Mar
13
Hi guys, sorry for the lack of updates. I know I promised that I’ll call write, but seriously it’s not that I didn’t wanted to, I just got caught up with two new projects, a few kernel panics, 3 clean Leopard installations and a hard drive failure. Seriously, it’s not you, it’s me. I just needed some time. Sheeeeeesh… I’m starting to sound like Janice. Anyway, I thought to chime in this morning and illustrate my last few days.
Let’s start with the Kernel Panics shall we? Seriously, I don’t know what the heck is going on with the Mac OS X 10.5.2 update. Clearly, I’m not the only one suffering, there are tons of reports about people updating their Macs and then later getting the gray screen of death. I know it happened to my MacBook Pro already, but on the iMac it got to a point where I had to reinstall the whole system 3 times. I already tried memtest and TechTool Pro and every test was passed flawlessly. So anyway, because I was getting a lot of kernel panics (which forced me to restart the computer by pressing the Power button for over 3 seconds or so) it seems like I damaged my external Hard Drive.
Yes, *THE* external hard drive with my 130 GB iTunes Library and the 80 GB iPhoto Library. At one point it just didn’t mounted itself anymore. I got a lot of “Do you want to Initialize this Drive?” dialogs and Disk Utility wasn’t being too useful either. Not even TechTool Pro 4.6.1 could’ve fix it, it was like possessed!. That is, until Disk Warrior came along. Cue for Def Leppard’s “Rock of Age”
After this, I was able to gain access to my data, but half my iPhoto library was gone. If you think that’s sad, wait til my wife finds about the Wedding Pictures and the Wedding Album that I had there.
Poor sucker, look at him. It looks like Robocop. I had to take it out of its original IOMEGA External Case in order to mount it on a different case and format it on a PC, after which the PC reported the hard drive is totally fine. And this is Janice’s cue for...
Even so, I won’t even trust this hard drive with our Frankenstein iSight photos, from now on, this sucker is condemned to be The Official Torrent Archive Hard Drive. You know… for the… ummm… Readme Files and Software Manuals that I once download from the internets.
Yay! We got the proof from the printer on Monday and I they look amazing. They are printed on a 18 x 24, 100# Gloss Cover High Quality paper with Satin Varnish AND I specifically ask the printer to use the special fruity-scented ink that repels Zombies. I don’t know if you knew this, but someday, Earth will look just like the I am Legend movie, and when that day comes you better have one (or two) of these hanging on your walls. Don’t tell I didn’t warn you.
Anyway, Except for that last part about the fruity zombie-repellent ink which I totally made up, they really look amazing.
I’ve been feeling a little bit burnt the last few days and besides my mud-wrestling sessions with the iMac (and the external HD) the only thing left to blame was my messy desk. You ever get that feeling that you need to change things a bit in order to jump start your creativity? I know I do. I like keeping my workplace organic, change things around, switch back to Windows once in a while, ok maybe not that, but I hope you know what I mean, so today I came armed with a Zen philosophy and a clear goal: to clean up my desk.
Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.
- Lao-Tze
I just finished and Boy am I enjoying it. Let me tell you, while it’s sill too early to see if I got my groove back, I already feel a lot less contaminated.
This is how my desk looks like right now and it is as uncluttered as it’ll ever be. I only hope it last until the afternoon. DISCLAIMER: Now, contrary to what it may look like, Martin isn’t just picking his nose. He’s bringing back the lost “Pick your Nose whenever someone next to you is having a Zen Epiphany” tradition of the old Zen Monks. As you can see, he’s very devoted to that.
In the middle of everything I was working on a new project for a client of us, called PERMASPACERS. Their product is a Permanent Ceramic Tile Spacer that is not only is easy to install but also helps reducing time and costs. Pretty nifty huh?
So the whole layout was organized in a way that will reflect the symmetrical distribution of tiles on a 120px by 120px grid. I’m very excited to get the client’s approval and start coding it.
In other totally irrelevant news, today I got a new record high of 9km (5.5 miles) on the treadmill… doing the Michael Jackson Moonwalk. Gotta tell you, it’s actually harder than it sounds, specially when everyone laughs at you. Ok I’m done. Vent mode = off and now I need some breakfast.
1
Oooohh, yeah, what’s an IT guys advice before his HDD crashes and all the data is lost because he didn’t make a backup? Right! “Always back up your data”. (it can be a IT girl too)
Just the two cents from a guy from Austria that started reading your blog 5 days ago and can’t wait for new entries. Yeah, I already read the archived ones..hmm..what to say? Addictive, funny, aesthetical, interesting and all the good adjective and adverbs an English dictionary contains. I just love it and the “good ol’search” and of course the stars, and your work and the PSD of your index..
I should stop, but it’s 3:32am here in Frauental an der Laßnitz (which means “Womenvalley at the Lassnitz river") and there are no women here but a not so lovely “design-usability-html-css-and-everything-else- expert” a client wanted to be part of a project which should have been done by yesterday...oh..I think I start using this comment as a therapy.. I really should stop!
Anyways, thanks for making my day!!!
Gerald
2
The Permaspacers site looks really good, they’d better approve! :)
offtopic: Your desk looks really nice, did you buy it or build it yourself?
4
@Gerald: exaaaaactly. And what frustrates me the most is just two weeks ago I lost the opportunity of getting a really nice deal on a FreeAgent Pro over at Slickdeals.net (which btw, you might want to check out). Anyway, I end up getting anyway this week but for the full retail price.
Thank you for your comments on the site. Really, I’m overwhelmed! I promise to stay more up to date with the posts.
As for your client, just send him this letter and he’ll probably get out of your back… or sue you.
Wünsch dir noch einen schönen Wochenende!
@Bart-Jan: I really hope to hear back from the client today. This guys are really easy going so I hope I get the green light and start coding it.
As for the Desk, thank you! I’m really proud of how it came. I ordered the legs from Ikea.com (took about 3 weeks to get here) for $ 5 each, they are made out of aluminum so they look really nice. For the table top (2 meters x 1.85 meters) was designed real quick on AI and I found a real good carpenter who made’em for $ 190 each, which is really inexpensive if you consider the wood I chose is ”paraiso” (which means “heaven"). Luckily for me, we have plenty of both (wood and carpenters) down here in Paraguay.
