Alex's Journal

Yesterday I was finally able to order a brand new MacBook. I’m quite excited about it because it means I can finally rid myself of the stupid PC laptop with Windows Vista that I have been using now for a while. I hate that thing. Vista is slow, sloppy, ugly, unreliable and generally obnoxious to work with.

MacBook

I went to a party on Saturday night and one of the guys who was there brought his computer. It was a brand new MacBook and the first one I’ve seen since Apple came out with their new line of MacBook and MacBook Pros on October 14th. I got to talking with him about it and quickly realized he wasn’t just some guy that follows the trend or buys technology-related items because that’s what the guy next to him bought. He knew what he was talking about in terms of computers.

After talking with him for a while, he mentioned that he just made the switch to Mac and that his MacBook was the first Mac he has ever owned. He also mentioned that he’s worked for Dell for a while, but that he had had enough of the problems attributed to Windows, so he decided to opt for a Mac. Based one what he has experienced so far with his Mac, he said that he will never go back to Windows again after getting used to the Mac.

This is something I find to be really sad and it just proves we really need some sort of reform at the university level in this country.

Academic Salaries

While the image is an exaggerated comic, it still has plenty of truth behind it.

- Windows not finding the wireless connection my iPod Touch found despite wireless card being on
- Microsoft Word crashed when I clicked the Office Button
- Explorer crashed while shutting down
- Windows crashed while shutting down. Instead of just shutting down, it rebooted to check for solutions.

Since my PowerBook’s hard drive died, I have been forced to use Windows Vista Home Basic on a Dell Inspiron 1521 for the past week. It has been an absolute nightmare! In lieu of this, I’ve started keeping a running log of things that have gone wrong with Windows everyday. I will be making daily posts with lists of problems I encounter. Some of them are more entertaining than others, but most of them are stupid.

Here is the list for October 3, 2008:

- Wouldn’t boot. Had to restart twice.
- Clicked a bookmark and the titlebar of the window moved to the cursor instead of the browser going to the bookmark.
- Scroll down a webpage and it automatically comes back up.
- Explorer crashed and took all open program (iTunes & Pidgin) with it.
- Blue screen of death.
- Windows locked itself up trying to find a solution for the blue screen of death.
- Explorer crashed.
- Computer went to sleep, internet wouldn’t work afterwards. Had to restart.
- Trying to rename a file in Windows Explorer, but instead menus keep opening. (Alt-button is not a problem; closed the window and tried in a new window, same results).

I found a really interesting webpage that has a lot of information about the 1908 presidential election. The two candidates were William J. Bryan and William H. Taft. The most interesting part of the website though is that it includes two speeches recorded by each of the candidates. It was the first time any presidential candidate had had his voice recorded. The recordings were done on wax cylinders and could be purchased for 35 cents (about $8 in today’s money).

If you’re interested in listening to them, you can find them here. Bryan gives a speech about the financial crisis that was present at that time (and is surprisingly relevant 100 years later…) and Taft gives a speech about the “progress of the Negro” forty years after being freed from slavery.