I suffer from a brain deficiency that keeps me from being able to compile comprehensive lists. If asked to name the top three bodily functions, I’m likely to remember “breathing” two days after I’ve turned in the the test. I actually had to come to an accommodation with a CEO I reported to because he liked to go around the table and ask for list-y information, e.g., “What will be the top three threats we’ll face in the next 18 months.” I freeze.

Anyway, I enjoy a good top ten list as much as anyone. For example, J.D. Lasica has a list of the “Top 10 Tech Transformations of 2005.” The only things I can think to add are wifi (particularly the municipal version of it) and AJAX.

At AlterNet, Tai Moses has The Ten Best Top-Ten Lists. Of these, the Top 10 Grocery Lists from Grocerylists.com is the oddest.

Anyone have a top ten list of top ten lists of top ten lists? The year can’t end until we’ve gone meta-meta! [Tags: lists]

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Just in case someone else has the same problem: Firefox 1.5 and Internet Explorer both stopped displaying animated gifs for me recently. It turns out that it’s because of Zone Alarm, a program that is turning into a high maintenance pain in the ass. Anyway, to get the animations back, go to ZA’s Privacy pane’s Main tab and turn Ad Blocking to off. [Tags: zoneAlarm firefox InternetExplorer]

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This morning, I was expecting a Skype call. Ten minutes before, I started up my PC (we had an outage overnight). All was fine except Skype didn’t recognize the skype name of the person who was going to call me. Odd. So, I downloaded and installed Skype on the Mac, and it worked immediately.

On the one hand, this was probably a firewall (ZoneAlarm Pro) issue on my PC. On the other hand, I don’t seem to have firewall problems on my Mac. I don’t even know if I have a firewall on my Mac, which is how it should be. [Tags: mac macintosh skype]

By coincidence, in order to log onto the Harvard network, I’ve had to turn on my firewall, and thus have discovered where it lives on the Mac.

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The basics are working, or at least are on the way to working. I’m going through the many suggestions you’ve had for software. Heck, I’ve even installed a kickass screensaver, LotsaWater that makes it look like your desktop is under an inch of clear water during a rainstorm. Very cool. (Why aren’t there screensavers like this on the PC? Maybe there are and I just haven’t noticed.)

I still feel like I’m driving on the wrong side of the road. But Britt Blaser has been incredibly helpful, answering the questions too dumb to be worth surfacing in public, such as: When I find something in Spotlight, how do I tell where it is on the disk? (A: Click on the info button next to the listing.) How do I eject a disk? (A: Click the function button, among other ways.) How do I delete a character forward, which is what the Delete key on Windows machines does? (A: Fn+Del … pretty clumsy, actually). Britt’s been great, answering my questions and insisting that they’re not dumb when in fact we both know they are. Thanks, Britt. [Tags: macintosh BrittBlaser screensavers]

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I plugged the Mac into an ethernet cable instead of using wifi, and now it’s able to find and copy the documents on my PC desktop. Huzzah!

I’m not sure what the problem is, but since I’m at the moment blundering around in the dark, I don’t expect to know what it was.

BTW, Windows doesn’t see the Mac, although the Mac sees Windows. I found a web site that gave some basic instructions. No joy yet, but still trying.

Later: It works. I have no idea why it didn’t work an hour ago and now it does. But Windows, meet Mac. Mac, meet Windows. Woohoo!

I’ve started downloading and playing. I tried Camino but it doesn’t support XUL, so there aren’t many extensions for it. So I’m installing Firefox. (I’m a big fan of mouse gestures.)

(Nit: I have to say that having on one corner from which one can manually resize a window is a bad idea. Windows does this better.) [Tags: macintosh]

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Scott solved my registration problem. Thank you, Scott. Gotta appreciate a machine with a community built into it.

It’s doing some heavy updating now. I can see the desktop underneath it. Oooh!

The battery icon tells me that the machine arrived 100% charged. Nice. I’m going to take advice from MR (proferred through email, hence the slight cloaking) of letting it discharge entirely overnight, and then charge it up again.

Playing around with the local network: It finds my Windows desktop machine (“Honker”). Nice. But it tells me that the alias “Honker” could not be opened because the original item cannot be found. I can delete or fix the alias. Going for the fix…Hmm, now it wants to know the item that I want “Honker” to open, I was expecting (hoping) to see items on my PC desktop, but instead I seem to be seeing default Mac folders (desktop, documents, library, etc.).

Try again. More luck. It finds the public folders on Honker. Yay! Not letting me connect to them yet. I may actually have to read the manual. The scandal!

By the way, Joi Ito has, accurately, told me that I shouldn’t write about using Macs because it makes me stupid. He’s totally right. My expectations are high about Macs being dead simple, and thus I am easily disappointed.

Random questions: I’m going to the UK in a week. I assume people make power adapter cords for UK plugs. What’s a good place to get one cheap and fast?

Also, I have a DC adapter for airplanes for my Thinkpad. What’s the cheapest/fastest equivalent for the Mac?

(I can Google and find this stuff out, but you may know good places to buy. Besides, if you post it here, maybe others will find it, too.) [Tags: macintosh]

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First, thanks for all the incredibly helpful advice. That’s generous of you.

So, first impressions:

It arrived in one day, via Harvard’s purchase plan. Cool.

Beautifully designed box. Nicely packed. The white accessories are very Empire Strikes Back-ish.

Turn it on. It begins its cheery set-up program. The keyboard has a pleasant soft-click feel. It finds my wifi without any fuss.

Problem: I go through the default setup process and am faced with a screen that wants to know what I will primarily use this computer for and how I describe myself. I don’t want to give Apple that info so I leave the blanks blank. But the Continue button won’t let me continue.

I am not willing to give Apple that info and there is no obvious way to skip the registration process. If you know how I can power up the machine for the first time without having to give Apple personal information, beyond the contact info, please let me know.

Otherwise, I’m afraid I may already be an ex-Mac user. [Tags: macintosh]

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My Thinkpad is scheduled to go back to the shop on Thursday. A 5-hour chkdsk session seems to have cleared up some of the disk issues. The remaining problems are:

1. USB ports don’t work. They don’t even work on boot up, so it is not a Windows driver issue.

2. The IBM rescue partition doesn’t load.

3. Performance is worse than sluggish because a process called System (not System Idle) takes up 99% of my CPU. (The System process apparently is a catchall for kernel threads.)

Sigh.

PS: Unless you will personally warrantee the Mac you want me to buy — including you paying roundtrip Fedex if it needs repairs — do not leave a comment that I should be an aforementioned Mac. Thank you. [Tags: thinkpad]

Scott Kirsner argues that Apple is favoring Goliath over David (to use his trope), in an op-ed in the SF Chronicle today.

A PowerBook (12″, 60mb, 528mb ram that I’ll up to a gig) is on its way, thanks to the Harvard discount. And my Thinkpad is on its way to being repaired; I’m not ready to give up on it yet. I’ll blog later about why, as someone who has used Macs on and off since the mid-80s, I am not the fan that the rest of you all seem to be. I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying I enter this new phase of my life with trepidation.

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My computer has been acting funny — Word and Powerpoint say that all my Office files are “not available” even though they open fine if I move them to my laptop; a saved game from Serious Same 2 was corrupted yesterday — so I ran AVG’s detailed scan to check for viruses. I switched from Norton Antivirus to AVG about 1.5 yrs ago because I got tired of Norton’s belief that my computer is its plaything. AVG didn’t find any viruses. So I ran Norton and it found four: Hacktool (2 files); Trojan.ByteVerify, and W32Mydoom.BN@mm.

I doubt these are causing my problem. For example, the MyDoom was in an email in my Thunderbird Trash bin. So, the question is whether Norton actually beat AVG or does Norton simply over-report?

Anyway, now I’m moving on to a chkdsk to see if I’m about to lose yet another hard drive… [Tags: viruses]

Nothing that a complete reinstall of Office won’t fix. But now my task bar isn’t loading correctly. It sure feels like a virus…

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Does anyone know how to program a Visual Basic 6 (not .NET) form so that its contents get loaded into the Movable Type create-a-post Web form? So, imagine that I have a text box in VB that gets filled with the text “Here is my post.” I’d like to press a button, launch a browser so that it opens up my MT editing page, and have the “Entry Body” text box there get loaded with “Here is my post.” (I know how to launch a browser to a particular URL.)

Note: Comments telling me that VB6 sucks and I suck for using it are not, technically speaking, helpful.

TIA.

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