Well, my last post admittedly was a little plaintive. Guess I can be a little touchy! With that said, I’ll lay off the sensitive topics and be more “normal”.

TUAW announced their finalists in their iPod Nano contest… I wasn’t one of them. That’s ok though. The best things are acquired through hard work. There are ten finalists with really good entries, so may the best blogger win! Besides, I thought about it a lot; winning the iPod Nano woud’ve been nice, but I wouldn’t want to buy one. I’m too used to having the large storage of a 20gig iPod, and getting a color (photo) one as an upgrade for $299 would be a better value than a 4gig Nano for $249. Especially since the full size color iPod can display the photos on any TV, which the Nano can’t do. I’m not saying the Nano isn’t a technological marvel though… it is sweet!

In other news, my work is getting a lot better now. The stress has loosened up greatly and I can afford to take some days off here and there in the near future. I’m just glad to have my team back to normal, and we work in almost total synchronicity together (start playing “Synchronicity” now…). I even get along great with others in different departments, so I feel double-blessed. Monday I have to go to another facility to help out, which sucks a little. I hate being away from home base, but I get to forge working relations elsewhere, which is good. I have been told that it’s one of my greatest strengths, being able to make friends (read: acquaintances) everywhere I go. I’m just easy to get along with… either that, or I’m a pushover, and I don’t always know which one I’m being at the time!

Speaking of work, Christine is really glad to have her husband back! I’ve had to make up a lot to her because of my hectic work schedule last month. Our relationship has gotten quite a bit better lately. We been talking more and spending more time together, and things are looking good there. Aaaaaand I’ve been throwing myself into little projects here and there. Now I just have to find time for the doctor!

I’ll try to write again soon… in the meantime, here’s an insightful post from “Life in Dresden”. Cheers!

Christine and I got into this conversation topic a couple of times, and today it re-surfaced again. Before you assume the worst from the title, NO (!), it’s not about that! She was telling a co-worker of hers today about me and described what I look like. When it came to my height ( 5′ 4″ ), this friend of hers replied “Man, that’s short!”. In further conversation, she stated that her preferance in guys is around six feet tall, and she’s five-six. Now, this is a source of constant irritation among the vertically-challenged guys like me.

Why is it that half the people I meet (men and women) feel a great need to look at people like they’re shopping in a J.C. Penny catalog!?? Hey, I can notice a pretty face on someone well-put-together, but if I were single I wouldn’t make it the selling point for a possible girlfriend. Women, in general but not all of them, seem to want to date guys taller than them or that have a certain height or above. In all fairness, guys tend to be just as bad when it comes to superficiality; the girl needs to be a skinny-mini with huge tits, for example. Both of these kinds of requirements alienate roughly 75 to 85% of the total human population, for crying out loud!! As a man-boy growing up, I had my likes and dislikes, for sure, but I put those away when I was dating someone interesting and fun to be with. I didn’t bias so much on looks or body dimensions, because I realized early on that those characteristics didn’t tell you whether the girl was going to be great or a total b****h! Women should realize the same applies to men as well.

I just needed to vent about this… being the small guy throughout my life has had its share of frustrations (and bruises!). To all who read this, feel free to post a comment to me. I wanna know why most women make a big deal about height. This is something all short guys wonder about!

Well, we got the computer back from the shop yesterday… we’re crossing our fingers that the new power supply isn’t a tainted one. There’s still the residual smell, though, of burnt resin core. Nowhere near as bad today, but yesterday we had to operate the machine with a scented candle in back of it. It looked eerie… as if we were conducting a séance to rid the demons out of our beloved G5! I’m just glad to have full capabilities now. Couldn’t burn CD’s or feed the iPod with old faithful (the G3 iMac).

Here is my contest entry for TUAW. Hope you guys like this… first I’ll start with:

Steve Jobs’ Condolence Call
This was the best, most heartfelt entry in TUAW, and it also showed how warm, and how callous, people can be. Steve definitely had my admiration with this one… how many CEO’s would do what he did?

Pierced Mighty Mouse
This one made me laugh hard! Showed it to my wife, who loves piercings.

Video iPod
I love the Photoshop job on this picture! This post had me dreaming…

MacDev on Flickr
This post got me checking out Flickr… Especially since it seems C.K. has the same kind of birdie I do!! Oh, and check out my photo galleries, too!

Gapless Music Files With iTunes
Read my post from August on this… my enhanced live albums were a success, BTW!

AOL Radio With XM
I checked it out… after hunting down the download, my ears gained happiness!

Trent Reznor Rules!
This is the first TUAW post I ever read. My admiration of Mr. Reznor went sky-high after reading his letter to the fans. I had so much fun with his music file for THTF!

Force Spotlight to Index iPod
I love any article that shows nifty workarounds like this. I love Spotlight even more now!

Comic Live
I just like this post for the Ekkie! Seriously, this is a good app.

… And finally this post:
iPod Nano Contest
… for forcing me to actually care so much about a contest! Normally I don’t even bother with contests, but it looked like fun and… well… anything for more visitors to my blog!

That’s all I have! I hope you enjoyed my post, and may the best Apple fan win. Cheers!

Well, it finally happened. Something happened to the computer, an iMac G5, that warranted a trip to an “authorized technician”. Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, I turned on the computer and started checking the usual haunts in my favorite sites list. I was also listening to a good mix of music, but I digress. Ten minutes of operation later, I got up… and noticed a burning smell emanating from the top vent on the monitor/computer shell. Folks, if you ever smell this from a computer, shut it down immediately! I did just that, laid it down on the monitor face and took the back panel off. I honestly expected smoke coming from the G5 processor, but luckily that wasn’t the case. Instead, the smell was coming from the power supply! Well, I waited for cooldown, set the computer back up, and did some really quick net-surfing to find out if anyone else was having this problem. There was that smell again, five minutes later! Anyways, some users did have problems with their iMac power supplys, even letting it go to the point that they would hear some sizzling (I heard this too, right before shutting it down for servicing) and then a POP… no power whatsoever!

After reading these horror stories, I found the documentation on how to fix/replace the power supply (almost everything in these new iMacs is user-serviceable, right down to the integrated LCD monitor itself, without wrath from Apple) on the Apple support pages, along with a recall notice regarding isolated problems with the iMac G5; my computer serial number fell within the range of the affected numbers! I printed everything I found, shut it down, opened it up again, and called Apple technical support. They told me to get it in to MacMedia, right down the street from me, and they would evaluate it for me (they wanted to make sure I didn’t do the damage myself, as if I’d be that bone stupid!).

I took it over there, the tech looked at it and concluded it definitely was the power supply (duh!!). They also concluded that I was smart to bring it in when I did (double-duh!!), especially when I read that the users who waited too long, and had theirs pop dead, found that not only did their power supply burn up, but it took parts of the motherboard with it! Unfortuately, they didn’t have a spare power supply, so I have to let them hold it for the weekend, and hope they get one on Monday.

Christine and I saved her old blue iMac G3 in the event that this would happen, or if the need arose. I hooked everything up last night, as you all can see from me posting this entry. Fortunately, most of our important files and our good sized music collection are backed up on the external drive and CD-R discs, so we’re not going to be hurting too bad. UNfortunately, this old G3 doesn’t have Firewire or USB 2.0 ports and our iPods need those connections for updating and transferring music. Won’t work with USB 1.1… too bad, so sad!

Some morals to this long story: if you ever get a new computer, save the old one and keep it on ready-to-go status. Also, get a capacious external hard drive to back up your essential files…. heck, if everything in your computer’s hard drive is really important, then get some backup software and have it mirror the two drives! Believe me guys and gals, you’ll be glad you did!!