Da Sixers

A couple of my team members heading around the track just before I joined them, Melanie and Priscilla.

Kona sundown

Sundown at the Makaeo walking path during my evening miles for the team.

Bribery

My walking/running team has gotten a shake-up as two replacement members have come in this second week of the challenge and our team captain is on the bench as she nurses a back injury.

So I thought some bribery was in order to motivate. I'm donating the Senseo coffee machine I got to be a prize for the top mileage person on our team, sorry other teams you gotta find your own bribes. Locally this thing costs over $50 so it's a pretty good prize and of course it is totally possible that I may win it myself. Brand spankin' new in racing red of course.

Personally I like to buy coffee pods from PODhead.com and you gotta love their name. Although more expensive than the normal coffee pods the coffee is pretty darn good as I use the ESE pods in my cappuccino machine. Hey, it's still cheaper than going to $tarBucks.

Now if I can just find the time to put in the miles as my work sked doesn't always agree.

The competition

Joe's on the other walking team as we go around the track in opposite directions. As you can see it's pretty cloudy and rainy weather on the island.

On the track

Me on the track. Joe's competition. Got my Geek-Fu going. iPod, Wireless internet for email, web and chatting, camera cellphone.

Monkey Business

I tried to run my Photoshop CS2 and got the above splash screen and it wouldn't run. That's the developer's beta splash screen and the code name for Photoshop CS2 'Space Monkey', I had to reinstall Photoshop. Of course you can always see the developer's screen if you have Photoshop by holding down Command key (on a Mac) when choosing About Photoshop from the menu. I think Windows users hold down the Control key.

I updated some previous posts/days. Added photo galleries for Andrea's farewell at Durty Jakes and some photos from my hard drive replacement.

Ban the cellphone spam

Cellular Phones & Telemarketers

As a reminder, on February 12, 2006, all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. You will be charged for these calls.

To prevent this from occurring, please call the following number (which accesses the National Do Not Call list) from your cell phone: 888-382-1222.

This will only take a minute of your time and will block your number for five (5) years.

For more information, please visit http://www.donotcall.gov

Read the comments and find two links: One to Snopes.com another to the FTC. Will it hurt for you to register on the DNC list? Probably not, so why not take 1-2 minutes of your time?

Busy as a B

Got the new hard drive in last night, spent today reloading all the data from a backup. The 100GB drive formats out to about 93GB. I've been so busy the past week, all day/night assignments, fixing people's computers, fixing my own computer, the time just flies. I'll have to back date some posts that I'll get online tomorrow, some photos of the guts of my laptop and more photos of Andrea's going away at Durty Jakes.

On a scale of 1-10 I'd rate the replacement of the hard drive in my PowerBook to be about a 7. If your idea of difficulty is adding memory to a laptop computer, which I'd rate a 2, then I'd say pay someone else to do this kind of work for you. For most folks who work on computer repairs all the time the job felt like maybe a 4 in difficulty but compared to the average John Doe doing the work I'd say 7 is fairly accurate.

The scale being 1=changing the main battery of a laptop or putting the little rubber feet on the bottom to 10=rebuilding parts for the constant tension spring assembly for the hinge (a bitch to do which I've done) or hardwiring/unwiring components which I've also done.

No guts, no glory

Replacing the hard drive in my PowerBook wasn't too hard but you don't want to try this at home kids, or anywhere for that matter as one step was difficult. You can find the instructions to do this kind of thing at PB FixIt.com where they have lots of great manuals. Click on the photo above for a gallery of some of the steps along the way.

Do you miss it Brian?

Do you miss it Brian?
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

Today's media center lunch.

Pooley's on Fire

Pooley's on Fire
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

I'm out all day covering golf. MasterCard Championship at Hualalai.

WTF? Bizzaro hard disk issue

Got the PowerBook going again but running off an external Firewire hard drive. Finally got Disk Warrior to work and when run I got the above panel. What's up with that? I never gave the main partition that name. The only two references I can find is on Yahoo where it references that as a keyword for two eBay auction sellers, even more of a deeper mystery. Is this some kind of worm or virus? To have something that specific only found in the keywords for an auctioneer is really strange.

Anyone else encounter this weird NotQuiteMaxDisk name?

*Mystery Solved*

From Alsoft tech support:

The drive name "NotQuiteMaxDisk" is a test name for when the computer is
being built at the factory.

The fact that DiskWarrior is seeing the older name indicates there is
directory damage to the drive in the locations where the current drive
name is stored.

This is a minor issue and should be repaired once you run DiskWarrior.

-- Marc

*UPDATE*
All is well, ran Disk Warrior and everything is back in place, nothing lost, things running fine again. But I've ordered a replacement hard drive that's bigger and faster anyway as I am running out of space. The leftover drive will go into an external case to be used to troubleshoot computers, mine and others.

Computer Problems

Computer Problems
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

Grrrrrr Computer problems today. Either a hard drive or memory issue as I boot into the Unix type prompt interfaace for some fixit routines. Hard drive may be kaput.


*Update* Looks like, most likely, the internal hard drive has crapped out. This really bites. But the good news is that I backed up my hard drive on Friday or Saturday by chance. Hopefully that backup on my external drive will make things good once the internal hard drive is replace if that is indeed the problem.

Cool Music from Canada

Very cool music by Marianne Baker. There's some rumor that she's the sister of 'Lala' from Tiki Bar TV but her music is great regardless of the celebrity connection. Take a listen to Pretty which is a loose cover of Guns n' Roses' Paradise City. Other fun songs are Booty Call and Bad Kitty. The whole album is great.

Click on the album art at the left to be transported to her website where you can listen to all of the songs on her new CD and buy it, or visit the iTunes Music Store where they also have it but I think the Pretty re-mix track is missing.

*UPDATE* Word from Ben Baker in the comments is that Marianne has no connection to Tiki Bar TV, other than they're all in Canada I guess. With her her music she should see plenty of fame, and hopefully fortune.


And Marianne writes in a little note to me (though it looks like Lala's name is spelled wrong).

Fitness Challenge

Another year, another battle of the Team Fitness Challege by Friends For Fitness. The big difference this year is that you can walk/run anywhere, except your home on a treadmill. So now there's stiff competition from the real runners out there who take to the streets to do their running anyway but had always treated the walking path like kryptonite.

We've got different team members this year and although there was talk of culling together the best walkers/runners from the office for a ringer team I think the four teams at work are pretty balanced with some of the high mileage members from last year's WHT top team spread out amongst the other teams.

We'll have to see how it goes, but don't expect to see anymore photos of fish n' chips, beer or cheesecake in future posts. Diet and exercise is now on the menu. How about it people? Wanna compete with me for weight loss/body fat loss? I'm calling you blog readers out. We can post progress here for the biggest losers. Or create a new blog where folks can post their own results. Nothing like public humiliation to get people motivated huh?

My erratic work sked makes it hard to get down to the track to workout but I hope to be walking/running wherever I am on assignment during breaks. We also get bonus points for extra activites so looks like I'll be out hitting golf balls, kayaking, snokeling, hiking, playing ping pong, etc.

A Room With A View...of a parking lot

On assignment on Oahu, staying at the Ala Moana Hotel with a wonderful ocean view. The ocean is way over there on the left side, over the green of Ala Moana Park. Mostly it was the parking lot of Ala Moana Shopping Center with Macy's building. Click on the image for a slightly bigger view.

Mama, I'm Coming Home

Photographed the homecoming ceremonies for the Hawaii Army National Guard with a group of Big Island troops being part of them. Good to have them back. One said the first thing he's going to do when back on the Big Island is "jump in the water." We shouldn't take such life pleasures for granted.

I’ve seen your face a hundred times
Everyday we’ve been apart
I don’t care about the sunshine, yeah
’cause mama, mama, I’m coming home
I’m coming home
- Ozzy Osbourne

Jet-Set Kim

Jet-Set Kim
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

Getting ready to fly to Oahu on assignment.

MacBook Pro: what got left out

Apple just introduced the MacBook Pro today at MacWorld in San Francisco. This is their new Duo Intel cpu machine and their first Intel laptop. Should you buy one? There are some serious omissions on this new laptop.

1. No PC Card slot, it now has something called ExpressCard/34 which will be the new standard for expansion cards. So if you use a networking PC Card, or PC card reader for memory cards or want to buy that spankin' new Bluetooth mouse that recharges in the PC Card slot you're out of luck. What kind of terrific Express Cards can we use? None yet, there aren't any for sale yet that would work in this Mac.

2. No Firewire 800. I've got two external Firewire 800 hard drives that are very speedy but if I bought a MacBook I'd have to use the slower FW400 or USB2.0 to connect. Is Apple conceeding Firewire to Intel's push for USB?

3. No S-Video port built-in, my current PowerBook has one. So much for that S-Video projector you bought. Notice only five puka on the right side of the laptop instead of seven.

4. No RJ-11 jack for dial-up modems. The last fallback on connectivity to the Internet is gone. My folks still don't have broadband so there's only dial-up at their place. And many older hotels don't have broadband, just that double RJ-11 dohickey adapter on the phone jack.

5. The new MagSafe power adapter that falls out if you trip on your power cord. Good idea but now all those extra power adapters you own and every third party adapter manufacturer is SOL. Apple should make a ton of money selling extra power adapters.

6. Battery life information is MIA from the tech specs page. Just how fast is this thing going to suck down the batteries?

7. No Classic OS9. When was the last time I ran an OS9 app? Probably only about 2-3 times in the past year so this one is not much of a loss at all.

8. Single instead of Dual-Layer DVD burner.

Do I want one? Sure, right after they release a Photoshop for Mac on Intel along with a VirtualPC that runs at full speed. It won't be available till February anyway, maybe some of these issues will be resolved by then. And seeing as how my birthday is next month I hear these laptops make great gifts!

Durty Jakes

Durty Jakes
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

Andrea's last day in Hawaii.

Andrea's Aloha

A few photos from the going away get together at Durty Jakes.

Assume the Lotus position

SUCKS

We use Lotus Notes for work and the interface must have been designed by three separate teams who didn't share any notes because it's one of the most confusing email clients ever created. Pine Mail was better.

For example, when using Notes the originating email address/person is designated by at least three separate terms.


From


Who


Sender

And that's just the originator designation. The rest of the application is similarly dismal in its interface with user-unfriendly icons and a mish-mash of terms.

All your Note belong to us....

Aloha Dawn

One of two cakes for Dawn's farewell from the Big Island. Dawn will become the branch head at the Kahului Public Library on Maui. Our loss will be Maui's gain.


Dawn in her usual universe in what looks like chaos but there must be a method to it all.


Dawn and some of her library crew and friends all got together on her last day at work at the Bond Memorial Public Library. Notice the big stack of returns on the left as it was still business as usual at the library.


Dawn photographs her patrons in her library.


Another photo subject for Dawn's photo scrapbook.


Dawn and her peeps.


Food, food and food for the going away event.


Dawn with some Terminator shades on. But will she say, "I'll be back"?

Photos TK

Mmmmm...Korean Chicken, Sushi, Noodles, Chips and layered dip. What's going on here? Photos embargoed until 1/12. Check back.

Road Trippin'

Waipio Valley on a cloudy, rainy, windy day. Pretty good sized swells in the bay and the waterfalls were going fairly well across the valley and in the valley walls. This is a vew from the lookout in Kukuihaele after an assignment.


Sportswriter Brendan came along for the ride on assignment and we found the often seen pastureland rainbow in Waimea. Here he takes a few photos before playing human Frogger trying to get back across the highway.


And once back at the paper I got the blue screen of death, Mac style. We continue to have problems with our computers, I'm fairly sure it isn't because of the computers themselves but because of tight controls on how the computers function by the company. I booted up and had a BSD Login prompt come up on a black screen flash for a second before it went to blue screen.

I mean, I can get to the login prompt on my own PowerBook by holding down Command-S when starting up but the company computer shouldn't do this on its own. Weirdness.

Ono Fish 'n Chips at Quinn's

Ono Fish 'n Chips at Quinn's
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

Ono Fish 'n Chips at Quinn's

First Fire

Covering my first fire of 2006, a 20 acre brushfire in Hawaiian Ocean View Estates.

Peaman

Peaman
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

Peaman Birthday Biathlon

Denny's

Denny's
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

12:46am

Happy New Year!

Missed the Fireworks? Click on the blank space above.