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The Lee Equation

3.26.2008 by Mike McHargue

My friend Nathan Lee was contemplating the MacBook Pro vs. MacBook Air decision that so many of us are facing.  He came up with a handy equation that solves the issue perfectly.  I'm proud to introduce the world to the Lee Equation:

Z = D - L

D is the number of days in a month your MacBook would be on a desk.
L is the number of days in a month your MacBook will be on your lap.

If Z is a positive number, get the Pro
If Z is a negative number, get the Air.

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MacBook Air SSD has taken over me.

3.24.2008 by Mike McHargue

My MacBook Air with 64 GB SSD arrived last week.  After pondering its form and dead silent operation, I've decided to use it full time.  This hasn't been an easy decision--the Air has a lot going against it for someone like me.
  • My home directory is 112.59 GB.  That's bigger than the Air's SSD or HD options.
  • I'm a chronic multi-tasker.  I have a lot of apps open and many of them are disk, CPU and GPU intensive.
  • I travel frequently, but not so often my 15" MacBook Pro is cumbersome.  I am not a road warrior.
Because of these considerations, Apple's 15" notebook has been my One Machine since the launch of the titanium PowerBook G4.  The PowerBooks (and MacBook Pros) have always been a compromise compared to their desktop siblings, but I've rarely felt held back by my computer.

The Air is different.  64 GB is tiny.  I frequently use more than one USB port (while traveling), and I travel with a Verizon ExpressCard.  The Air shouldn't be a machine I even consider, but then I held one.

It's tiny.  It's silent.  It wakes from sleep instantly--and it's completely usable as soon as the screen comes on.

Did I mention its silent?  You don't know how loud a hard drive is until you have a computer without one.

So, I've ordered a Mac Pro to use at my desk at work and a 24" iMac to use for managing family media at home.  The Air will be my travel/meetings/presentations computer.

This will either be fantastic or a total disaster.  I'll keep you posted either way.

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Macworld pictures

1.14.2008 by Mike McHargue

If you want to see my pics of Macworld as I take them, use this link.

I'll be posting lots of pics leading up to the keynote tomorrow.  As part of ritual, I plan to hop in line by 4 AM.

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@Macworld 2008

1.13.2008 by Mike McHargue

I'm in San Francisco again for MacWorld. The weather in  San Francisco is incredibly beautiful today.

I was entertaining the notion of doing a photostream, but then I realized that 1,000 other people will do better ones than I could.

Here's a few random thoughts.

  1. Registration starts at 8 AM tomorrow.  My first session is at 9 AM.  Huh?
  2. If you wear a *really* loud Hawaiian shirt in San Francisco, everyone will stop to talk to you.  This is in a city where there are some truly colorful characters everywhere.
  3. If you're in SF for Macworld, there's a restaurant next to the Pickwick on Fifth.  They have inexpensive and nicely edible food of the sandwich and pasta variety.  Folks on a tight per diem should check it out.
  4. There are two substantial tractor trailers attached to Moscone West.  One of the Apple security guard stopped me (to talk about my shirt) and mentioned they were for the keynote.  The trailers are here every year, but for the first time I've stopped to think just how much money Apple spends to do a keynote.
  5. John C. Welch is a cool dude.  Yes, I'm sucking up.

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5.04.2007 by Mike McHargue

It's going to be a long weekend.

New toys

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Sercurity Update 2007-004 kills FTP on OS X Server

4.30.2007 by Mike McHargue

Man, I wish my Google skills were a bit better. Instead of spending hours solving a problem, I would have spent minutes implementing someone else's solution. So it goes.

For you OS X Server admins out there, if you run FTP services the most recent security update is going to cause some pain. After I updated my servers, I went about testing all services to make sure everything was running correctly. At first glance, everything was fine.

Then I tried to update my website and got some really strange errors from Blogger. It kept telling me the path to my website did not exist on the FTP server. I manually connected with Transmit to make sure everything was working--and found myself staring at the root of my disk! I assumed some configuration file got hosed, so I launched Server Admin only to see that all my FTP server settings were dandy.

Logging into several servers all yielded the same result.

Lucky for me, I clone my server boot drives before applying updates. I started using diff to see what had changed between the updates. I found that the ftp.plist file in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons was different so I looked at both versions. I was shocked to see that ftpd was being invoked instead of xftpd. Copying the file from the cloned, pre-update, drive and rebooting fixed the issue.

Here's a great discussion I found on the issue this morning, along with the text needed to resolve the issue.

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Mike blogs again!

4.29.2007 by Mike McHargue

I've just spent the last few hours wrestling with a bug in Apple's Security Update 2007-004. The fact that this post is here means I found a solution (copy the ftp.plist file from a non-update server so xftpd gets launched instead of ftpd).

Sorry I've been silent so long. I do appreciate everyone who's emailed to ask me to write again. There are many things to discuss, but I've just been crushed at work. We're growing at a breakneck pace and it takes all my energies to keep up.

I'll post again soon, I hope.

Did I mention the site is hosted on a Mac Pro now?

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