Category Archives: Geek

All things geek

Thanks, Steve

Steve Jobs passed away today at age 56 after a battle with cancer.  Here’s a few random thoughts…

On this day, I own a buttload of Apple gear: iPhone, iPod, iPad, MacBook Pro, Apple TV, Apple TV 2, Time Capsule, Mac Mini… I’m planning on getting an iPhone 4S as soon as possible.

I was (and am) a big open source dork at heart, but Apple’s simplicity and ease of use, especially the past 7 years really spoke to the pragmatic side of me.  It turned me into a fan boy, I guess.  It didn’t hurt that OS X is NeXTStep is UNIX… I touch OS X and Linux every day.

One of Dinah’s first words was iPod which she taught herself so she could ask me to turn on music for her.

In college, I loved using the NeXT computers we had. My first class in college used scheme on the NeXT’s. The NeXT is one of the first places I played Doom.  I took calculus using Mathematica on the Mac in college.

Steve also touched my kids’ lives via Pixar. (Okay, my life too, I saw Toy Story in the theater first run, long before I had kids.) Also through their first computer, a Mac Mini.

There were too other public figures who’s lives and deaths touched me the way Steve’s passing is touching me today: Jim Henson and Fred Rodgers.

OS X 10.7/Lion attemping to mount a Windows 2008 file share: WTF?

Overall, I’m happy with the changes that Lion brings.  I was a bit thrown off by some of the changes that happened as Spaces got folded into Mission Control, but once I found out how to assign apps to desktops in the new style I calmed down.

We’re stuck with one vexing problem at work that’s Lion related:  We have all of the work Macs tied into Active Directory and that’s working pretty well.  However, we can’t seem to mount a Windows 2008 file share if it has access permissions on it.  This worked fine in Snow Leopard, but I’m getting an error dialog with “You do not have permission to access this server” when I use the “Connect to Server” GUI box.

However, if I go to the command line and issue a mount -t smbfs cifs://server/path/to/share /some/path it mounts just fine.  I’m not sure what the command line is doing different from the GUI, but seriously WTF?

Its holding us back from doing wider deployment.  I can live with doing a manual command, other users, not so much.

[Update: I’ve opened a bug with Apple.]

[Update 8/24/2011: Apple has put up a Knowledge Base article addressing this at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4829 which explains the behavior differences. I don’t have a great workaround yet but we know the why now.]

[Update 2/15/2012: 10.7.3 is still showing this behaviour]

[Update 9/14/2012: I should have posted this awhile ago, but Mountain Lion continues the trend of the behavior change.]

How do I stack up on twitter? Infographic showdown

Infographics of me vs @tcar, me vs. @beattyj, and me vs @evo_terra. Due to Evo’s popularity and social media presence I thought it would be interesting.  In any case,  a fun little twitter bug. I like how it knows I like beer. And that it thinks Jason is a rapper. HAHAHA

The infographics after the jump. Continue reading How do I stack up on twitter? Infographic showdown

RE Tech Rocks DC

Get ready, I’m going to start to use flickr a lot more, I just upgraded my flickr account to a pro account.  Here’s my first attack against you visually, the photos I took at the “RE Tech Rocks DC” event the other night where non-other than good friend and boss Mark Lesswing performed on his acoustic bass.

(BTW, the above if a flash based slideshow from flickr…sorry iPad users, but I’m experimenting with flickr.)