Wednesday, July 31, 2002

A couple of folks emailed to see if I was OK -- thanks for asking! -- as I have posted very little on the weblog recently. On the Cocoa front, all of my recreational programming time has been consumed by Things of Which I Cannot Speak until after August 25th or so. On the CodeFab front, see CodeFab's web page for more information. Also, I recently acted as an expert witness on a Software IP related law suit. Can't say much other than I learned a huge amount about Patents, Copyrights, Trade Secrets, and legal proceedings in IP related litigation. My current day job -- CodeFab has me on site with a client -- is working to port a very large body of NeXTSTEP 3.3 code to OS X 10.2. Let's just say that porting NIB files across 10 years of OS revisions is non trivial, but can be done. I also started writing a book. On a totally personal note, my son just turned 2 and has rapidly advanced into the every-day-brings-something-completely-new-and-exciting phase of learning. Quite the adventure trying to fill that mind. 4:42:21 PM

Unfortunately, PowerBook's don't bounce. My dog managed to get tangled in a cable and in the ensuing freak out, pulled my TiBook off the edge of a 3 foot high desk such that it landed dead-smack on the upper left corner on a hardwood floor. The case is bent and the white titanium band around the top of the powerbook is actually split through above and to the left of the escape key. The IR port's cover popped out and a hunk of the titanium case shattered around the opening and fell out entirely. The audio jack is extra tight these days likely because the motherboard is now bent in the corner. However, the system continues to work flawlessly. All ports work (though I haven't tried the exposed IR port yet). The CDR drive still burns discs, the hard drive hasn't shown any gravity related filesystem issues, the battery still makes a solid connection, the display is fine (though the left hinge squeaks a bit), and I think my one dead pixel is now fixed. I bent things back into shape the best I could and the end result is just a bit of extra character. An amazing combination of really awesome engineering and some good luck. I wasn't in the room when all of this happened, but a bunch of family members were. They fully expected me to freak out when I saw my TiBook on the floor with. I didn't as the machine is covered by one of CompUSA's extended warranties. If a real problem crops up, I have no doubt that it will be taken care of under the warranty. Posted with a new version of RadioServices built with stuff I can't talk about... 4:36:07 PM