buy and use one of them. And the best ones are typically cross-platform, taking advantage of the features available on the OS you use. Microsoft, ironically, is a big practitioner of that with Office. Which is available on the Mac, and excellent as well.

Burnt

My legs are en fuego - I got up at 6 this morning and went for a bike ride. Only 13 miles, but I did a lot of climbing on the route I took today (down to Swampscott, and back up the Marblehead coast around Marblehead Neck), and I was moving at a pretty good clip. It was a good way to start the week off.

Maybe one morning my riding partner will show up... in his defense, though, I called his cell around 7 last night to let him know I'd be heading out today (Robert's one of those folks who it's easier to get on his cell than his home phone). And golf season has begun as of this week - our shrunken league now plays bi-weekly, but that's still enough to play a decent number of matches. And bi-weekly doesn't mean I can't golf more than that - it just means only one score counts.

One glitch has been reported in Tiger that will keep me off it for a little while - Apparently there's a cosmetic bug with QuickBooks 6.0 that prevents new entries from being processed the normal way. I'll see if it's still there with 10.4.1 before deciding how to proceed (one option is to upgrade QuickBooks).

David woke up way too early today. He got up as I was leaving the house on my bike. Jane blamed me initially for waking him up, but I'm convinced that if he heard me tiptoeing in my slippers, then he was already awake in bed.

Update-O-Rama

I just posted a new picture page of David in the usual place - one change in the routine is that I posted all the pics in full-resolution this time (you can do that when you have your own server...) as an experiment, since this particular batch bridges my old and new cameras.

I also finally posted the MCE review on the BNUG site just before midnight, squeezing it in right before my self-imposed April deadline.

In a week or so I will probably take the plunge and upgrade my home Mac (the iMac G4) to Tiger - for the most part, I've had only minor issues with it on my PowerBook.

Tiggers like to...

Tiggers like to install themselves on my PowerBook. That'll be the guinea pig for the OS, at least until 10.4.1 comes out. The PowerBook isn't as mission-critical as my iMac is. The only thing on the PowerBook that I know will be incompatible with Tiger is PocketMac - the developer has stated that a Tiger-compatible revision will be available within another week or so.

The install itself as an upgrade to Panther is about 2.2 GB in size. Tiger ships on a single DVD.

Where have I been?

I haven't been available much for posting the last few days since I've been pedal-to-the-metal busy. And I've been finishing up at recovering from the minor health problems I had this week (sore throat and cough, as I'd mentioned last weekend). But I landed a few new accounts and hopefully lined up an additional contract to support a company's site move this summer.

Meanwhile, tonight is the long-awaited Tiger launch, and I'm looking forward to it. I will be at the Peabody Apple Store, and I'm going to pick up a client copy of Tiger since I'm not going to get my NFR for a couple of weeks, and I've got some immediate Tiger-related support work. We'll turn it into a night on the town for the family.

If all goes well, the long-promised MCE review will be finished and posted to BNUG's blog sometime tomorrow.

Memo to self

I just got back from my first morning ride on the new bicycle - it's a lot faster than the old one. And the ride helped me clear a lot of gunk from my lungs, which was a bonus. In keeping with a trend set in the latter part of last year's riding season, Robert blew the ride off - which I kind of expected since it was chilly out (you lazy sack!). However, I do have to make some adjustments to the bike before I head out next (probably Friday morning, if the weather forecasts I saw the other night are accurate):

- Adjust pedals to allow less lateral motion
- Switch seats with the Fuji
- Straighten left control lever
- change angle on bike computer
- Move pump back to downtube

Other than those minor tweaks, the bike (a LeMond Etape) handles nicely, with very little flex. I'll have to learn to trust it more - it can turn much quicker than the Fuji mountain bike I've ridden for the last decade plus can muster, plus it's more stable in a given direction. The Fuji has the nice Specialized road seat I bought for it last year, which I'll move over to the LeMond - the included seat isn't bad but the Specialized is way nicer.

I also should get a different pair of gloves (the ones I have are way too tight, and the stitching is coming out), and maybe a pair of tights for the occasional cold morning. The gloves are important, the tights less so.

My mediocre weekend

Since my last post, I've had a couple of nights' where the combination of a cough (now getting better, thankfully) and a sore throat that feels like I'm gargling with razors have made me rather grumpy. Friday wasn't too bad (and we went out to my bowling league wrap-up banquet that night), but I've felt like crud the last two days. I went to the doctor on Saturday with David in tow and was diagnosed with uvulitis (a bacterial inflammation of the uvula). so I'm on antibiotics.

Otherwise, though, the weekend was OK - I spent a lot of time playing with David despite my lack of energy (we played trains a lot). And I took him to see my broken car, but it was already sealed away in the body shop - a good sign pointing towards rapid return. Which is good, because David has decided he doesn't like the "temporary car" (a 2005 Nissan Quest).

I'm fairly busy this week for the most part, doing a spyware cleanup tomorrow afternoon, a networking job tonight, and having a meeting with a new client in the morning tomorrow for starters. There's a few more things to keep me busy as well. April's been a pretty good month so far.

Bam Thwok

I just had One Of Those Days yesterday. Oh, it started well enough, despite my minor cold and sore throat. I took David to school, did some work here in the office, and then went home for lunch and a little bit of home chores before heading in to Cambridge for an ACN regional meeting.

Except I never arrived. While I was heading out of town, I got rear-ended pretty hard by a car driven by the 17-year-old son of a former coworker of mine. He was basically driving like 17-year-olds do - not noticing that, despite the light changing to green, the intersection ahead was congested and none of the cars in front of him had moved yet. So BAM! my trip was over.

After summoning the police to write up the report, I wound up limping the minivan over to the Chevy dealer's body shop, where it will be until sometime next week. I dealt with all the insurance bother, secured a rental car (which the other driver's company will be paying for), and headed on home - by the time everything was taken care of it was about 6PM and there was no way I'd be making it in to Cambridge. So now the insurers are taking care of all the details and I'm driving a rented Nissan Quest.

I did go out with a few folks later for the end of bowling season - our league wrapped up last night (about a month later than usual), so now I have my Wednesday nights free again until fall. Which is good.

Wrasslin' comments

Last night I watched this week's Raw, courtesy of TiVo. Overall, not a great show, though I took two things away from it:

Trish Stratus is a darned good athlete and wrestler. She's a terrific heel - good enough that I don't want to see her turn face again anytime soon. On the other hand, though, there's one thing that's a little disconcerting to me about her - her voice always seems just a little bit too nervous and quavering for my liking. I suspect it's got to do with her Canadian accent, but something about it puts me off, as good as she otherwise is.

And Hogan just plain rules. He's got to be one of the worst wrestlers you will ever see as far as his skills go - and since his hip replacement last year his already limited movement is all but gone. But there's something about Hogan - his presence, his look, his charisma, whatever - that makes you just momentarily suspend all your disbelief and, just for a moment, think "hey - this stuff is real". Maybe it's just nostalgia, and if he was on every week as a regular I'd get sick of him quickly, but when he's used like they're using him right now, Hulk Hogan is a blast to watch.

Memo to jobseekers

My wife has an open position in one of her stores right now. One person who she had an interest in has been, shall we say, aggressive in her pursuit of the job - enough to Jane's office phone 3 times last night between 7 and 9, and once (so far) this morning at about 8:45 or so.

By the way - that's not how you get hired by my wife. She'll be taking someone else.