Heresy!

I started my 'career' about 10 years ago. Just out of high school, was playing around with this thing called unix. This odd thing called Exploring - post369 to be exact. I was about to head out on a trip when one of the organizers tells me: We need to talk at some point on this trip - I think I have a job for you.

That talk consisted of seeing if I was interested in cleaning up ( eg, I was wearing cut-off jean shorts and wore gritty combat boots :-> ) - to which I said sure. Turns out, that internship turned into a pretty wild ride. Got into Solaris administration which turned into Linux administration which also included learning lots about networking, the ( evil ) hacks you can do with a linux box acting as a router/switch/bridge and many other things. I have pretty much always been a unix geek - well, except for that very! short period I liked windows. C'mon, had to run games somehow. Long live StarCraft!

The last ~6 years or so I've been a big linux geek. I ran mostly RedHat/Fedora for quite a while. About 4 years ago a co-worker said we should switch to CentOS and thus began my permanent switch from Fedora to CentOS.

( Had to look it up :-> ) MacOSX came out back in 2001 and had captured my attention. I had owned a NeXT for a short while - and I liked the interface. I was really bummed it did not work out for them. The hardware was pretty good for the time and the OS had a pretty interesting look/feel to it. The first thing I thought when I saw some of the presentations on OSX was - heh, thats cute, they resurrected NextSTEP! From there I was quite interested in seeing just how well the OS would do given the past attempts.

Thanks to a really neat contract assignment, I had the opportunity to pick up a Mac G4 tower for free as they were refreshing their hardware. I picked up a nice new hard drive and a copy of OSX 10.4 ( Thanks to an un-named store for forgetting to scan the bar-code :->, that was a freebie too! ). I sat down with it, played and found that I pretty much liked the OS. There were a few things missing imho:

1. Virtual Desktops ( Spaces in OSX 10.5 )
   
2. Better game support
   
3. Less expensive hardware
   
4. The ability to run some other me-isms ( virtual machines, run a few X-based apps and automate some things which I had not yet had a chance to figure out )
   

With 10.5 and the decision to run to an X86-based platform, in addition VMWare Fusion - most of my complaints have been answered. I went ahead and, for the first time in quite a while, bought software :-> I picked up VMWare Fusion and a copy of Aperture for my photos. Aperture is neat though I still need to learn some of the touchup features - just a time thing really.

VMWare fusion is missing a few things imho:

1. On start, auto load some of my vms for me in the background ( ala VMWare Server )
   
2. The ability to have my linux guest work under Unity ( which is just cool! )
   

I have a few minor complaints about OSX 10.5, though they are reasonably minor:

1. I really like the ability to have a window follow me when I change spaces. EG, if I have an Adium window up on space 2 and switch to space 3 it should stick with me
   
2. If I click on the finder icon I want it to make a new one - not take me to another one!
   
3. If I click on the terminal app in the launcher, I want it to start a new one!
   
4. If I start an X application, I would like to have a Documents-style pop-up with all of my X applications/windows to choose from
   
5. I would like to have a config option for power management such that when I close the lid and I have the power adapter plugged in - don't sleep the laptop!
   

A few handy links for apple-related things I use so far:

1. Adium
   
2. QuickSilver
   
3. Warp
   
4. Fink
   
5. MacVim
   
6. ... probably a lot of others, those are just off the top of my head ( eg, the ones I use most )
   

All in all, my experience with OSX as an operating system has been pretty good. The UI is pretty much functional to me. I can get most of my work done with little effort. Having VMWare helps, but I do use Terminal a lot. Having QuickSilver really makes it nice for getting around. It checks things like /Applications/foo if I hit ctrl+space and type foo ( or fo even - it looks for matches in various places ). I think apple may want to consider something like QuickSilver as a new feature and integrate that one!

I have found its nfs support to be ... meh :-> Its got issues, but so does the linux nfs implementation. The changes they made for autofs make automount config pretty much a snap. I have had issues with nfs-related hangs ( sleep the laptop and go off-network, it pretty much hung the laptop until I powered it off and rebooted... not good imho :-> )

I have managed to crash OSX a few times which is kind of frustrating. Operating systems do crash from time to time and that is nothing I would go screaming it sucks! but I would like to think there are ways around the gui crashing - eg, switch virtual terminals and kill the display manager. They may be a way to do it - I just have not found it :->

All in all - well, the fiance's mac book is in the plans. She used to have a mac and she really liked it. I've have to fend her away and kick her upstairs ( I know, I'm so nice :-> ). I dig it - at least for my user interface, I'm staying on OSX. The back-end for the house is still linux :-> And probably always will be.

Its killing her!

Ok, so Ohio had our voting primary back in March. At the time I had not yet transfered my voter registration to the current address so they made me fill in a provisional ballot. I'm sitting there filling things out in one of the voting booth/cubicals and my phone starts ringing. Its the GF looking for me - thinking I got lost or something. The provisional ballot is actually a paper ballot which you fill in with a pencil so it took me a little longer.

By the time I got done filling it out and dropping it in the box she was standing outside the hall thinking I had managed to beat her outside - but no, I am just fucking slow :->

She poses the question: "So who did ya vote for?" - "no one" is my answer :-> It was my own polite way of saying none of your business ( even though I don't care if she knows :->, its a game - we all play games and I relish in keeping non-critical trivialities from her :-> ). She of course gets rather upset and starts the process of trying to determine who I voted for. Its so fun, she is so damned cute - oh and has little/no subtlety.

It has been about 3 months. The primaries are all but over ( http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/3/205916/1276/191/528667 , http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/03/election.democrats/index.html , http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24944453/ , http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7434791.stm ) she poses the question: "So who did ya vote for?" - did I tell her, nope :->

It is probably an understatement to say that I am a liberally minded individual. I don't call myself a democrat nor any of: Republican, Libertarian, Socialist, Green Party - or any other political association. I think the idea of political parties have become something of a problem in our culture. Political parties have turned into a fairly divisional entity. If you are Pro-Christian, Pro-Gun, Pro-Capitalism then your party seems to be the Republican party. If you are pro-Environment, "Anti-Christian", "Anti-Gun", "Anti-Family" ( as some would call it - grossly over-simplified I admit ) then you are one of Democrat, Libartarian, Green party etc. We seek to classify far too much.

I think that generally speaking, assigning ones self to a given political group in a way means you volunteer yourself to also get behind an array of ideologies which may or may not be of your own mind-set.

Heh - wonder if she will ever figure out who I voted for anyway. Some day I suppose I may tell her but we'll see.