Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Ich bin ein Mac

I'm typing this on our new Macbook Pro.   Yes, I have finally made the switch.  It was a long time coming really, dating back to a couple of years ago.  I had become tired of dealing with the exact same types of issues at home as I do at work, and thought that learning a new OS would be more fun.  Also, I have been trying to wean myself of my Microsoft dependency for quite some time, starting with Office and things of that sort.  Shedding the entire OS was the only remaining item.  I have to say that so far I am having a good time with it.  One of my greatest complaints about the Mac OS version I used previously (9.x) was that you couldn't get "behind" it if necessary.  Not true at all with OS X.  Since it is built on a unix flavour, there are all kinds of possibilities with the command line.  One of the first things I had to do after installing World of Warcraft was edit the hosts file and add a static name to IP address mapping as for some reason the authentication server wouldn't resolve.  Yesterday I used rsync, a unix command line tool to copy all the music over from my PC to the mac.  As for the OS itself, the GUI is lovely, and mostly intuitive.  I haven't had trouble finding things when I need to, and there have only been a few irritating things that I'm just going to have to get used to (i.e. inconsitent maximization behaviours in windows, and the very annoying mouse acceleration behaviour that I haven't been able to figure out how to disable).  I've been able to find various free apps to do everything we consider essential these days (VLC for media, opera/firefox for browsing, NeoOffice for office apps).

I'm now working days again, and I've started my new position at the TNOSC for a few days now.  Actually, I had a 3 day weekend for transition from nights to days, then worked 3 days, and am now on my first 3 day weekend.  These 3 day weekends are awesome, I could get used to it for sure!  So far the new job is fine, the people are nice, and the possibilities for the future are exciting.  I'm really looking forward to planning and deploying Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008, which is currently looking like first part of next year, though the way things move around here, I won't be surprised if we don't really get started til the middle of next year.  Nonetheless, it's great to be in on this at the ground floor.

We are all still getting used to the new schedule, and luckily Rowan's first grade curriculum arrived just the other day, so Kerri and Rowan won't be going nuts with nothing to do during the heat of the day which they are now going to have to endure more than they did when they could stay up late at night.  The material is really exciting and definitely more substantial than the kindergarten stuff.  However, Rowan is still having trouble with writing which is more important this year, so I think Kerri is going to work mainly on that before really diving into the rest of the material.  The emphasis is on ancient history, up to the fall of the Roman empire I believe.  We are in such a great spot right now to visit a lot of these historical sites, so we are going to try to plan many trips over the next year or so.

13 comments:

Damon said...

Jesse! say it isn't so... you know... every time i think of mac i remember the original anti mac video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iEAGmBRC1dc

oh well.. hopefully you have a good experience with it! I'm in the process of trying to use Ubuntu a bit more... maybe I'll switch to it in the near future...

Miriam said...

Sounds exciting! I can't wait to start homeschooling. You use Sonlight, right?

Anonymous said...

Welcome!

Do you find people treat you differently with a Mac? I couldn't help but notice you looked taller after you got it...and much better looking...

Anonymous said...

Heya JC... I have not comment (yet) about your Mac experience, but I thought of you today when I met another INTJ :)

Anonymous said...

Hello,

First time reading your blog, very informative thank you.

One off the topic question, is Arifjan PX accessible to US citizens?

I just relocated to Kuwait a year ago but I'm a civilian.

Khaled

Jesse said...

Khaled,

No, it is not. It is extremely difficult to get on the base even if you are supposed to be here. It is a real pain.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

....so...a dry spell then?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, and congrats. We just got Story a mac book for high school. Did I tell you she was a geek? What did you teach her, beside chess? She will be in all advanced classes, Alg2, excelerated science, english and history, and she signed up for choir. W/E.

paulmerrill said...

Congrats on the Mac!

You will never regret it...

Anonymous said...

Hi Jesse and Keri,

How are you both? I just caught up on reading your recent blogs.

I have been in Kuwait 4 months now. So far so good.

Do you know of a good place to get a rental car for 130 KD or less?

Do you know anyone who is selling a good used car for about 1,000 KD or less?

Was it a good decision to buy a used car compared to renting a car?

All the best,

Jeff

Jesse said...

Jeff,

I have not looked into renting cars here, so I can't really help you there. Nor do I know of anyone selling their car.

I think buying used was a good choice for us at the time, but we are saving up to buy a newer vehicle for the next country we end up in. I've had to spend quite a bit on keeping our car running.

American in Kuwait said...

Dear JC,

Greetings, I just started a new Blog to help out anyone interested into moving to Kuwait.

http://americaninkuwait.blogspot.com/

Regrds,

AIK