This post brought to you by my new 15″ MacBook Pro.

This. Is nice. The screen is INCREDIBLY bright, almost too bright if I have it turned up all the way. No (noticeable) dead pixels either. *whew* And it’s FAST. I mean, really, really fast. It feels huge too, but that may be more perceptual due to the smaller size of the old PowerBook. I was a little concerned when I started reading about noises, but they aren’t as bad as their made out to be. There’s a very slight hissing noise that I can’t discern the origin of, and there’s a very slight buzz of the frequency modulator when the screen isn’t turned up all the way. I had to put the computer up to my ears to hear either of them.

Time to start installing things. First order of business: Warcraft. *evil grin*

//edit: More observations. The Superdrive sounds like a dying cow when inserting a disc. The Airport reception is an order of magnitude better than the old PowerBook, I’m picking up networks from my apartment I didn’t even know existed.

//edit2: Yet more observations. As a basis of comparison, if I have the brightness on the MacBook Pro set to 8 bars (1/2), it is still brighter than the screen of the 12″ PowerBook at the highest setting. The computer runs warm, no bones about it (I’ve been running at full performance settings while it’s plugged into the wall). I wouldn’t use it on my bare legs, but it’s actually warmer on the little strip between the keyboard and display hinge than it is on the bottom. It’s not uncomfortable at all on my lap while wearing khakis, and would probably be better on “Normal” settings, like it will be when I’m running on battery power. Oh, and Warcraft? Yeah, it’s fast. Full settings, 1440×900 resolution, 2x multisampling, runs as smooth as on the PowerMac.

NBA OR NFL?

36 have been accused of spousal abuse,
7 have been arrested for fraud,
19 have been accused of writing bad checks,
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses,
3 have done time for assault,
71, repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit,
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges,
8 have been arrested for shoplifting,
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits, and
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

Can you guess which organization this is?

(answer under cut… guess first!)
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Well, they charged my credit card this morning and I can no longer cancel the order, so they must be packing it up. *bounce*

//edit:

Hello [me],
We wanted to let you know that your order has shipped. If you ordered multiple items, you may receive separate shipments with no additional shipping charges. An invoice for your shipped products will be emailed to you shortly. Visit Order Status to review your order at any time.

It was picked up after the cutoff in Shanghai, and it says delivery of February 27… we’ll see though. I really hope it’s here on Friday so I can play with it.

“I need to touch something to learn more about it.”
“I would rather spend the weekend alone in a cabin than at a fancy resort with lots of people. … Yes, ALONE!”

More to come.

*sigh*

Apple upgraded all the MacBook Pros with faster processors. So now instead of 1.67GHz, I’m getting 1.83GHz. Yay! They’ve also started shipping them.

Mine hasn’t shipped yet.

*twiddle*

//edit: Damnit, didn’t read the whole press release. The high-end models ship this week, the lower-end ones won’t start shipping until next week.

//edit2: Estimated ship: February 23; estimated delivery: Mar 2. I really, REALLY hope it’s delivered faster than that, since I leave for Omaha at 6AM on March 2.

//edit3: Just upgraded to faster shipping, so things won’t be so close if it does get sent out by the 23rd.

Well, as part of my light on-bus reading, I brought along Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X.

I’m starting to get the hang of the Objective-C syntax (far, far cry from PHP’s OO syntax), and realize just how easy it is to make a functional program with just a few lines of code with the Cocoa libraries.

Now I just need to remember what need had motivated me to try and do this in the first place…

Maggie and I are moving at the end of July. If you want our new address now, let me know; otherwise, it will be in the wedding literature for those of you being invited to the wedding (which, as I recall, is most of the people who actually read this thing).

Please?

The Universal Binary for World of Warcraft was released today. This was my only “deal-breaker” for intel. Now I want my MacBook. BAD.

7 days and counting…

“The day Microsoft makes something that doesn’t suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners.”