ramblings of a {sys,net}admin…

Anyone know if it’s possible to pair up a Blackberry Pearl with a MacBook over Bluetooth in order to get online?

I can do this pretty easy with XP and have managed to get it to work under Ubuntu Linux after casting some ancient African spells, but once my MacBook gets here that’ll be irrelevant. I don’t have a need to do that very often, but occasionally it comes up so I thought I’d ask while I’m thinking of it.

Have any of you been able to link up your Pearl with OS X over Bluetooth in order to get online? Thanks!

According to FedEx, there is a MacBook for me somewhere in China. Unfortunately, I imagine it won’t arrive until Wednesday at the earliest. =(

w00t!

According to the “Apple Order Status” page, my new MacBook’s status has changed to “Prepared for Shipment” within the last few hours. Of course, that’s little consolation when I was told on Tuesday that it was “ready to ship”. Oh well, whatever. If it goes out Friday (the 21st), there’s still a chance it’ll make it here Monday, in time for Christmas. crosses fingers

Well, it’s a long story but basically I had to start over on my Apple order.  Kinda.  The original order had to be cancelled and then I had to submit a new order (via purchase order this time), but at least they already had the MacBook configured how I wanted it.

The last Apple person I spoke to said it’s already been configured and is “ready to ship”, but it may not actually ship until as late as December 24th (next Monday!).  Why that is I’m not really sure, I just wish they’d get it here!

I mentioned yesterday that on Friday I ordered a MacBook from Apple. Later that evening, I called back and asked if I could upgrade the shipping. The Apple representative that I talked to (I have his name and e-mail, but I’ll keep that to myself for now) told me sure and gave me the price. I gave him the credit card number and we hung up. Problem solved, right?

Not so fast… I called back a few minutes ago because I still haven’t received any type of order confirmation or receipt. Since this was purchased on a company credit card, I sorta need that. This time, I spoke to a helpful woman named Emily. Emily pulled up the order and let me know that the representative who took my order was “an idiot”. Apparently, the MacBook is coming from overseas and, according to Emily, there’s no way they can ship it overnight. In addition, due to the closings of various schools (I work for an .edu), they’re “putting a hold” on their orders until after Christmas.

I’m not sure what that means entirely, other than it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting familiar with the new MacBook over the Christmas holiday. That kinda upsets me, to be honest — probably much more than it should, but I want my new toy now! =)

I’m gonna close my office door and cry now. =)

Yay, new MacBook!

Early last week I mentioned to $boss that I’d like to have a MacBook. I’d already been looking at them and have been thinking about getting one. I made a joking remark about $work getting one for me, made a half-hearted sales pitch (”I know lots of other people in the same role who have one and they say {they love them|it makes them more productive|etc.}”). That was pretty much the end of the discussion; I never expected anything further to come of it.

Thursday morning I’m sitting in my office working on who knows what and I get an e-mail from $boss:

Can you please “shop around” for what you want and send me the link?

Hell yes, I can! I surfed around on the Apple Education Store site for a while, explored the options, and came up with the following: MacBook 13-inch (White), 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2×512MB, 250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm, Superdrive 8x (DVD+/-R DL/DVD+/-RW/CD-RW), Apple Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter. 4GB of RAM will be ordered from the vendor that we always purchase RAM from ($130 there vs. $765 at Apple).

I’ll go ahead and justify my choice, since I’ve already been asked about it more than once. For a few years, I carried around a Dell with a 15.1″ screen. After that, I sometimes carried a Toshiba with an even larger screen. Both are much heavier than the MacBook. To be honest, I wanted something small and truly “portable”, so I chose the MacBook over the MacBook Pro. I also don’t need the higher graphics capability of the MBP. The 2.2GHz C2D is slightly faster than my primary workstation (WinXP) and the 4GB of RAM will be double what’s in it as well. My goal was to replace the XP box completely with this MacBook. I put together a “Web Proposal” on Apple’s site and sent it off to $boss.

Friday morning $boss approves it and signs a purchase order. At this point, there’d probably be about a two- to three-week delay because the purchase order actually made it around, got signed by everybody who needed to sign it, and then made it back to our A/P department to actually get ordered. By this point, I was anxious and excited and decided to take matters into my own hand. I took the PO and physically marched my way down to the office of the $boss of my $boss, walked in and said “Hey, sign this PO for me.” She signed it and asked what I was getting. I told her and explained that I was in a hurry to get it, which is why I brought the PO down for her signature. She says “Can’t you just go to the Apple Store and get it?” We looked at each other for a few moments then walked together to the office of the guy who’s over all the finance stuff. (Coincidentally enough, one of his employees also needed to sign the PO, so I got him to sign instead while I was there.) He explained that I couldn’t just go to the Apple Store and buy it with a credit card for a bunch of reasons I won’t bore you with. That idea shot down, I walked the PO over to Purchasing and headed back to my own office.

A few moments later, I’m on the phone with the Apple Education Store, company credit card in hand, placing my order. A few minutes after that, the order is completed and in progress. w00t!

Expedited Shipping

Friday evening after I get home from $work, I’m looking up the order on apple.com. It shows that “Standard Shipping” was included in the order and lists two dates. I’m informed that the MacBook should ship between December 19-21 and arrive December 24-27. THAT’S NOT QUICK ENOUGH! I, of course, want it now. I call the Apple Education Store back. I finally get connected to a guy named Paul Flowers. I explain to him that I placed the order earlier and I want to change the shipping on it. He says “no problem” and asks how I want it shipped. I finally settle on “Overnight”. =)

The shipping date won’t change; the laptop will still be shipped anywhere from December 19-21 because it has to be “customized” (250GB SATA drive instead of the standard 120GB). Okay, I can deal with that. Sorta. Whenever it does ship, I should have it the next day. I’m really hoping that it arrives by Friday, since after Friday we’re going to be closed until Wednesday. So unless I want to camp out in our Shipping & Receiving department and wait for UPS to show up, I’ll be out of luck. PLEASE let it get here by Friday!

Apple has released a Windows version of its popular Safari web browser.  The Safari 3 public beta is available for both OS X and Microsoft Windows.  I’ve installed it on my Windows

The alarm clock goes off, buzzing insistently until I reach out a hand and groggily slap at the button to silence the sound. I roll out of bed, pause for a few minutes, then head for the shower.

After breakfast, I head down to the office. I’ve got several different projects in flight. The new Macintosh has arrived, sporting a new operating system revision. Apple’s finally broken the silly fixed memory limit for applications, but the new OS still can’t multitask worth a damn. Apple’s number one market share–about fifteen percent of the PC market–make it a little complacent. Of course, it helps that Apple is unified, and that the other 85% are running a variety of different operating systems.

Read more…

Heh heh. Somebody just posted this link on IRC. The page is entitled How to pick up and carry your iMac G5. Read it for yourself.