MBP 2.0 upgraded and the start of July
Its been a few weeks since we arrived back in the US and already there has been so much going on; although I haven’t really been writing with as much regularity as I used to; the context of my writing has been technical in the past or some random quip, however lately I have been far more involved in tasks and thoughts that encompass other matters.
I do have a few technology items to discuss: Firstly, I ordered an installed a new Western Digital 320GB SATA disk into my 1st generation Mac Book Pro (Core Duo). This took my HD from a 100GB factory installed drive to this new giant drive that can store all the applications, files, and virtual machines that I need/want for various tasks.
During the hardware upgrade I took the time to upgrade to Leopard. I must have been one of the only users not to upgrade to the newest OS; I took my time as I looked at the 300+ features of Leopard as nice to have’s but not entirely essential. Way back in the day, when OS X was still relatively unstable (circa 2003 - 2005 ), I used to jump on the newest software as soon as it came out with the hopes of alleviating issues with Mail.app or some kernel crashing issue, however I would have to say that 10.4 has been very close to rock solid. Admittedly I am not a normal user. I install kernel modifications, work quite a bit in the command line, run many network oriented applications that open raw sockets, keep a vmware instance open on another display, etc all on my MBP and still I was able to keep an uptime of over 30 days while commuting between work and home, on airplanes and crossing various countries and still jump close the lid to suspend the system. I have come to understand and deal with various OS X bugs that pop up sometimes in the name resolution stack, and other quirky things. That being said, 10.4 has been pretty decent, and I really hope that 10.5 is equally as stable.
July is starting today. Central New Jersey and New York weather is fantastic and it paints the sky at dusk with hues of cotton candy (the pinks and blues) while the sun sets and the beaten down concrete has a chance to calm for the night.
Originally published on truman.net. See the archived copy.