Bobbis.net

I'm now running Leopard. After backing up my drive, Tiger upgraded flawlessly. I still have to decide if I like certain things, but they are pretty cool-looking. I'm not liking the icon preview being on by default. When browsing a directory of avi files it kicks the fans in.

Spaces is a little strange when I switch between applications. Say I have a Safari window open in space 1 and another in space 2. I'm working in another application in space 2 and I command-tab back to Safari. Instead of going to the Safari window in the current space it will whisk you to the desktop of the first Safari window. Kind of annoying and I can't seem to find a setting to adjust that.

They got rid of the old calendar widget and confused me really bad because they replaced it with the iCal widget, which looks the same, but will now show iCal events.

We'll see how things go. Time to do a clean install on my mini and bask in the new Front Row.

I am a little concerned about what was said in the announcement:

"Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than 'totally open,' we believe it is a step in the right direction."

Does this mean Apple is going to expand on what Nokia is doing with the digital signatures? If so, does this then mean Apple will have a more strict policy than Nokia? I really hope the iPhone SDK will be open to anyone and won't be much of a hassle to be able to publish software.

Now that I have a steady job and am saving money, I am considering buying a house in about a year. My goal is to save 20% of a down payment.

In order to aide me in figuring out this goal, I used Numbers and found that I could really save some money by not going out to eat a lot. I have been going out for lunch every day and often going out for dinner because Gaila works evenings. I will be cooking dinner when Gaila is working evenings and limiting going out to eat. I'll still be doing Satay on Mondays and Burrito on Fridays and the occasional out to eat dinner. Cutting down on weekday eating out will save me a lot.

Unfortunately, trying to save for a down payment means I will probably not be able to go to WWDC in 2008 with a bunch of people who are planning.

Apparently there is a highly secure underground data center in Boone that used to be a communications station for NORAD. It opened last year. I had no clue such place existed near by.

I have finally upgraded to Drupal 5 and have this new theme that I think looks pretty darn cool. I moved some things around and will be getting the quotes back up when I have time. Also, when I have time, I will go through and delete all the spam comments and work on keeping them away.

Let me know if you run into any issues.

I have discovered the Prototype Javascript Framework by way of Sheng. I am quite amazed at how simple it makes creating Ajax applications. Prototype abstracts all the icky hacks and differences that need to be accounted for when you want things to work in the majority of browsers including IE. Using this for a few days now, I am now breaking into learning Javascript.

Back when I first started school at Iowa State, I was already working for the university. This pamphlet was created by my co-worker Ross Miller to explain how college life goes. Enjoy.

Bob 1st day @ skool (PDF) 1.5MB

This weekend sucked. Thursday afternoon during the last day of the process improvement workshop at work, I started feeling sick (achy, sore throat). I called in sick on Friday, even though I wanted to get started working on some ideas from the workshop. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, both Gaila and I hung around the apartment eating Ramin, watching TV and playing Sim City on the Wii Virtual Console. I ended up calling in sick on Tuesday as well when I finally felt good enough to be active in the middle afternoon. Luckily I got a new TV in exchange for my broken one on Wednesday. Unluckily, my mini's DVI port is busted (actually it's probably something else causing the DVI to not work now that I have it in the shop).

On some good news, the PHP User Group turned out to be pretty cool, other than the fact the majority of the people there were from Captain Jacks Communications.

You can find photos from my New York trip here.

I went to visit my brother in Seneca Falls, NY last week along with my parents. It was nice to get out of work for a week and relax a little bit. We hit the wine trails a couple of the days, so I kind of know what I like for wine. I’ll have some pictures from the trip up soon.

Lately, I have started to get involved in a couple groups in Des Moines. The CocoaHeads had its very first meeting in Des Moines and the PHP User’s Group, CIAPUG, will start meeting again starting in early September in Ankeny. I am excited to be joining these groups to help me expand my interests away from work. I think being part of CocoaHeads will help me learn Cocoa as there are a couple other newbies in the group that I can progress with. I really don't know about the fate of the AmesMUG now since most of the officers are either graduated (like me) or in grad school. There needs to be some more freshman/sophomores to get interested, or the group will probably die.

The HDMI port on my TV died, so I had to take it into Best Buy. Interesting story. The port dies, I call Westinghouse, they tell me to use a straight HDMI cable and not an DVI to HDMI converter cable I was using. They did not accept the fact that I tested the cable on a different TV and it worked. So I buy a $45 HDMI cable from Radio Shack and borrow my parent’s up-convert DVD player and sure enough, it sill doesn’t work. Westinghouse does not have any service techs in the area, so the service will have to be carried out by Best Buy :( . Call Best Buy, they don’t know what I should do; they will give me a call the next day. The next day I get a voice mail saying just take it into the local Best Buy store. I take it to the local Best Buy Store and they inform me they do not take TVs that are larger than 25 inches for service. Talk to their Geek Squad to see if they can find a record of the service that needs to be done. I ended up calling Best Buy’s warranty line and they basically order the local Best Buy to take it and ship it out to a depot. I’m quoted 2 to 3 weeks on the repair. It has been two weeks now, and no word about it yet.