Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

Microsoft on my Mac no longer, so long and thanks for all the bugs

This afternoon I updated an Excel spreadsheet that I have been tracking my work hours with. Then I made a copy of an invoice (a Word document) so I could make a new invoice.

But I didn't use Excel, and I didn't use Word. I used Numbers and Pages.

I hadn't gotten around to installing Microsoft Office 2004 on my new MacBook pro yet, so when I double-clicked those documented they loaded in the iWork '08 apps instead.

But then I decided to look at Pages' templates for invoices and found a way nicer one than the Word one I was using before. It was smarter too, it automatically calculated the cost of each line item and did the tax calculations for me too. With the Word invoice template I had to enter those numbers manually.

And then it hit me: I didn't have any Microsoft software on this MacBook Pro, except for Remote Desktop Connection, which I don't need or use. So I trashed it. Cheryl has my old PowerBook G4 now, she uses it to connect to the computer at her office, but I have no use for it at all. Thankfully.

I have the Flip4Mac WMV components for QuickTime installed, but they weren't written by Microsoft.

It's a great feeling to know The Omni Group, Ranchero/NewsGator, Delicious Monster and Nintendo are the most important software companies in or near Seattle for me. (apologies if I've missed someone)

I suppose I shouldn't forget that I have an Xbox 360 and that's by Microsoft, but it's so fucking easy to forget when it's out of my house for TWO months this summer because the piece of shit is broken. It took them two months to send me a replacement for a broken piece of hardware that they had no intention to repair (the policy in Canada is to replace broken hardware).

I feel good.

Pictures of Cyan from the Female Hockey Jamboree

Here are some pictures Cyan's friend's mom took of Cyan during the Female Hockey Jamboree.

http://gallery.mac.com/roepcke#100021

I forgot to mention that UVic Computer Science professor Dr. Wendy Myrvold was one of the volunteer coaches for the U13 girls last weekend - and Cyan was on her Team Burgundy on Saturday morning. Cyan thought it was really cool to be on Wendy's team. You can see Wendy on the bench in the last two pictures.

Female Hockey Jamboree

Cyan participated in the Female Hockey Jamboree this weekend... 2 games yesterday and 1 today. It was lots of fun to watch, she's improved so much over the offseason... and she's never been on the ice with so many girls at the same time.

She scored a really nice goal this morning, she was skating so fast and her shot was harder than I'd seen before!

The VMHA development camp and shooting clinic they went to last week made a big difference, I think.

Do that on Windows…

My procedure for getting my new MacBook Pro up and running:

1. Unbox the MacBook Pro. Ooooh, ahhh!
2. Boot it in Target Disk Mode (hold down T while booting) to make the computer an external FireWire 400/800 hard drive.
3. Plug MacBook Pro into another Mac's Firewire port
4. Using Mac OS X's built-in Disk Utility application, make a backup of the MacBook Pro's hard disk to a read-only disk image. (now I have the exact shipping state of my machine, should I ever care)
5. Unmount the MacBook Pro, and boot it up normally.
6. Go through the regular first-boot procedure to create my account.
7. Resize the boot partition on the internal hard drive to reduce its size to 40GB, and create another 40GB partition for Leopard and another partition taking up the rest of the disk for my home folder. This is done using "sudo diskutil resizeVolume". See this MacWorld story for more details. Note: the partition resizing is non-destructive and done LIVE, while the full OS is running from the partition being resized.
8. Reboot.
9. Ponder the fun that having Tiger and Leopard installed is going to bring!
10. Re-install Mac OS X 10.4.10 and the bundled software from the provided DVDs. Kam suggested I do a fresh install, he doesn't trust the factory-installed OS. I kinda doubt this was really necessary but it's easy to do and I really don't want to give Kam an "I told you so" moment so I did it anyway. Anyway, it's nice to know the new Mac has minty-fresh breath.
11. Create an "Administrator" account during setup, not my personal account, that will come later.
12. Call AppleCare and book service for the old PowerBook G4 on the last day of the warranty to deal with issues hat couldn't be looked at until I had a different machine to use. Great timing on the shipment, one day late and I would have been screwed!
13. Boot the PowerBook G4 in Target Disk Mode and connect it to the MacBook Pro using a FireWire 800 cable.
14. Using Disk Utility on the MacBook Pro, restore the PowerBook G4's MacOSX and Data partitions onto the two blank partitions on the MacBook Pro. The 25GB MacOSX partition took 20 minutes, the 40GB Data partition took 35 minutes! Disk Utility does a block copy of the devices. Nice.
15. Disconnect the PowerBook G4, reboot it using a Tiger DVD and install a fresh Mac OS X Tiger on it while continuing on the MacBook Pro.
16. Create my personal account with the same username and UID/GID as on my old machine. Set the path to my home folder on the Data partition using NetInfo Manager.
17. Turn on Fast User Switching and log into my personal account.
18. Marvel at how everything just works. My custom desktop background appears, Mail, iCal, AddressBook, Firefox, etc etc, everything is there just as it was on PowerPC-based Mac.
19. Take the PowerBook G4 into my local Apple Authorized Service Provider and basically reaffirm to myself that I made the right choice by being a Mac user.

If I sound smug, it's because I'm feeling smug. Very satisfied customer, here.

I only have to reinstall applications that were installed on the boot drive (and only if they were installed from packages). Xcode, SSHKeychain and Privoxy are the only apps I've had to manually reinstall so far. I don't know why SSHKeychain uses a package to install... I still need to install Adobe CS3, iWork '08, and Subversion.

If I was using Windows, there's no way I would have been able to get my entire working environment back up and running simply by copying my home folder across and logging into it. I (probably) wouldn't have been able to do the seamless and dead-easy images or backups/restores of my new and old hard drives either. I definitely would have had to re-install dozens of applications and re-do all of my personal settings in the OS and most of the applications.

This is 2007, and after this great experience setting up a new Mac, and staying connected to work IMAP, work Jabber, Google Talk (including Twitter!) and the web on my new Nokia 770 Internet Tablet while my computers were getting set up, it's really starting to feel like 2007. Where the hell is my flying car?

But seriously, why do people use Windows, anyway? Games? Windows Vista still uses the registry... what were they thinking???

Last night a hockey teammate asked me if I was going to install Parallels to get Windows running on it since I finally had an Intel Mac. I thought about it, but I couldn't think of a single reason to install it. I might install Ubuntu on it, though, that'd be nice, I guess.

The Mac really takes all the adventure out of setting up a new computer...

It’s here!

My new MacBook Pro just arrived... I haven't unboxed it yet, wish me luck!

My plan is to boot it up in Target Disk Mode first, and take an image of the hard drive so I have a backup of the exact factory state. Then I'm going to repartition the hard drive and re-install, or just restore the backup onto the system partition. My home folder will go onto the other partition.

Posted from my Nokia 770

This thing is amazing!

Memphis? You went too far, turn around!

And it still has to clear customs...

So close but yet so far (MBP)

I'm watching my dashboard like a hawk to see where my new 'puter is... it's finally in the western hemisphere!

So close!!!

The Jets, an Island Hockey 101 team

Island Hockey 101: The Jets

This is the hockey team I'll be playing on this year. The league is really cool, they even keep player and team stats on the web site...

Our first preseason game is three weeks from today at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre in Victoria, the biggest arena in town, home ice our ECHL team the Victoria Salmon Kings!

Last year Cyan's team played there during the 1st intermission of a Salmon Kings game, but this will be my first time on the ice there. I can't wait!

Plone 3.0 released

Digg: Plone 3.0 released

This is a huge release for Plone, the improvements are really impressive. The best gets better!