Music

I ordered an M-Audio Axiom 49 MIDI controller from Sweetwater the other day. That, combined with some interesting tools and GarageBand, should be a fun thing to experiment with on my Mac. here is my first loop.

SHOCKER: Steve Jobs Pretends To Invent Volume Shadow Copy

Surprise, surprise, Steve Jobs is claiming that Apple invented Volume Shadow Copy, a feature that has been in Windows since Server 2003. And, of course, in the same breath, he manages to insult Microsoft by accusing Vista of copying OS X 10.2. Ha! Just because you put a pretty picture of a galaxy or something on your version control system does not mean you invented it.

Needless to say, I will still buy a Mac Pro Woodcrest dual dual 2.66GHz box at some point here.

Fun Directory Serivces Command Line

The domain admins where I work called me asking me to somehow identify and remove any workstations in the "Workstations" OU that might be mine. So I whipped up a "little" one liner. You will need to modify this if you want to use it for your own mystery workstation removal task. You'll also need the Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools.

for /f "usebackq tokens=*" %A in (`cmd /c "dsquery computer ou=workstations,dc=your,dc=domain,dc=org -name *"`) do (cmd /c "dsacls %A | qgrep -l your_account" && dsrm %A -noprompt -u yourdomain\your_account -p "removedformyviewingpleasure")


GRRRRR Steve Jobs Is A &$%*@!

This story could also be called another reason why Macs do require IT people for support.

After more than a decade of not owning a Mac (I was in Linux land for six years, and my current job involves being a Microsoft slut) I came back to Apple land with the purchase of a new 15.4" MacBook Pro. The machine is great- I love it, it runs both OS X Tiger and Vista which I need to have on there for work.

The laptop worked great plugged in, but then I got it home and it was discharged from being used without the power plugged in for a while. So I plugged the MagSafe connector in, and the notebook (Apple claims it's "not a laptop" if you call them about this issue...) immediately became unusably hot. It left a red mark on my leg. To be fair, I had heard horror stories about the MagSafe not being quite so safe after all. But after my totally positive iPod nano experience I had faith in Steve. This faith was misplaced. A friend of mine refers to him as The Old Dirty Bastard, apparently with good reason.

Luckily there is extensive documentation of this issue. The ODB has tried to threaten Something Awful for posting pictures of the service manual for the MacBook Pro, which shows the recommended slathering of thermal grease, which is way too much.

So I resigned myself to having to dissect my MacBook Pro. It took me four hours, but I finally discovered absurd amounts of what could only be described as nonconductive gray wax on the three conductive pads of the heat pipes, and the cores of the video, northbridge and CPU. I'm amazed the northbridge actually still works- the glob of wax was half on and half off of the core, and the half of the core that was exposed was discolored! So I scraped that crap off of the cores and the heat pipe, and applied a thin, even layer of nice silver bearing thermal compound to the cores. It took me another two hours to put everything back together, but it works and it now runs much cooler.

Thanks, Apple, way to think differently.

BONUS UPDATE
Cook an egg on your MacBook! This guy prefaces this as a joke. Rest assured, you could actually do this.