YaY for Mac

Short one today – cause I had to reformat my pc AGAIN *groans*, and am still in the process of reinstalling everything yet again. Wow, that’s like 2 formats in 1 month. Important note to self: Never run a program that looks legit (but really isn’t) when you haven’t yet got around to installing a virus scanner. My PC really crashed and burned that time! Spyware installed itself and took over big-time – Windows Defender and a few other programs all couldn’t remove everything, programs started booting automatically on start-up, internet-ad windows kept popping up every 30 seconds, my wallpaper reverted to active desktop (which was not undoable, despite 3 hours of trying with patches and all kinds of manual DLL replacements).. anyway, I just decided to reformat, since I’d only just done it a few weeks ago anyway! This time, I didn’t loose any email – but even if I would have, it wouldn’t have mattered, cause I’ve only been collecting all my email again since the last reformat 2 or 3 weeks ago, so there’s not much

You’d think I’d know better not to run some dodgy app without having a virus scanner installed yet, but work has really been stressful these last week or two and my mind has been on another planet. I was very disappointed in myself though, but what can you do. What’s done is done.

But I suppose the exciting news is that rather than doodle around thinking about it for another few months, this most recent example of just how easily a PC running Microsoft Windows can crash and burn (1 small program – less than 20K in size actually, is all it took) pushed me over the edge once and for all. I have now ordered my Mac, and paid a deposit. I also decided to upgrade the processor, cause you never know how long it’s gonna be until I get a bunch of programs that’ll need something gruntier. I don’t think that day will come for at least another 2 – 3 years, but still… it didn’t cost too much extra to do it.

Here are the specs:

* 4 Intel Xeon 2.66GHz processors (dual core – so it’s actually 2 physical processors, but there are 4 CPU cores)
* 1GB RAM
* 250GB SATA drive
* 2x NVIDIA video cards with 256MB RAM on each
* Firewire 400 & 800
* Bluetooth
* Built-in wireless
* SuperDrive
* Wireless keyboard and a Mighty Mouse

So.. how much? About $4500.

My boss is interested in buying my current home computer (for me to use at work), because it’s much better for design than my work machine is. My work one is a 2.6GHz AMD Athlon MP, but it has some weak & dodgy 20GB IBM drive… yeah, from the batch at my last job where we sold 20 and had 15 come back after a year? Yeah, that batch. I’m surprised it hasn’t died yet actually. But my home box (which may soon become my work box) has SATA and that means I can use the two Western Digital Raptor (10,000 RPM) SATA hard drives we have at work lying around doing squat. Schweet Vvrrrroom!!! See that? That was the hard drive. Spinning. Fast heh.

Unfortunately my current home machine seems to be getting a bad name at work – Simon hates it cause it’s too loud and has too many fans (when speaking about it some months ago, he said, and I quote: “Nah man, it’s too loud – too many fans. I don’t want all that air going across my desk all the time. How would you like it if I blew over you all day??” … it took about 5 seconds before we both looked at each other and burst out laughing at the ‘other meaning’ that comment has! haha…), and those who read my blog there (everyone?) know how dodgy its been lately… but I must point out that the first reformat had to be done cause 1) it’d been a year since it was last formatted (which is a looong time for a PC!), and 2) because I desperately wanted to get Surround Gaming to work on my tri-screen setup. The second reformat took place cause of, as you read above, I wasn’t paying attention and ran a very bad file, which completely destroyed my Winblows installation

Completely random insert here – you know what’s freaky? I have been getting a stack of VHS to DVD conversion enquiries lately… 7 this week in total – 4 of those came in today! I always try and ask how people find me – three came from the ads I’m currently running on Google AdWords, and the other came from the YellowPages! Cool

RiverFire tomorrow night… should be good. We have a BBQ at work each Friday – today included, so we’ll be having another one tomorrow night when we all meet for RiverFire 2006. I’m gonna bring my DV cam, so stay tuned for some cool RiverFire vids on here soon. We have an awesome view of the city and today when the two F1-11 fighter planes did their practice flyby, we had an AWESOME view of that, the Roulettes and the army helicopter, so it’s gonna be mad… music, food & drink, fireworks, work-mates & friends. YaY!

On Sunday night my bro and mum and that crew are going out for my birthday (dinner)… I hope my cute Latino friend can come too. He says he’ll be there (he works there ). I think he likes me, but he doesn’t want a relationship atm – so I’m yet to figure out why he’s so keen to get to know me better when I’m not interested in casual atm…? Hrm.. oh well, I just hope he’s there on Sunday night

Ah well, that’s all for now. I wrote a really long blog entry the other day about some issues I’m having with certain things that are occurring at the moment, but I decided not to post it. I might chuck it in the Members area… or I might not. Dunno yet. Oh well, I just needed to get it all down on paper, and that’s what I did. .. suppose it doesn’t matter if no-one ever gets to read it. That said, when I hit 10-years worth of blogs (4 yrs to go!) I’m gonna try and create some kind of book and all of my D&M posts will probably be in there.

As always, love to you all. Peace and all that jazz