I had read that the Supreme Court in California invalidated the ban against same-sex marriage, but it did not occur to me that it would effectively legalize it. County Clerks in California will be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in about a month. Amazing!
People went nuts in the Castro the evening following the announcement. Photos were posted by Jameth.
Quicken Mac 2007 sucks!
I’ve switched to using Quicken 2008 (for Windows) which I’m using on Windows XP running VMware Fusion.
I wish I could get a refund.
I’ve migrated the email hosting for netmonkey.net over to Google Apps recently.
For those of you who aren’t in the know, this is Google’s offering of Gmail for domains. Since they offer a basic package at no charge with IMAP support and lots of storage, it made sense to switch over to them from Tuffmail. It’s just me and my mother using netmonkey.net, so I don’t see the point in paying someone for something I can get for free (and still keep my domain).
(By the way, I have nothing bad to say about Tuffmail because they’ve been an extremely reliable hosting company for the past three years, but it is time for me to move on.)
Anyway, the only difficult part of the migration was the migration itself.
I had to get used to the way that Gmail handles its IMAP folder structure, but so far I don’t have any complaints. It works exactly as it should.
I recall reading some rumors about a year ago that Flickr planned to add video support, so I was not one bit surprised when it finally launched this week.
I think this is a great idea! I love the idea of having my videos and photos in one place.
So, here are a couple of videos I’ve posted. They’re nothing special, but it’s nice to get them archived up somewhere.
Thunder Over Louisville 2005
I was in Louisville with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew for Thunder Over Louisville back in 2005. We were on top of a parking garage in downtown. It offered a pretty good view of the 4th Street Bridge over the Ohio River.
Back Home Again in Indiana by the White River Jazz Band
The White River Jazz Band was performing back in 2005 for the annual Strawberry Festival in downtown Indianapolis. I filmed this on the southern steps of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.
I went up and talked to the banjo player.
She kept asking me whether she should smile or not while I took her photo. I hope she’s still performing; it was great to see her play and capture the moment in my photo stream.
Tonight I started an electronic filing cabinet.
I got a Canon 4400F scanner for Christmas this past year. Not only does it allow me to take high quality scans of my old photos, but I can import regular documents directly into PDF documents.
So far I have imported all of my old tax documentation (forms W-2, 1099, etc.), as well as stuff I need to make a travel insurance claim for my delayed baggage during my trip in Italy. I like the idea of not dealing with FAX machines, and just using email.
Having electronic documentations means that I can rid myself of paper copies. As long as I have a backup of my data (and I do), I don’t have to worry about losing anything. If I need paper copies, I can simply use my printer.
Easy pie!
Recently, I decided to change the password on my instant messenger accounts to something much more secure than the one I’ve been using for so many years.
After changing my passwords on the web, I went updated the accounts in Adium on Mac OS X Leopard. It all seemed normal; however, Adium prompted me to re-enter my passwords when connecting to any of the changed accounts. I would type in the new password, select the option to save it, but it just wouldn’t stick. Happened every time.
I remembered that Adium uses the Mac OS X keychain, which is a built-in password and certificate store. You access it via the Keychain Access utility. Once in there, I searched for “Adium” in the search bar and found my password entries. I changed the passwords, clicked Save Changes, and it still didn’t work.
At this point, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Obviously, something had to be wrong with my keychain for the Keychain Access utility to not even work, let alone Adium.
After doing a little research on Google, I learned that Keychain Access has a nice feature called Keychain First Aid to diagnose and fix problems. Sure enough, it found something wrong, and was able to fix it fast.
My problem was that the owner of my keychain file wasn’t set to me. Since I didn’t own the file and the permissions were apparently set so only the owner (who wasn’t me) could make changes, Adium and Keychain Access weren’t able to update my passwords.
I’ve no clue why there was a problem with my keychain file and this doesn’t explain why I’ve not had problems elsewhere. None-the-less, it’s fixed the problem and Adium can now log into all of my accounts just fine.
Yay!
Google has deemed us worthy. Indianapolis is now on the Google Maps Street View, and they even included many of the other smaller cities in the metropolitan area.
It looks like they were here back in October.
I installed Mac OS X Leopard last night after the maintenance outage at work. I ended up falling asleep at the table while it finished installing. It wasn’t until I got up this afternoon when I could actually start using it. 
So far everything works, with one exception: the Last.fm client. It simply locks up after you load it. The only way to get rid of it is to just force quit the program. I haven’t found any information yet as to why it’s broken or how to fix it, so I’ll just have to live with it until an update is released. Bummer.
Other than that, I like it. Good job, Apple!
Now that Apple has announced plans to officially support third-party applications on the iPhone, I’m totally jonesing for one now, but I’m going to be patient and wait.
Did some side work for a friend and his business partner, and used the proceeds to replace my seven year old ViewSonic E771 17 inch CRT monitor.
The new model is a Chimei CMV 221D 22 inch Widescreen LCD that I purchased from Newegg.com. I bought it because it rated very well with customers and was priced very well. I highly recommend it!
With its much anticipated release in a matter of days, the iPhone is all the rage at the moment. Knowing that I’ve been an Apple fanboy for many years, I’ve been asked by several people if I’m buying an iPhone when it comes out. The answer is a flat no, at least for now, and here’s why.
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m certainly not against buying an iPhone in the future, but, for now, there are cheaper phones out there that meet my needs and can tackle most, if not all, of the issues laid out above.
I know that Apple will eventually offer 3G. I know that the kinks will eventually get worked out. I also believe that Apple will eventually open up the platform, allowing me to install third-party applications directly on the phone itself. If they can tackle these issues, or at least offer some really compelling reasons for me to use a closed platform without MMS, Apple may have an iPhone customer in me after all, but for now I’m going to stick with Nokia’s S60 platform.
I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy myself a new Macintosh. I spent a lot of time going over all the possibilities in my head, but I ended up deciding to buy a MacBook Pro. Being that the line was recently updated, it made sense to make my move now.
I bought the 15.4 inch model with the LED backlit display. It came with 2.4 Ghz CPU and 2 GB of RAM, which should be more than enough for what I intend to do with this system. It should do well to replace my old PowerMac G4 (which I bought back around April of 2000).
Photo Set: MacBook Pro Unwrapping Ceremony
I spent a good part of my evening migrating data over to the system. So far, I think I’ve got just about everything setup the way I want. Should be really nice having a fast Mac, for a change.
