i feel like steve jobs is playing a cruel game of punk’d on me.

so here’s the deal.  i have a macbook.  many applications that i want to use don’t work or don’t seem to be entirely supported or have weird issues in tiger (such as the bizarre instance of photoshop not being able to open .psds).  plus, spore requires 10.5.3, and spore on the mac would be awesome.  so i finally decide to try to upgrade from tiger (10.4.11) to the latest leopard (10.5.5).  

that’s when i started reconsidering suicide.  or at least technocide.

leopard installed okay the first time around. in fact, better than — it was more responsive and had a faster boot time.  so i did the software updates…which proceeded to kill everything.  after the 10.5.5 combo update, the laptop would no longer boot.  ultimately, i had to start over from scratch — erase everything i had installed and do a new install.  here’s the summary:

for some reason, every install directly from the 10.5 disk failed.
trying an archive & install (that keeps all your old settings and applications) didn’t boot after it got trashed from the update.
which means i would need to install 10.4 first and upgrade.
the 10.5.5 combo update, according to various mac forums, seemed to have issues for some people, so I did each incremental update separately, but I only got as far as 10.5.1 before i started having more issues.

so here’s my dilemma.  i love osx, i really do.  if i had a choice, i’d use it as my de facto operating system.  but i don’t want to spend another 2-3 hours hacking away at the laptop to try (and possibly fail.  again) to get it up to 10.5.  i thought about running time machine, and making a backup as soon as i have a successful install of 10.5 so at least i have a restore point when it fails, but that just means that i’m expecting to fail when i install the updates.  i’d rather not just expect to fail.

so my options are:

install tiger again and leave it.  possibly funky-acting programs and no support for current/next-gen applications (making the laptop dated).
install tiger again and sell it.  possibly using the money to buy one o’ dem fancy schmancy asus eee pc’s which i read have had osx86 successfully installed on them.
install something completely different.  i downloaded and was this close to installing the google linux distro, gOS — the biggest detractor was, a) no app support for what i wanted, i’d have to find possibly lesser-quality equivalents of what i want and expect the adobe suite to not work 100% (so back where i started with that), plus, what’s a google OS without chrome?  seriously.  considering waiting until they finish chrome for linux and inevitably release a new gOS with chrome out of the box.

ultimately, installing something completely different doesn’t solve anything, but the install process would be like 15 minutes vs. 2 hours.  and my sketchy cd-rom drive just keeps getting worse everytime i do this, so by the end i’m kind of expecting that it won’t accept any cds anymore at all, which doesn’t help things.

so i’m at a loss.  what do y’all think?

so if you aren’t following me on twitter, you may not know that i got a laptop in the mail yesterday.

my new toy is a 13″ macbook with osx tiger, 2gb ram, 60gb hd and 2ghz (actually i think maybe 2.2 ghz) processor.  i got it on ebay for a total of $710 including fedex shipping.  i’m pretty happy with it, considering when i got it, it moved like molasses.  in the snow.  in antarctica.

here’s the deal:

the auction was for an as-is laptop.  i’ve been looking for one with 2gb ram for a long time, 2gb being my requisite.  i’m going to use this for work stuff, so i needed something that could handle big photoshop files.  this seemed perfect, it had a buy it now (that i missed) price of $700 which is cheaper than anything i’d seen in the months of looking (usually they’re $1300 at the bottom end).  the only problem in the description was that the cd-rom drive was a bit sketchy (it is).

seeing that this was my one big chance, i bid and won (after being outbid at one point and then having that bid be retracted for unknown reasons).  well it arrived yesterday.  w00t.  there was, of course, one problem that i discovered when i booted it up — i literally could not do anything.  no wonder he was selling it on the cheap and emphasised the as-is part.  so i did, in windows-geek vernacular, an FFR (format > fdisk > reinstall), except in mac-land it’s just an erase and install.  this is where the twitchy cd-rom drive gave me some headaches and ended up in my near-brick experience.  it was 70% through reinstalling the os when it just hung there not moving.  so i rebooted and, well, let’s just say, don’t ever do that.  not that i could’ve really done anything else because it was stuck anyway.  i was able to get the install going again after googling some apple boot commands and in an hour or so, i had a fully functional macbook.

this brings up an interesting point: the previous owner must’ve been plagued with spyware, malware, or a virus or something.  naive me thought that macs were somewhat immune to that sort of thing — certainly there aren’t many viruses written for macs.  then again, he was pushing the point that the laptop came with ilife and microsoft office — it’s conceivable that it was an office macro virus thing that was causing problems, but i don’t think so.  i kinda think it was spyware.  which reveals some major security flaws in safari — even though i did notice firefox installed (i can only imagine it came as too little too late).  it didn’t really take a whole lot of tech savvy to come up with the reinstall everything idea, but i imagine that was the main reason he was trying to unload this perfectly good laptop (with kind of an iffy cdrom drive).  either that, erin says, or he was loaded with pr0n.  it’s almost disappointing that i didn’t get to do an investigation (not that i could anyway).  which is another thing — most of the laptops i’ve seen on ebay say they’ve been wiped to their original factory condition, but this one didn’t — and that’s a bad thing.  not for me of course, i could have identity thefted his credit card info, passwords, usernames by scouring the history and cache files left behind.  but, you know, i’m nice and i didn’t want to and i just wanted a clean system anyway.  but still, that’s a major risk.  so people, if you are selling your computer or laptop on ebay, erase your stuff, yo.  i mean seriously.  it’s bad.

anyway, i’m pretty excited.  i’ve been saving and waiting for this thing for a long time.  and i’m pretty happy that i turned what looked like it might have ended up being a wasted investment into a fully funtioning machine.

but chris, you say, i thought you were a pc guy.  or at least a linux guy.  what gives?

well, i never explicitly said i only use windows.  or linux.  and i’ve long said that if i had the cash i’d get a mac because i think osx is awesome.  the best thing apple could have done was to base their operating system on unix, and the second-best thing was sourcing intel for hardware.  now i’ve got 3 (actually 4 if you want to differenciate windows xp and vista…which i do) operating systems on various machines i use regularly.  sweet.  and now i can be one of those somewhat annoying people you see in coffee shops with their macbooks — the glowing apple like the eye of sauron watching your every move, chastising your windows-ness.  it knows, the glowing apple knows.  it mocks, as if to say “i, of the highly superior operating system, laugh at your futile attempts at user friendliness and intuitiveness.  fear me and my ever-growing masses.  come to the all-white side and bask in the neon glow of our ipod headphones and backlit iphone 3gs.”

also, it seems as though i am fully equipped with a webcam now.  as most of you pc users probably don’t know (i didn’t), macbooks apparently come with a webcam shoved right above the display.  so, if i so desired, i could do a vlog.  now, i wouldn’t want to do something silly like that, but i could.  if i wanted.  it was a bit disconcerting as i’m turning around to finish up the install and put in my username and stuff and suddenly i see myself staring at myself (actually, staring a couple inches lower than myself) when it asked me to take a picture for my account profile.  not sure when this will come in handy — not even sure how to use it yet — but it’s there.  it’s interesting, but i probably won’t use it (unless i do do a vlog, or if i bring back the pic of the day).

— posted from a mac —

looks like the single sign-on thing isn’t working right….when you create your wp account it doesn’t pass the authentication to the members/community site.  sorry about this folks, i’m getting it worked on.

UPDATE

well i got the join link up top working…sorta.  it’s just not using the single sign-on.  but it’s a temporary fix…

UPDATE 2

okay, so the links at the top work to get in but the user registration is separate from the wordpress registration for the time being.  i’m leaving it that way until i can find a solution to integrate the two.  :/

in my last post, i expressed my woe at the sudden upheaval of my computer.  today i woke up excited because my hardware was coming.  now i have a history of always forgetting something.  i get a new motherboard but the processor doesn’t match.  i get a motherboard and processor but don’t have the right ram.  i get a SATA hard drive but my power supply doesn’t have a SATA connector.  or enough SATA connectors.  or i don’t have a SATA hard drive cable.

so this time i swear i’ve got it covered.  the board specs say it can take up to 4gb of ram, so i max out and get 4 sticks of 1 gb.  i know my older power supply doesn’t have a SATA connector so i think ahead and got an adapter.  i’m getting a mainboard, ram, and a hard drive because i don’t want to swap the motherboard and ram and find out the drive died, too.  or vice versa (but i’m pretty sure something on the board is shot at least.  could just be a dust short, but still…)

well, time to throw in my hat because it turns out my power supply is a 20-pin and the new board requires a 24-pin.  oh, and since i went the cheap route and got a micro-atx board, there’s only actually 2 slots for ram.  so i have 2 extra sticks (which i’m sure will come in handy at some point, but not so much right now).  i could always swap the 4 for 2 2gb, but then i’d have to wait and there’s a restocking fee and i’m sure i can use these eventually.

/sigh

so another couple days before i get the new system running and i can actually figure out what was going on with the old system.  color me lame.

so there we were.  playing guildwars.  trying to get some new characters to a high enough level that we can beat the mission which will unlock the ability to go from the nightfall campaign back to the original prophecies campaign.  we’re running aroung collecting XP from the quests we just finished, when, all of a sudden, click, my computer shuts off.

at first i think it’s the monitor.  i have this old 19″ from when we were at college and the color is going which has caused us to a) shop for new lcd flatscreens (cuz I can’t just get on and then be jealous!) and b) swapped monitors so i have the big, but slightly off-color monitor and erin has the color accurate monitor (she seems to do more interesting things with color in graphic design — choices for specific colors when i would go more basic. i decided she needed accuracy more than i did).  so i fiddle with that a bit, and eventually i’m staring at the monitor test thing bouncing across the screen saying “your monitor is working correctly.”  no it’s not, i tell the computer, but it doesn’t listen.

in reality, it is working correctly.  well as correct as it can.  because as it turns out, my character drops off the network in her game and when i try to reboot the computer it does…nothing.  literally nothing.  no happy little beep saying it booted or anything.  i start to get concerned.

first, i try using an ubuntu live cd — i figure if the hard drive went, then i should still be able to boot off the cd.  but after powering the box on, i can’t even get the cd tray to eject.  nothing happens.  i don’t get the pre-operating system self test (POST) screen up, even.  that means there’s something fairly serious wrong along the main brains of the system, the motherboard/processor.

good thing we have the media center, i say, and proceed to pull the new computer that was being used as media center over and swap hard drives.  i figure, the hard drive should still get me into windows and i can just rejoin the game as soon as i swap drives.  but as soon as i swap drives and boot up the new computer with the old drive, i get a bluescreen flash and then reboot.  flash of bluescreen, reboot.  it’s not even up long enough for me to read the error.  so now i’m looking at a bad mobo/proc and hard drive.

so for now the media center is acting as my backup computer until i get new hardware.  i put the original hard drive back in and installed the software i need to do my work.  the only thing lost in this fiasco is just the apps i run, since everything, all my files and everything for web design work, is saved on my server.  ’cause, you know, that was the whole point.  and the server has backups done weekly, so yeah, no harm no foul, just an annoyance, and you know, money.  money that was previously going to my macbook.  /sigh.  i really think the fates are against me in getting this laptop.  i’m going to perservere, though, if it takes every piece of electronics in the house out in the process of getting the laptop.

in completely random other news, however, damn this is a nice machine i built here.  vista runs like a charm, which, you know, is ironic since when i last installed it, it completely trashed my hard drive and led me to vow to never install that piece of trash ever again ever.  this is a much better machine, of course, and newer, and probably really built to run vista (actually, it was precisely built to run vista because the original remote i had only ran on vista, but i ended up having to reinstall it and replaced it with a stripped down vista which didn’t include the requisite driver and i couldn’t get the requisite driver from the manufacturer).  still, it never fails to surprise me to see vista running the way it should.  and fast, too.  so i’ve perhaps changed my mind that it is the spawn of satan.  perhaps…