What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning I had a horrible feeling as my MacBook Pro had that annoying little "chirping" sound again. About every second for 10 or 20 seconds a little "chirp" came from the left-hand side of the laptop. Not good. This has happened on and off for a while now, and I just figured it was some odd software state, and when it didn't stop, and the apps stopped being responsive, I decided to reboot and clear it up.

Not bloody likely.

It wouldn't reboot. Not at all. Nothing. The machine would startup, and the "checking disk" would spin, but I'd never get the login screen, and I knew then that the culprit was the drive. At that point, it was clear that my drive was on the edge of death, if not already over the edge. So I shut the box off and let it sit for a while. I had a lot of work to do today, so I needed to get to it.

After about 30 mins., I tried again. It appeared to boot, and I thought "Holy Cow! What a lucky break!" But after only a few minutes, it was clear that it wasn't OK, in fact, it was really in trouble. Bad news. Thankfully, I had TimeMachine, and that was going to cover all the data I had on the box. Good to have that backup.

No, the problem was How to get a new drive? I called the Apple Store in Oak Brook, the closest one to my house, and asked them "Hey, let's say my drive is dead, do you have one in stock to replace it with?" - they diverted my to Apple Care. I can understand that, so I was patient and dealt with that guy, who agreed that it was a drive, and to have me get to an Apple Store.

So I called back the Apple Store in Oak Brook, and told them of my conversation with Apple Care. Again, the "best" they could do is to say I had to bring it in and then they can tell me if they have what is needed in stock. Arrgh. OK, I can see the logic here, most people aren't going to be able to ask a question, and then that makes Apple look bad when they say they have the part, and that's not the part that's needed. OK, not good, but OK.

So I make a Genius Bar appointment and go to the Oak Brook Apple Store.

The Genius there agreed on the assessment, and said that if they had the drive in stock they could replace it right then. So back into the "bowels" of the Store she went.

I waited.

She returned to say that no, they didn't have a drive to put in my laptop. She could order one and it'd take two days to get a replacement.

WHAT!?

I asked her to check the other stores in the area - maybe one of them had a drive. SHe called one store - no good. Didn't call any others. Clearly, I'm guessing that she wasn't able to get this level of information from anyone. She did say, however, that the Unibody MacBook Pros were designed to have user-serviceable drives. I asked her how, and she explained that by removing the screws on the bottom, the drive is easily accessible.

I decided to try a new drive myself. I got directions from Liza for how to get to Fry's from Oak Brook, and she helped out a lot. I got a Seagate 500GB 7200rpm drive - the same drive that is in the new 17-inch MacBook Pros, and went home to install it.

The screws are small, that's for sure, but they are almost all just small phillips-head screws. The exception to this are the "posts" on the side of the drive to hold it in place once in the machine. These look like very small torx drives. But since they were posts, a pair of pliers worked very nicely.

I got the drive in, had to use the restore disks for 10.5.6 as the 10.5 disks didn't have the hardware support that was needed for this "Early 2009" machine. Still, after about 30 mins I had OS X installed and was pulling in the accounts and files from the TimeMachine drive. I had to let it run overnight as it was time to get some sleep, but I had a good feeling that in the morning I'd be able to finish it all up and be back at work with a functioning laptop.

This morning I noticed that VelaClock 2.1.14 was released and the sum total of the release notes for this guy was:

• Version 2.1.14: Updated Daylight Saving Time rules for Bangladesh.

and while I don't have a lot of need for knowing the time in Bangladesh, it's nice to know that should the need arise, I've got the tool to help me know the time.

Honestly, it's an invaluable tool for looking at the time in a lot of timezones. It's been very helpful more times than I can remember.

I'm still a bigger fan of the Hulu Desktop, but for the open source crowd, I'm guessing that Miro is the preferred choice as it's got the blessing of that organization. It's a sharp looking player, there's no doubt. And I really like the way it works - downloading without you having to get involved in the process... it's just the content that I'm not a huge fan of. I was looking for a place to watch House, M.D. and Hulu Desktop has it with limited commercial interruptions. Kinda hard to beat that.

But I like to see what Miro has to offer, certainly with an upgrade such as this.

This morning I was upgrading Firefox and I noticed that WordPress has been upgraded to 2.8.1 and I went over to HostMonster to see if SimpleScripts had the update - sure enough, it did. I'm not exactly sure why the availability of this update didn't generate an email like the previous one did, but no matter, I spent the few minutes updating the WordPress installs on my HostMonster account.

I do think this is a great thing - HostMonster and WordPress. Very nice.

This morning I saw that Miro 2.0.5 was out with important fixes for YouTube video downloads. I've not used Miro as much as I had hoped, primarily because it doesn't have the content that I'd like to watch - Hulu Desktop does. But in the spirit of supporting a good cause, I'm going to keep looking at Miro as it's all about the Creative Commons, and that's a cause worth supporting.

It's got content, and it looks good. Give it a run.

Well, this weekend I decided to see how my iPhone 3GS handled getting calls. I have to admit that I've yet to actually receive a call on the phone - sticking mostly to text messages, apps, email, and the other smartphone features. I wanted to hear the ring, see how it handles the calls, and then set up and check the usage of my voicemail.

Pretty much, it's Apple all the way - class, ease of use, and exactly what you'd expect. But then there was the Voicemail. I was totally blown away.

Maybe it's because I've been using corporate voicemail too long, or maybe it's the old answering machines - I don't know, but when I realized that the iPhone downloaded the voicemail to the iPhone so that you can easily see who it's from, play (or re-play) it over and over, save it or delete it - all with the ease of text messages or email, I was completely blown away.

This had never even occurred to me as a possibility. I was thinking I was stuck with the horrible "press 7 to listen to the message" for the rest of my existence. No longer. I have seen the absolutely beautiful way that these engineers and designers have looked into the way you'd use a smartphone and made this do just exactly that.

Stunning.

I have to tell people that this alone, is a good enough reason to get an iPhone. The rest is gravy, but the ability to deal effectively with voicemail is something that every technology device connected to the phone system should learn from.

Simply amazing.

I'll never have anything other than an iPhone as long as they make them. It's only been a few weeks and already it's a life-changing device. I didn't think it possible. Stunning.

I read a tweet about DVRs and Hulu Desktop and decided to see if they had an update, and sure enough they did - 0.9.6 is out and it's got a nice new feature - it allows you to pick what you want the app to do on startup. I don't like it to start playing the last thing I was watching because, frankly, I've already watched it. No, I like it to go to the "favorites" menu so that maybe I'll see something that might catch my eye.

This is still one of the slickest apps that shows TV and movies to the desktop. I don't mind the commercials as it's targeted and I'd have to watch them on TV anyway. It's the cost of watching, I understand.

I also love that the web page for Hulu Desktop shows House, MD - one of my favorite TV shows.

This has got to be the evidence that PETA has really, collectively, lost their minds. I remember seeing the original video, and thought that the President was pretty neat in getting the fly.

The response is out of control:

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

They're saying he shouldn't have swatted the fly! What's up with these people? Are they totally off the deep end? What little compassion I had for them and what they are trying to accomplish vaporized as soon as I read this official statement. Show more compassion for a fly? As if anyone should? How about rabid dogs? Bats? Venomous snakes?

Amazing.

After a great deal of work, the VideoLAN folks have finally released VLC 1.0.0 and (of course) I got it and updated my copy on my MacBook Pro. While it's a nice player, the biggest reason I have this is to use Handbrake which now requires VLC if you're going to rip DVDs - which is the reason for having Handbrake in the first place.

I haven't dug into the release notes (primarily because I can't find them on the web site), but I'm sure they've added things since the last version. But the biggie is that it's final, and Handbrake uses it.

For the last day of the Staycation, we had planned to go to the Indiana Dunes, but when we got up today the weather looked like it wasn't going to cooperate. If it's 82, then the water will be colder, and no one is going to have fun in freezing cold Lake Michigan water. So we decided to go to a local place and ride a few GoCarts and play a little Putt-Putt.

As it turned out, it got up to 92! So much for good weather predictions.

But we had a lot of fun on the GoCarts, and a good bit of fun on Putt-Putt. Nina doesn't like not doing something really well, and so when she wasn't hitting it in the cup in one or two strokes, she got a little nasty. Face it, she's 10, and used to being able to do what she wants to do. But life isn't always like that. Lesson learned.

We then went home, plated a few games, and called it a Staycation.

Liza and I learned a lot about our family and vacations, and that's good.

• Get out of town - Joseph is just going to text his friends, and when you go home all the problems of home come to the forefront. Gotta get out of town.
• Do more, little things - the days were full, but fun. Keep it up.
• Don't allow the kids to feel too comfortable - keeping them out of their element allows them to bond with each other. That's great.

So long as we carry these lessons forward, it'll be OK.