And it’s been a good day.

My inclination is to qualify that statement, but I don’t think that I will.

What I will do is delve into the day, because, well, I can’t remember the last time I had a day that I reflexively called good.  I’ve probably had a few good days not too terribly long ago.  Even if I have to go back to, say, the Denver trip.  Or all the way back to late September (?) to PAX Prime.

But I am not certain that even then, during those fun trips, that it just popped into my head ‘Hey, today was pretty good, huh?’

But today it did.  And that is why it should, must, be examined.  To pick out the factors that made it a good day, or to examine it as a whole and pontificate on just why was it a good day?

Being someone with something that you could absolutely call a condition, I feel I must.  I also feel that it’s good that I’m taking the time to.  And again, it’s happening naturally.

I’ll start with the night before, when I went to bed, to my knowledge, at about 1:15-1:30 am.  To many, this is quite late.  However, I find that I really have to target 2-ish, and combine it with my week-day target wake up of 8-ish, for this is the sleep amount from which I appear to most easily wake.  So technically, it was an early night.

The early night showed itself, for even as I awoke significantly late, at about 9:20, it was still somewhat difficult to get out of bed.  I attribute this to the greater amount of sleep, which curiously does not typically help me.  Heaven forbid I should do what I did the night before last and go to bed at 11:45.  That 8 am wake up is even more brutal.  It makes no sense really, but it’s a pattern I’ve observed to be fairly sound in its reproducibility.

At any rate, I had my granola with raisins and my shot of Pepsi (for which I need no telling what madness it is).  I trundled off to work and, sufficed to say, plugged away on replacing my work computer’s hard drive with a small SSD intended for system use, eventually to be complimented by the existing 640 GB ‘green’ drive.  The new OS install went very smoothly, as would be hoped, but typically not expected, and I moved on very quickly and with continuing smoothness as I reloaded critical applications and hardware drivers.

Note: Apparently, I enjoy this work.  I suppose it’s obvious based on how I choose to spend large chunks of my time (in the basement, assembling, configuring, disassembling, reassembling, reconfiguring) but the lack of challenge in this task did not bore me this time, it was quite refreshing.

At lunch time, not too much later due to the late wake up, I took the lunch order from Rich and Kevin, the two employees, and surprisingly Kevin got lunch, and lacking Dad’s presence for a third order, I proceeded to Bagel Boys to get the food.  It was unusual, in my opinion, that there weren’t many customers at 12:30 in the afternoon, but I didn’t think much of it.

Of note at the deli, I picked up a bag of Smart Puffs (I think that’s what they’re called), instead of Pirate’s Booty because I wasn’t enamored with the tough spots in each bite of the latter.  Real tough, I know.  Despite my being sure that they’ve both sold this particular snack at this location for many  years, as well as the young man who helped me with my order having worked there for many years, he (name unknown) did not have any prior knowledge of this snack food.  He didn’t even know they sold it.  So, hoping to enlighten him, I popped the bag open on the spot and offered him a try.

Oops.  I got distracted by a pretty lady.  NSFW  http://rekit.deviantart.com/art/Hippity-Hop-267993424

Anyway… where was I?

Right, so, I give the guy a try and he takes a few and shares the handful with the short hispanic lady that was working there too and they’re appreciative and approving of the snack.

Man, that really messed my concentration.  I just went to a bunch of my usual sites.

So the point is that he gets the rest of my sandwiches * and comes back with something unexpected, un-ordered.  A pint, or a cup, or something, of rice pudding *photo* and puts it in the bag with the rest of the sandwiches (italian combo, 2 Florentines) and bags up the Smart Puffs and Rich’s Diet Coke too.  I was like, hmm?  And he says for letting him try the Puffs and I was like, Oh man, you didn’t have to do that, and he just says, Thanks, so I thank him with great sincerity and with an extra bounce in my step and rice pudding in my bag, head on back to the office.

I mean, if we’re really paying attention, I even made an easy left out of the lot.  And that, like, never happens.  About as rarely as a good day.  No.  Not quite that rare.

I might be distracted, but that might not be why I can’t specify a whole lot else.  I’ll specify, before I totally forget, that the * two paragraphs ago was because I did remember that while I considered a turkey club, I was having a day where I felt like I needed something different.  I’ve eaten a lot of turkey clubs of a lot of different quality in my life.  And recently, I’ve had these days where I’ve just had to have something different.  An Italian combo is not completely wild or unprecedented, but it goes with my expanding palate which is cautiously craving different.  I did as for the sandwich, which he confirmed they would make, and then ask what was on it, which had to have been a little strange, but I wanted to make sure it had three kinds of meats (ham, salami, pepperoni) and not just two (the former) like some italian combos do (such as, ironically, the one at the Italian deli across the street).  At any rate, I took it with the oregano, oil, and vinegar, which at a different point in my life I might have left off.  I did, however, remove the tomato later.

And at this point I’m aware this is incredibly long and incredibly detailed and probably of little interest to anyone to the point where it probably is worth keeping to myself instead of posting in a public forum but, well, it’s just how important a naturally good day is is the point.  It doesn’t happen for me.  Not that I’m aware of.  It needs to be noted and examined.

Let’s see.  What else?  I continued to work, largely unperturbed or interrupted, on the work computer with great ease and success.  The only issue is that the new SSD is quite small on capacity and will take careful system modifications to deal with this fact.  But it’s FAST!  It’s so nice and super fast!

I spent part of the day away from the desk using some clips I’d found at MicroCenter which literally inspired me to finally run some ethernet around the office to a desk that had no access and, in turn, little use as anything but a table.  So I did this, finding a piece of ethernet on hand that was EXACTLY the right length and that was nice.  Truth be told, it’s a damned red cable, and it’s hideous, and I will be abandoning the clips post haste in favor of concealing cable channeling, probably today (Wednesday) but the point is I did it, and it was perfectly enjoyable (besides the hideousness, besides the fact that the clips turned out to be almost entirely shit but not quite).  So there’s that.

There’s that.  And the computer is pretty much done except for the symlinking that I found out about (on my beloved Lifehacker, no less).  I did also find out how to facilitate local remote access to MALLCOM, our common workstation, which I swear on any other day would have been a nightmare to figure out and twice so to implement but it appears to work just fine almost OOB.  Not to mention the fact that Windows Home Server Connector also installed flawlessly which is UNHEARD OF.

I feel like I’m forgetting something but… I mean… I barely have room to.  I’m covering everything!

Oh, I did splice the mono phono jack into my 9 volt 20 second sound recorder component from Radio Shack so now I have a working button that I can push at any time to hear the ‘the Price is Right’ failure tuba.  I mean, how great would that make ANYONE’s day?  Despite the implied failure!  I’m considering not even forcing it into the Staples Easy Button as originally intended, although it probably would sound better with the better speaker.

On top of a solid, easy, perfectly acceptable day, Mom comes home, decided that she is ready to upgrade her phone, and off we go to the Verizon store to see how she feels about the world of smartphones etc.  There’s some traffic, but I don’t care, because I’m behind the wheel and my day has been going swimmingly so far.  Sure, I’d taken the trash out, and it stank, but today, I didn’t care.

We go to the store and I explain as best I can, tailoring my explanations to what I know to be her needs, about all of the Android phones and pros and cons versus the iPhone and Windows Phone 7 as well as smartphones versus the latest dumb phones and we consider the massive increase in her monthly bill from her current, minuscule, 100 minute voice only plan she’s got on her little purple flip phone.  She’s interested by the smartphones with physical keyboards.  She’s not even open to consideration of Blackberry (which I never instilled in her, so who knows where she got that).  She’s interested in iPhone, naturally considering it to be the highest point of smart phone – and I mean naturally as in naturally, not naturally as in that’s my opinion so I report it as gospel.  To this end, she’s surprised that most smartphones ARE the price of the iPhones, some being even greater (storage being relative) and ultimately decides on the 16 GB 4s except… they don’t have any.  So taking in mind the spiel from Karlos, the rep, pushing a data enabled tablet, which she was surprisingly interested in, we departed, empty handed, for dinner at the nearby Applebee’s, from which we would move on to the adjacent Best Buy to at least look at cases to prettify her likely iPhone.

Why does my editor recognize ‘prettify’ as a word?  Is that a word???

Our waiter was a real peach and she had Bruchetta chicken which came out curiously well done which she actually liked despite it looking like a plate that had just been served before a nuclear apocalypse struck, and I had a ‘Philly Burger’ which happened to be quite different, palate pleasing, and messy to the point where I felt like I was satisfied food wise but had to wash my face despite not having actually, say, smeared the overflowing sandwich all over my own face.

…still have to wash my face…

Over dinner I continued to explain all of the finer points I could think of regarding a tablet replacing her desperately limping laptop and an Android tablet versus an iPad and a tablet versus an iPhone along with ways to rehabilitate the laptop she currently owns.  A bit before the check arrived she decided on an iPhone and I was interested because I would not necessarily have guessed she’d go for one.  But, she did.  So we moved on to the Best Buy to peek into the wild world of iPhone cases and investigate their stock.

The interesting thing about Mom is that she wanted to wait to get the iPhone at the Verizon store because the rep had spent a chunk of time with us.  This would never have occurred to me, since I function quite largely on the concept of ‘instant gratification’.  I myself probably would have skipped over dinner in order to first investigate the Best Buy and nab any potential iPhone they might have had in stock.  But, it weren’t about me, it were about her.

So we go, and she’s not thrilled with any of the cases to the point of considering to buy them, and we almost leave, except, I admittedly prod her about going for a 32 GB, which they DID have in stock, because it’s tough to fight that need for ‘instant gratification’ and because the iPhones are indeed so terribly non-upgradable that it would be a shame to discover, despite her disinterest in music AND movies AND apps she might somehow, magically, run out of space.  So Mom does agree that she could go for a 32 GB, despite the 100 dollar increase, and we get to begin the process of obtaining it!

I forgot.  Toward the end of dinner I did experience a shooting pain vertically through the right side of my face, which was unusual, but I assumed it would go away, which it has.

I did feel a bit like I’d pressured Mom into the larger capacity iPhone that she hadn’t really been interested in but she did appear to be quite comfortable with the decision to go for it.

Now it’s 12:51.  I’m starting to get tired.  I may fink out and wrap up significantly more quickly.

While she did not get a case tonight, she did get convinced to get a Zagg Invisible Shield for the front glass which we had the sales associate put on for a well spent 8 dollars.  8 bucks for the application!?  HELL YEAH.  You should have seen what a pain that thing was to put on nicely.

Just as it was activated, then Dad called.  So Mom answered and says ‘Oh hi, I’m just in the middle of buying my new iPhone!’ to which he must have been like ‘wut’ and would call back later.

That terrible pain in my mouth that was hanging around for several days has gone away.  That’s good

Oh!  And also, this thing I’ve been trying to return for over a month to Amazon, or an Amazon affiliated seller – I’ve been refunded for it!  But, I still have it!  I’m happy to have a refund, but even happier that I might be able to take my refund and, I dunno, eBay the thing for bonus cash!

Which I could use.  I mean, most people could, but I’m a people too.  Looking at the current credit card bills, which are going down decently, well, I’d hope this will work out to a beneficial end.

I’m up far too late.  Actually, I’m not 100% sure of that statement.  Practically, I’m up far too late.  However, in practice, I’m up only a bit too late.

To round out the day, I played a little bit of Magic with Ed at Donney’s house while we ogled Catwoman in Arkham City.  I won twice of the three games, after which Ed finally won.  I do think, though, that if I played someone not either of those two guys, I’d figure out what it was to get beaten fairly quickly.  Can’t just base success on a set of two.

Before I go any further, I can’t neglect the fact that as of this lovely day, I’d been approximately a day off medicine, and I think I had some headaches but not too too bad.  Also, previously, the last pill had been an old extended release cap, not the standard pills as usual.  Would I have more to add to that if I weren’t getting tired?  Not sure.  I was going to say I wasn’t going to take one tonight because as the hour grows later, I need more of an assurance that I’ll eventually get to sleep, but maybe I’ll try another XR cap.  Nothing like experimenting on one’s self, right?

Post shower: I mean, it’s some kind of coincidence that I have a Good Day after switching informally back to XRs right?

And here’s Jasper.  Between 2 and 3 is the time when he shows up and it’s either bed time or ‘feed me’ time – it’s highly ambiguous which.  Ok, well, it’s sort of ambiguous which.

Ok he just wants a treat…

Last night, I got to communicate with Ericka, which I always enjoy.  She isn’t well, which I certainly am displeased with, but… despite that, being in contact with her is nice.

I think this is a nice end to the day: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/collectibles/ea60/

Here’s to a similarly pleasant tomorrow!

But the reality is that only the most unified and/or vehement user feedback or backlash will have any effect on the site’s design. While a concept like some kind of crowd sourcing would seem to have merit for the world’s largest online community (that’s true, or at least probable, right?), crowd sourcing probably won’t make anyone any money, and that reduces its likelihood of occurrence.

Do I know what’s best for Facebook? Not off the top of my head. Maybe if I were tossed something in the vicinity of the average salary for a Facebook employee I could really sit down and think about it but again, there’s that money thing and that motivation thing.

And the changes? I am a Facebook frequenter. The changes will probably not deter me in any appreciable way. My time on the site will not change. My effect on the carbon footprint will remain the same. If anything, I’ll have to take a few more minutes to train my News Feeder and understand the rationale and uses of the new features. I won’t be deactivating my account over my poorly organized messaging experience. And they haven’t made a privacy policy so egregious that I cannot tolerate it yet.  Yet.

In fact, maybe the entire article is bunk. Maybe the changes to Facebook SHOULD be lauded. Because nothing has inspired me to sit down and write a chunk of creative text in a very long time. Even in spite of an errant ‘backspace’ which lost me my original first paragraph, I decided I was clever enough to reconstruct it fairly faithfully.

But for now, I have cats to find.

When I discovered this, I just couldn’t stop looking at her.
Not staring. I’ve learned at least that much in the last sixteen years.
Is that how long it’s been?
I counted. It’s been eight years. Since the worst eight years.

Things have been bad since then, but differently.

I wanted to say something to her.
I desperately wanted to say something to her. Anything.
Anything that would not be ridiculous to say. I’m through saying the ‘right things’.
They’re always the wrong things.

Eventually I’d realized I couldn’t have anything to do with her anymore. I couldn’t even let myself think about her. It had to stop. And it did, eventually, finally.
But a while ago, I’d wanted to talk to her.
I’d have better things to say. I’d be able to talk to her like a person and show her how I was and how everything was fine and that I’d grown.
That things were different.

And what would she say? Would she laugh and smile and carry on because it was all right?

Of course, being not all right precludes this meeting from ever taking place.

And so tonight, there was nothing to say to her. And maybe there just isn’t and never will be. Because… what’s the point?

So I was going to dash out to the comic store before dinner which nowadays falls SO conveniently right around 6 or 6:30.  There isn’t a proper comic store inside of 20 minutes away from me, so that’s one pain in the ass.  I can’t make it out and back after work and before dinner unless I RACE there and back at speeds after FLEEING work like a maniac at the stroke of 5 which would doubtlessly net me several tickets AND have time to actually be at the store.  And then since dinner is not instantaneous, I have maybe an hour to go AFTER dinner and that too is pushing it, but at least I have the convenience of transit time back home after the 8 pm close if necessary.

Well.  I light out of here today after sitting around wasting my time 5:30 to 6:15 because I didn’t leave work until 5:30 and then my mother and I couldn’t get our acts together in regard to dinner because we’re a couple of dullards.  So there was no time before.  And then we’re done and I’m free to go around 7 so I bolt and I’m halfway to the store at about 7:20 because there’s a fucking time warp between the house and my car, and there always is, but only when you’re trying to get somewhere, and I realize half way there that I don’t have my wallet.

Fucking shit.

So I have to turn around.  And plod home.  Because by the time I make it back, get in the house, find the fucking thing, and get back on the road, I’d only make it to the store by the time it closed.

It’s not like it’s a big deal.  Everything will still be there tomorrow.

It just wrecks an otherwise perfectly pointlessly boring day.

Physical Space

The MacBook Air is some pretty serious engineering.  To hammer a fully capable laptop computer into the Lilliputian internal space found inside the MacBook Air’s brief unibody enclosure is no small feat.  Not to mention most of the internal space isn’t even computer – it’s slices of lithium polymer battery.  Viewing images from a site like iFixIt, showing complete tear down of the 11 and 13 inch MacBook Airs, it’s plain to see that it’s quite densely packed in there as it is.

At this time, Thunderbolt comes in the form of an additional chip of not insignificant size to add the wondrous capabilities that it does to the questionable MiniDisplayPort.  To shoehorn yet another chip onto the logic board of the incredibly densely packed Air is… well it’s something.  It’s a task meant for men greater than I.

A fantastic option and future inevitability is for it to be integrated into the system controller, in whatever form that may come in the next Air (odds are an Intel chipset).  And being an Intel chipset (probably) only adds to the hopes that it would be, however, it has not been as of yet.

Is it impossible to get the thumb sized chip in there?  Certainly not.  But it sure seems difficult.

Also.  This same reasoning is why we could have seen/could see a MiniDisplayPort/Thunderbolt iPad but almost assuredly not an iPhone.

A friend of mine is hanging onto his PowerBook G4 12” for dear life.  It’s admirable.  He’s not an idiot with his money, I don’t think, and he is happy to work with what he has, so he’s not jumping at every new model that comes out.  I think he’s a little nuts for not having upgraded even once but one thing that’s important to this PowerPC stalwart is the form factor.

Up until recently, nothing has rivaled the PowerBook G4 12” for foot print, at least not in the Mac world.  The 13” MacBook Air certainly beats it in portability, but footprint is also important to the guy I guess.

Despite the claims and tests and results indicating that any Intel Mac will annihilate any PPC based Mac in almost any given benchmark (anyone ever read that Mac Mini Core Duo vs. a contemporary XServe G5?  Knocked it out of the park in everything but disk access, probably due to the laptop style hard drive of the Mini) he was not prepared to believe that anecdotally, in actual daily use, that the speed makes a difference to a basic user like him.

And I can’t argue with him on it because when you have a person that’s satisfied with what they’ve got, they need not be fought.  Why dig in and attempt to knock someone out of their comfortable perch?  You don’t do it.

However, the only reason for going ahead with the kind of enthusiast research that I did is either personal interest, which was certainly present, or the fact that he is looking forward to the next Mac, and wants the most powerful, most portable Mac he can get.  So part of his game is awaiting the next great thing and hoping it meets his stringent criteria.  If he’s going to take the plunge, he wants as much as he can get.

He regaled me with tales of Mac fanboy message boards with, among other things, people taking PPC to their graves, people defending the aged Penryn Core 2 Duos against their (obviously) superior Sandy Bridge up and comers.  They insist the 320m video/system controller is not only more powerful but simply must be FAR superior to even the latest Intel HD integrated graphics.  Sufficed to say, I don’t put a lot of stock into any of Intel’s integrated graphics but I do observe benchmarks and must take into consideration its features and the realistic uses of the machines it’s found in.  I’m not going into the features or capabilities of the Intel HD Graphics at this time though.

This is a rough examination of what is theoretically possible in the MacBook Air.

The original bodied MacBook Airs, the tapered models, employed Intel Core 2 Duo cpus of the Penryn generation running at clock speeds of 1.6 or 1.8 GHz with a 2.13 GHz option coming along near the end of the life of that particular style of Air.  Most critical to this examination are the thermal characteristics of the CPUs, which somehow, by magic I think, came down as the processor matured, and matured, and matured.  The initial Penryns, in the customized MacBook Air package, ran at 1.6 or 1.8 GHz with a Thermal Design Point of 25 watts, meaning it was engineered to dissipate that much heat energy or less.  The second generation ran at the same clock speeds but on a revision of the core’s architecture which dragged the TDP down to a scant 17 watts, resulting in a cooler, longer running Air.  As far as CPUs go, this is very, very low.  Desktops range from 35 watt TDPs up to 195 watts and beyond, and even the range of 65 watts is considered a major selling point and a nice, cool, desirable place to be, where energy and heat are concerned in a computer’s CPU.

Later, we arrived at the redesigned Air, the wedge design, which ran at suspiciously similar clock speeds but, again by some kind of magic, better performance – very possibly due to its coupling with the custom nVidia 320m system controller.  The 13” wedge models ran again at the same 1.86 and 2.13 GHz speeds as their predecessors with the same impressive 17 watt TDP.  The new 11” wedge models utilized newly minted Penryns at 1.4 and 1.6 GHz speeds with mind boggling 10 watt TDPs.  The latest, well matured Penryns coupled with their nVidia 320m system controllers created machines that seem to perform well beyond their stated clock speeds.

They’re not Sandy Bridge though.

I refer back to benchmarks, as I do admittedly have almost no actual experience to fall back on.  I ADMIT IT.  But the benchmarks are so resounding that it’s very safe to assume that we’re facing more than a few milliseconds shaved off of any given operation (more like entire seconds, or entire minutes!)

I looked up the lowest TDP components in the Sandy Bridge range (note we’ve entirely skipped Arrandale) and found promising contenders.  One i5 CPU and two i7 CPUs roll in at the 17 watt TDP.

The i5-2537m, possessing 2 cores and processing 4 threads assisted by 3 MB L3 cache at speeds ranging from the stock 1.4 GHz to a Turbo frequency of 2.3 GHz!  (Conditions allowing).  The i7-2617m and 2657m both also have 2 cores processing up to 4 threads assisted by 4 MB of L3 cache at 1.5 GHz(turbo up to 2.6 GHz) and 1.6 GHz (turbo up to 2.7 GHz) respectively.  All three of these wondrous CPUs meet the 17 watt TDP apparently required to fit into the requirements of a MacBook Air.

Now, this was what was most important to my decently educated mind.  But there’s another largely unknown ingredient which is the power necessities of the Intel System Controllers versus the standards of other controllers such as the 320m.  Unfortunately, I am unable at this time to locate TDP or power specifications for the older 9400m based controller or the less old 320m based controller, but potential chipsets which would be coupled with the Sandy Bridge cpus have minimal thermal requirements in the range of a mere 3.4 watts.  This simply must be less than a system controller with a built in video subsystem.

Update: at least Dissidia 012 is not a strict fighting game. It sure as he’ll isn’t conventional. Or easy. Or even very understandable. But it’s easily more to my liking.

But then. Son of a bitch is a PSP uncomfortable to hold. Like wow!