Bill Seubert

Well, I finally got the guts to upgrade my Macbook Pro to Snow Leopard last night…the DVD has been sitting on my desk since before Christmas.  Since this is the laptop I use for work, I wasn’t eager to risk breaking it, but I figured I was safe if I took a CCC backup first.  Yesterday was my “screw around with computers” day, so after I got my old machine working with the 32″ TV monitor (to be used @ church), and reloading my wife’s old laptop for the kid to use until I can get THAT machine working, I did the SL install.

The install itself was pretty smooth…the install process did what it was supposed to – until the end.  After the progress bar finished its trip across the screen, it prompted me to click “Restart”.  So I did.  It restarted, and got to a blue screen.  And there it stopped.  And it sat there for a couple of hours (while I cursed at it periodically).  Convinced I was going to have to restore my backup, I disgustedly hard-powered it off and on.  And lo and behold, it rebooted (twice) and then came up to the normal login screen.  Wow.  It actually WORKED.  So, being the glutton for punishment, I went into Software Updates to try to update to 10.6.2.  And again ran into problems – it wouldn’t update.  So I went to apple.com and downloaded the combo updater and installed it by brute force.  This time, no blue screen stall.  It rebooted and came up fine.  So now – which apps are broken?

I have a Line 6 POD XT for my electric guitar and had installed the software that’s used to connect it to my Mac, and it is not SL compatible.  When I finished the install, it prompted me that it had moved that to some special folder for incompatible software.  I tried a bunch of other stuff that pretty much seems to work.  My Evernote install has lost all my notes (!!!!).  I need to boot from my backup and recover those.  Safari doesn’t support my extensions in 64-bit mode (1Password, AdBlock), so I had to go back to 32-bit, which works fine, although it’s slower to start up.  And Lotus Mobile Connect didn’t work at first, but a reinstall fixed that.  So far, everything else seems to work OK.  I installed a new release of Lotus Notes, since I was on a roll.  It, too, seems to work fine.

There are some interesting new features in SL.  I did buy back about 10GB of disk space, which paid for the $25 SL upgrade.  Now my touchpad supports 4-finger swipe…it’s pretty cool to be able to invoke Exposé using swipe instead of having to move my mouse to a “hot corner”.  I am anxious to try the built-in Cisco VPN, but haven’t gotten to that yet.

Overall it seems like a decent upgrade, even if there isn’t a lot of obvious on-the-surface improvement.

If you have a PS3 (or PS2), the game for you is Buzz.  We bought the PS2 version last year at Christmas, and we really enjoyed it.  This year we got the new PS3 version that comes with wireless buzzers.  It was great fun for the family, although it’s way too hard for younger kids.  Players probably need to be at least 16 yo, as the questions are pretty tough.  My 17-yr-old son did very well at it, as did the rest of us.  The wireless buzzers are GREAT, and the PS3 game will work with the older, wired controllers from the PS2 version.

If you’re more of the “Call of Duty” type, you probably won’t like it, but anyone who’s into stuff like Trivial Pursuit or the Countdown game they have in Buffalo Wild Wings and other restaurants & bars will love it.

Man, do we have a buttload of global warming out there now, or what? The temp right now here at the homestead is 10ºF. Forecast low for tonight is +5ºF. I was just reading the forecast discussion from the NWS, and they said:

FOR THE EXTENDED PERIOD (THURSDAY NIGHT - SUNDAY)...MODELS REMAIN
IN GOOD AGREEMENT ON HI-AMPLITUDE LONGWAVE H500 TROF PERSISTING OVER
ERN NOAM THRU THE PERIOD...WHICH WILL KEEP THE FA IN A MUCH BELOW
NORMAL TEMP REGIME THRU NEXT WEEKEND. AT THE SFC...ANOTHER
SIGNIFICANT INTRUSION OF ARCTIC AIR WILL DOMINATE THROUGHOUT THIS
PERIOD IN THE FORM OF AN INITIALLY 1044MB HI PRES. THIS WILL BE
EVERY BIT AS COLD AS THE LAST ONE...IF NOT COLDER. IN ADDITION...IF
THIS SNOW FORECAST VERIFIES FOR MID WEEK LIKE WE CURRENTLY ARE
THINKING...THE ADDITION OF FAIRLY DEEP SNOW COVER OF MUCH...IF NOT
ALL...OF THE FA WILL ONLY ENHANCE THE ABILITY TO RADIATIVELY COOL.
KSTL HAS NOT DROPPED BELOW ZERO SINCE JANUARY 1999...ELEVEN YEARS...
AND IF ALL OF THIS COMES TOGETHER...COULD SERIOUSLY PUT THAT STREAK
IN JEOPARDY...ESPECIALLY FOR EARLY SATURDAY MORNING. MODELS HAVE
ALSO BEEN CONSISTENT WITH BRINGING ANOTHER CLIPPER THRU AROUND
SATURDAY BUT WITH THE 12Z GFS BACKING OFF A BIT ON THAT...KEPT POPS
DRY FOR NOW AND ONLY BUMPED UP SKY COVER.

Check out the highlighted text – I found that pretty stunning!  I can’t believe it hasn’t been below zero in STL for 11 years.  I guess we missed the fun while we lived up in central IL.  And it looks like we may get a good shot of snow on Wed night/Thurs morning:

OF PARTICULAR INTEREST IS THE MID-LATE WEEK STORM...IN WHICH THERE
IS INCREASING MODEL CERTAINTY. THIS WILL BE A STRONG DIGGING
SHORTWAVE...A CLIPPER IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD...THAT IS EXPECTED
TO IMPACT THE FA FROM LATE WEDNESDAY THRU THURSDAY. THE TIMING IS
SLIGHTLY FASTER THAN PREVIOUS RUNS...BUT GENERALLY HAS SEEN DECENT
RUN TO RUN CONSISTENCY. AS WITH MOST CLIPPERS...THE KEY FEATURE IS
TYPICALLY THE SFC LO TRACK. THE UKMET/DGEX/ECMWF/GEM WANT TO KEEP
THIS SFC REFLECTION TO OUR N...WHICH WILL MEAN MODEST QPF...WHILE
THE GFS TAKES IT S OF I-70...AND HAS MUCH MORE SIGNIFICANT SNOWFALL
AMNTS. VERY COLD SFCS WILL ALLOW FOR SNOW TO EASILY ACCUMULATE AND
NATURE OF STORM FAVORS HI LIQUID-TO-SNOW RATIOS...PERHAPS AS HI AS
20:1.  AS PREVIOUS DISCUSSION MENTIONED...ADVISORY LOOKS LIKE A GOOD
POSSIBILITY...AND IF THE MORE SLY GFS TRACK VERIFIES...A WARNING MAY
BE NEEDED.

Yikes!  A 20:1 liquid/snow ratio is really, really high, but with cold like this, it’s not surprising.  Guess we’ll have to see how the models converge over the next couple of days.  Keep your eyes on the NWS HPC Winter Wx page.  We’re about a day away from the storm being within the 3 day model window.