My iBook

I’m spending a lot of time tonight on upgrades. I just upgraded my iBook to OS X 10.3.5. I also realized that I hadn’t updated the virus definitions on this thing since October 2003. That doesn’t seem possible, but apparently it’s true. Man, I have to update the virus defs on my PC about three times a week, just to keep the wolves at bay, so to speak. You gotta love the Mac — no spyware problems, hardly any virus/worm problems, easy OS updates that don’t break anything. If only I could toss my PC. I guess I could, if I didn’t make my living programming for and supporting PCs. Oh well.

Airport Express

The old Airport Base Station died again this morning, so I’m definitely giving up on it now. It seems to work for only a few hours after doing a hard reset and reloading everything, then it dies.

I just hooked up the Airport Express, and it’s working great. I have it sitting on my desk, so I can see the little green light. It’s small enough that I could just leave it on the floor, but I like being able to see if it’s working or not. It’s kind of hard to get it to stand up on the desk; I wish there was a little stand for it. Other than that, it’s great.

More Airport Weirdness

My new Airport Express showed up today. Rather than just toss the old one and hook it up, I decided to take one more crack at getting the old base station working again. And, hey, it works! I had to go through the reset instructions very carefully, but I did eventually get the firmware reloaded and the unit reconfigured. If the settings get lost again, though, I’m giving up on it. If it keeps working, though, then I’ll probably use the Express in the living room and hook up my stereo to it.

Or maybe I’ll sell the old base station to these guys and make a few bucks. (That’s the nice thing about Apple equipment. You almost never have to throw anything away. There’s always somebody that wants it.)

I picked up some Airport tips from this page, by the way.

Apple

I decided to check out Apple’s new music service today. Looks pretty good. Just for yuks, I bought a song — “Glad and Sorry” by the Faces. I was hoping I could find the cover by Golden Smog, but no luck. Also no luck finding “I Can’t Stop Loving You” by Ray Charles, which has been stuck in my head ever since I saw Metropolis.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

  • I got a chance to see Adaptation and Nicholas Nickleby this weekend. Both were definitely worth seeing.

  • So what’s going on at Macworld right now? Boy it’d be nice to be in San Francisco right now.

  • I give up on the Giants. Hey, the NFL admitted that there was an officiating screw-up on the last play, though. Can we just play the game over next week? Can we? Huh?