New iPuter!

ZOMG! So last week I finally decided on a new computer. I got a new-in-box previous model iMac from the bookstore for an excellent price, and it came with a free iPod mini. I soon figured out how to hack it to run FrontRow (really cool multimedia player that *only* comes with the latest revision iMacs). Then Monday comes along the OS X 10.4.3 update, and breaks the launching mechanism for FrontRow, so I postponed upgrading at home until I could be sure it would work (on my Mac Mini at work). Anyhow, I got it working, and upon getting home, I upgraded, and added the codecs for divx, 3ivx, and xvid to Quicktime, and now I can watch divx and xvid files natively in FrontRow! w00t!

At work, today, I spent probably a good 6-7 hours working on 4 pc’s and 2 printers. I got one of the pc’s cleaned up and running much faster, got 2 more of them online and updated, and was getting started with the last one on windows update. I really hate, or rather despise windows pc’s. It’s so sad when you can’t get a new computer and plug it into the internet without getting infested with malware. Can take over an hour to give a computer a good run-over to be secure and fully patched. What else is sad, is that if I were to do this off-campus, free-lance style, I could probably EASILY make 10x what I make on-campus, per machine…. Just without all the college atmosphere, helpful peers and superiors, guaranteed paycheck, etc, etc. I like my job a lot. And that said, I probably wouldn’t ever try to do similar work on my own, most of the positive aspects are the people and the atmosphere (and the fact that until today, 90-95% of the computers I support were Macs– I think it’s down to around 80% now).

Also, I’ve been thinking a bit about what kind of skiing I want to do this winter. I’ve got a season pass to Bogus (ID), and some vouchers to the likes of Willamette (OR), Meadows (OR), Schweitzer (ID), and Tamarack (ID). Part of my family lives in Idaho, so I’ll be there a fair amount. And this year I have a cousin going to grad school in Cali, so at least one, probably a couple/few trips to the Tahoe area (maybe something to Shasta/Ashland) are in order. The problem is, traveling this distance, *and* buying a lift ticket gets very expensive, so I need to figure out how to work out some deals on something, maybe arrange some ride-sharing somehow. We’ll see. Oh, and my parents got season tickets this year to their local ski area, so I challenged them to get out skiing more than me this year! 🙂