a curious week

A curious week.

I ordered a new re-furbished iMac from the AppleStore last weekend, and sure enough it arrived during the week. It actually arrived on Thursday, I had a day off then anyway. So I had the dining room table set up with three different computers, running migration assistant to transfer over everyone's files to the new iMac.

The new iMac, is one of the twenty inch aluminium jobs.
Impressions ?
• the screen is very glossy - plus point it looks stunning, minus point, it is way too distracting if you have light behind you.
• the aluminium looks okay, but in a tactile way, it is wonderful. Oddly they seem to have used the aluminium on the keyboard to give it more heft. This combined with the shallow keys, make it a wonderful thing to use. Easily my favourite keyboard now.
• the mouse looks out of context, against all this aluminium splendour, a new mouse must be on the way
• the screen is big, but not unpleasantly so. It is getting towards that tennis watching scenario, where you turn your head to see the other side of the screen. I suppose you could simply work in one corner, and use the other for less frequently consulted stuff, as you would with two screens.
• it has that lovely new computer smell,
• it seems a little bit faster than you would expect

And with a new computer, new housekeeping to do. I'll need to order some extra memory, (Dimms?), from Crucial. I'll need to set up a proper backup regime. I currently have three LaCie external hard drives of varying sizes. There is a troublesome one, drive number three, which seems to stall when doing backups using SuperDuper or TimeMachine, and accordingly is not much use. I've brought this up with TechSupport at LaCie, and they asked whether it worked okay connecting up via USB, rather than FireWire, and indeed it does. I'll see what they come back with next.

Anyway, I'll also need to think a bit more about how I am using my dot mac account. I must confess that I have yet to get my head round how it all works. My free trial was just about to expire, so with rather ill grace I upgraded to a paid for dot mac account, but really I do feel that it is very poor value, for what is a rather indifferent product. However I do really need the ability to sync between different computers.

As ever these days, everything seems back to front in money terms. Things that would have made good expensive wedding presents, like a set of cutlery, are now cheap as chips, and all the bills, seem to be on the up escalator.

Computer hardware is all phenominal value and getting cheaper, but you are paying out for the associated services. Broadband, dot mac, software, iTunes downloads, in my case.

My share portfolio is taking a tumble, a big screen full of red for the stockbrokers. I track the average purchase cost of my shares, so when the average price dips below that, I simply view it as a buying opportunity. I'm in it for the long term, and intend to have these shares for years, if not decades. All very Warren Buffet-ish. Currently spoilt for choice on what I could buy, and there is always the possibility that my best bet would be to just sell the lot, and repurchase them all cheaper in a few months.

Pretty quiet at work, currently readying ourselves for the next batch of work. The office is reorganising at the weekend, so we all got kicked out at lunchtime on Friday. IT staff coming in to roll up all our keyboards and phones, wrapping the cables round them. I've moved about every six months for the past year or two, so I'm getting quite used to it. For the first time, I had only a very modest amount to pack and move.

Met up with an old colleague for lunch, something that I really ought to be doing more often, as I really look forward to it, enjoy it, and look back on it as something valuable. Anyway, said colleague, has not been doing so well. No adverse comment on her abilities, thinking back to when I worked with her, she was running the most fun, most worthwhile, most brave, most innovative, place that I have ever worked at. This was not just my impression either, we all of us, felt that there was a real buzz about the place, that it was something different and something special. I think that we were all given the opportunity to try out new things, and develop ourselves enormously. That said, it was not without its frustrations, but with hindsight, these were pretty trivial, and when you care deeply about things, then the disagreements have a bit more bite to them.

Her current unfortunate situation is more a reflection of the vagaries of working in the very very real world of the voluntary sector, where you are at the end of a very long chain, and dependent on the grace and favour of a great many people for funding. Falling out of favour is no reflection on what you have done, or not done, it just seems to be a fact of life sometimes.

Anyway, I hope that she finds something that suits her talents, strangely many of the people that have impressed me most recently, are struggling to find work commensurate to their abilities. However that certainly does not diminish my view of them.