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My first generation (Rev. A) MacBook Pro (Core Duo 2.0 GHz Intel 32 bit Yonah) has starting to slow a little.  The 100GB hard disk is full and I can’t add any more RAM (2GB’s maxed out) but swapping in a bigger faster 7200 RPM laptop HD drive (say like a Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320 GB) and upgrading the mini-PCI wireless LAN card to 802.11n will get me by.  As I recall, Apple took about a year and a half to upgrade to the Core 2 Duo chipset with 64 bit capabilities and even then Leopard didn’t come out until Fall 2007.  I was an early adopter and I’ve been pretty happy with this machine.  So now I’m looking to either stay with OS X 10.4.11 or possibly go the whole hog to 10.5.5, either way I’ll need XP Pro SP3 for CAD software using either BootCamp or rEFIt as a bootloader.

In Leopard with Time Machine data backups should be seamless, my only concern now is application compatibility and system stability.  Z’s white MacBook 2.2 Core 2 Duo came loaded with Leopard 10.5.1 and seems to have stabilized in 10.5.4 (though I think it does need more RAM).  From what I’ve read, somewhat like Vista, Leopard has a basic “footprint” of 512MB, so really 2GB is the minimum you need in practice with multiple applications running.  Tiger apparently has something like a 128MB starting point.

I took my first 3D rendering class in SolidWorks today at NYU.  It seems pretty cool.  NYU sells an educational copy that should work under XP and the MacBook Pro supposedly works alright with it.  We’re going back to Jimmy’s No. 43, I’m excited.

The thunderstorms have been coming in every afternoon. It puts a damper on evening climbing. I bought some more GRE study materials. NY is full of mostly Mediteranean tourists. Apparently WPA2 Pre-Shared Key encryption is not fully secure. I’ve been considering for a while setting up an OpenRADIUS server, perhaps now is the time.

Also I’ve been considering downgrading to a Samsung flip phone with a small QWERTY keyboard. The 8830 quality control left a lot to be desired and I’m not sure that the 8330 would be any better, though I am quite sure that the bberry OS 4.6 has to be better than 4.2.2 which has been riddled with memory leaks and browser bugs from the beginning.

The latest thing that went wrong with the 8830 was it sensed the trackball (pearl) as being constantly depressed. The delete key would also act as the menu key and it’d randomly create and reply to both emails and SMSs automagically. Listen, okay, so the iPhone cannot cut & paste or search (find) within web pages and the 8830 breaks every few months. Who makes a smart pda that doesn’t run on Windows that is as slick as the iphone but has all the “computer like” features bberry users are used to?

No one, that’s who. Let’s hope Nokia and Google get in the game as there is still quite a bit of room for improvement.

[ed: apparently with a couple of clever bookmarklet non-Apple Sanctioned web-applications Safari on the iPhone can "find in page" and copy & paste. Now as to why we are on the 3G Version 2.0 of this damn Jesus Phone and it requires a third party work around to achieve such is beyond me.]

I’ve spent what feels like the last two months working either splits or overnights. Last night was under the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan side, one of Olafur Eliasson’s waterfalls is fully visible, but at night the LEDs seem somewhat dim.

Riding up East Broadway to Clinton on my way to the W’burg Bridge I nearly ran over a hooker who had positioned herself in the bike lane presumably for callers in motorized transport. Granted, I am only speculating she was a woman of the night, but there was a man nearby who I believe was her pimp and he did holler some indecipherable at me as I passed.

As I climbed the bridge’s bikepath I had various thoughts, namely how many Johns actually solicit while riding their bicycles? Which led me to think about bearded potbellied men on recumbents, tandem recumbents more prcisely, trolling the LES and Chinatown late at night with an empty seat hoping to score. It’s a funny image I think. And surely a boon to the image of large bearded men on recumbents everywhere.

A final thought: riding my bicycle is faster than taking the subway. I supposed I knew this, and most nights my excuse has been that I was so tired, why would I want to ride home? But the best reply to this is twofold: 1) after a long night riding home is a good way to unwind 2) there is literally no traffic in NY city at 5am. Seriously, I had some beautiful rides home coming up through the damp verdant jungle that is the east side of Prospect Park Brooklyn, riding home from Church Ave. Also at 5am, if you are lucky, there will be passed out tight jeans fix’sters on the Williamsburg Bridge who just couldn’t quite make it home from a debaucherous night out in the LES.

So yes, commuting on bicycle has somehow renewed my faith in humanity, even if NY is still far too automobile-centric. My hope, and perhaps it’s closer than we realize is 1000$ per barrel oil and every road a bike lane.

Maggie was in town briefly before heading to work at a clinic in Bolivia for a few weeks.  We were walking through Central Park near Umpire Rock and there is this a middle aged man time-trialing his Cervelo Carbon P3 with matching Zip 404 front and 808 disc (yes a disc! in Central Park!) wheels.  So of course he hits the corner with the intersection path that goes to Columbus Circle at top speed and expects everyone to get out of his way, because you know when you get to carriages and the smell of horse dung, that will really motivate him. He nearly ran over an old guy riding his huffy.  It was really an American Psycho moment.  I hope when he does race his triathlon that he is training for he gets run off the road by a pack of wild dogs.  That’s the least we can pray for really.