Take the 492 to the 200 - Day 33

Psychology Day

I don't look forward to assessments by anyone who's title contains "psych" because it usually involves coursing through hot point topics of my life. I don't do / never did hard liquor to excess sans one time over New Years, where I swore off any more alcohol after vomiting it back up. I don't do / never did street drugs or others that weren't prescribed to me. I live a boring life. I can say... I'm glad I'm going.

Catch up

Just playing catch up here...

June 25th - I GOT MY MAC!!! I said I'd break my boss before June 30th, and I did. It's been a few weeks and pure bliss. There have been a few minor hiccups, but I chalk it up to transition issues in locating replacement software to perform some of the functions that used to do in the windows world.

July 2nd - Decided to pursue having Bariatric surgery. My sister and are going to have it done this year, however not at the same time. I think it's time. I held off on this option for as long as possible. I attended two group meetings hosted by the doctor who performs the Duodenal Switch method. Everyone there seems genuinely happy with the decision. 95% success rate in keeping the weight off.

July 6th - My ex called and told me a voice in her head told her to cancel Alimony. She said "I don't know why, but I was told to sign-off to have it removed, so that's why I called you." I'm thinking, what's the trick. I know she has a growing arrearage, so I think the "voice" is probably that of her increased risk of getting pulled over by the police and getting arrested for being a deadbeat parent.

She called again the following Monday to reiterate the request, and then additionally added that it would be nice to have the children assigned to her in case of my death. I said, they are currently assigned to go to my mom and dad or sister if I pass away. She said, we'll perhaps you can have that changed to me. I would rather NOT do that since it took three years to fight for the full-time custody of them. They are all in the same high school, and I don't want them to move away from it before graduation, so switching them over to her is not going to happen any time soon.

July 11th - Gina has left for North Carolina to visit with her Aunt. She's getting older, and more ready for the next thing in life. Scary but true.

A poem to the victims and families of the Virginia Tech shootings

Trevor has written a poem that captures the feelings of a soon to be college student trying to put into perspective the shameless tragedy of the shootings at VT.



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Apple Boy

I think he's cracked. I do believe my constant and never ending pecking at the hard exterior of my Bosses determination to say 'no' is gone. He's called me Apple Boy. A new nickname, nay... my new slogan for 2007. I am now starting my official internal corporate campaign for getting myself an Apple Mac Book Pro from the company.

Apple Boy 2007(tm)

JamesCho (AKA Apple Boy) has determined that he will receive a new Mac Book Pro by June 30, 2007. Of course, I'm waiting until then to see if Apple Co. announces new hardware on June 11th.
;-)

Cheers,
JamesCho (AppleBoy2007)

(XP and OS X) a skit in one act.

"Torn between two lovers, Feeling like a fool. Loving both of you, Is breaking all the rules."
by Mary MacGregor

(XP and OS X) a skit in one act.

For the moment, I will be genderizing items in this blog: Mac = Female, XP = Female, and myself = Male. I have a new love - Apple's OS X. I have an older estranged love - Microsoft's XP. They are friendly around each other, but separately, there is a hatred that is whispered in between thoughts for the opposing. I cannot help it. I want OS X to be my true one and only. I want to be able to shut the door on XP and the rest of the Microsoft Clan, but there are times when I am returning to the (b)rainwashed steps of the house of Microsoft asking for XP to come out to talk about things.

When that happens, XP brings out her older brothers, Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL. The intimidation is heavy when I ask XP for a helping hand. Just a little task to tie me over till I am ready to move on. After much brow beating, XP eventually gives in and agree to meet me in Parallels playground. So, I leave early to get there and get everything ready.

Windows XP shows up and acts spurious seeing Mac in my arms. I coyly wait while XP steps up and sits down. Conversely, we are getting along. XP seems to be acting 120% better than when it was just XP and myself. Strange. I remember XP practically dragging ASS to run Microsoft Word 2007, and while Mac is around and in Parallels, the same ass dragging load time is almost nil on a cold start. WTF!? I think to myself, XP's just showing off, like saying... "See, I still got it."

THE END

I've got problems. OS X kicks ass (for the most part) and I'm sure the 10.5 upgrade will further itself in the right direction. XP used to kick ass (for the most part) but Vista sealed the deal, and now, Microsoft, I'm moving on. The only problem is, Microsoft's corporate servers and services (Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, etc) are really now starting to show their beautiful plumage! And of course, what works best with SharePoint? Office 2007!

So, the waiting game for Mac Office 2008 has started. More importantly, I'm hoping and waiting that a very special feature will be part of the final features list... SharePoint connectivity. I know you can connect to SharePoint with any browser, but the truth is, the most powerful functionality of SharePoint is the file editing from the SharePoint site and the ability to see the SharePoint users who are logged on at the time you are working on the file.

I only hope and pray that Microsoft's MacBU get far enough from the Microsoft MCP to give Mac users some of the mojo that is Microsoft's server and services connectivity. I love Parallels, but I don't want XP anymore, and do want to keep working in Mac Office data files.


JamesCho

Clients and Mac

So, I've decided to move my clients and (my day-time employer) over to Apple this year. I'm tired of Microsoft. I'm tired of supporting the platform. I'm sick of the midnight calls from clients and co-workers asking questions about shite Microsoft problems. BSOD's, Application Error Reports, and Windows Updates, WGA (and WGA2), etc. GONE starting now. Vista. Keep It.

So far, I've converted 3 of my 9 clients to MacBook Pro or Mac Pro. The process was WAY easier than expected. I have a meeting next week to order a MacBook Pro for my fourth client. He's already to go, we just need to place the order. Chip chip chip... chipping away at the stone foundation of Microsoft Windows.

Billy boy, you may want to consider making the XBox your new base product.

JamesCho

WordPerfect 5.1 - Day Three

Well, it's day three of WP51 and I'm seeing the past as a crude stepping stone that has begun to crumble around itself. Am I doomed to recall the days of yore with my own failing memories of DOS 2.0 and higher? I fondly remember the flimsy surface of a 5.25" diskette which we used en mass as a storage medium for our documents and future memories.

I remember the day I started transferring my content from 5.25" to 3.5", and then from 3.5" to hard drive, and so on. Now we're talking Terabytes being the norm, yet it was only 15 years ago that 100 MB hard drives were the now, and Gigabytes was the nutty sounding storage size of the future.

I looked at the visit with Marilyn as a chance to revisit the "museum of the old days" and interact with it. I could still see the same woman that I knew from the past, but it was only the eyes that stayed the same, the rest had aged appropriately for being 15 years since last seeing her. I began to age sitting there. I remember feeling intimidated by her back then, I was just 24 and still perfecting my computer-self.

Her desperation to reanimate WordPerfect for DOS on her latest Pentium 4 Win XP box was of the same pursuit to find the Grail. I calmly (and not so confidently) restored the files from her dead hard drive on to the new one. At that point, the ground starting disappearing into a fog, as the strands of memory in my brain began to fail.

Then she insisted on re-installing an application named Multi-Page. A program which allows the user to produce a multi-page layout of documents printed from DOS programs. It is a task that most windows desktop publishing and word processing programs do while performing hundreds of other meaningless tasks. However in DOS, it's front and center as a challenge.

The program did install with little effort (like the old days) but then the years gap between DOS and Win XP showed itself as her external USB floppy drive was not officially recognized by DOS. It turns out that the application was written to expect a floppy controller on the motherboard in order to "see" the drive. This USB based drive was not visible to Multi-Page.

We agreed to revisit soon the options available for her some time next week, in the meantime, I set up a desktop shortcut to WP51, and made sure that the macros I wrote back in 1992 were still functioning. As I received the envelope with my payment enclosed, I looked at Marilyn's face one last time, only to get a flashback from being in the room those 15 years ago. I shudder to think about the life I've had since that time. We said goodbye and I left the house, back to the rainy night, and into my car to go home.

Is that YOU?!

Wow. WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. It's been a while. How's it going with you? I asked first! Ok. It's going well, I guess. I've missed you. Life's been a bit crazy with Windows and all that GUI shite. I mean, I've thought about you now and then. Mostly in a reflective way, sort of the "I remember when" type of thoughts. Do you remember Marilyn? She called me out of the blue last night. It was kinda late, but I figured what the heck, I'll take a chance. Well, she's still doing legal transcriptions. The bird is STILL typing at age 72 on her new Dell using you from the good old days! So, what have you been up to?

Oh, sorry to hear about the Corel thing. Are they still keeping your windows edition on life support? It's been 10 years since 6.2, hasn't windows improved at all? It has? Wow, I read something different. Yes, I've seen the pictures of X3, win has grown up nicely, it's just that it's not you. Don't take offense or anything but what about the simple blue screen and grey/white font that you have... Why not keep up appearances by making win more like you? Sure I understand your old, but you still got it. Oh well. I'm trying to remember some of my favorite keystrokes that we used to do together. I'm sorry, I didn't know you were busy. I'll let you go for now. Maybe we can catch up later. Ok. Bye.