The Blog

The day has finally arrived. After years of hard work, heartache, and new beginnings, I can finally retire “Patillac” the MacBook Pro. Arriving today was the 24″ iMac, complete with 4GB memory, 640 GB HD and a screen so magnificent it rivaled the plasma in the living room (okay, okay…I may be exaggerating on this one a bit, but hey this has been a long time in the making). Actually, now that I think of it, I first made the decision to switch over to the iMac in October/November. I did my homework and committing to the desktop was pretty easy. But I decided I would wait until after MacWorld 2009, thinking there would be a huge modification to the iMac. That came and went, and not much was done…but I continued to hold off. There were some financial commitments that came up in-between MacWorld (January ‘09) and the summer (however, during that time the iMac’s were given an “upgrade”), but WWDC ‘09 and the announcement of Snow Leopard really got me excited. Here we are today (July ‘09) and Bonster comes down and tells me it is time for me to get a new computer…that’s music to my ears!! I’m so lucky!! But looking back, from October/November ‘08 until July ‘09 is ~9 months. LOL see where I’m going with this. Damn, I feel like a mother who spent 9 months anticipating the birth of new life, and now that its here I just want to spend every waking minute with it, coddle with it, and I can’t wait to watch it “grow up” and take on a life of its own!! Okay, don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind…but I’m a huge “MacHead” so this is pretty damn special, so let me be!! Can’t say thanks enough to Bon for making it happen!! You rock!!

Enjoy retirement Patillac
Welcome, iMac (Name TBD)

The last couple days I have been in Los Angeles at The California Wellness Foundation’s Champions of Health Professions Diversity conference, and wow what an amazing experience it has been!! I really can’t describe the level of motivation and inspiration that comes out of this type of conference. The stories of the three awardees were absolutely phenomenal. For a long time I have been debating what career chice I want to pursue and where I want to obtain it… Well I can now say I have an answer and it feels great!! It feels natural. It feels right. It feels amazing. Can’t wait to see what the future has in store!!

I heard a discussion this morning about the new rule that requires high school basketball players to spend at least one year in college before they enter the NBA draft. Stars like Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, and Lebron James skipped college and went straight to the pro’s right out of high school. I think it’s safe to say they are doing “okay.” Anyways, this issue is subject to debate for it’s own reasons…

What caught my attention was the piece where allegations and corruption were brought into the discussion (if you have ever heard a talk on college athletics, 9 times out of 10 there is SOME discussion of corruption). Essentially, the commentator made this point: People constantly blame the “NCAA” for being corrupt. They blame the “NCAA” for making decisions based on financial gain, not the student-athletes best interest or what will appeal to the fans. So, who is the NCAA? The executive director is Myles Brand. Their headquarters are located in Indianapolis, Indiana. They have an annual budget of ~$5.64 billion (yes, billion, with a BEE)!!!!!! But that is not who or what defines the NCAA. Rather, the NCAA is an association, as it’s name implies. As an association, there is a governing body that dictates the direction of the organization. The management team handles the day to day operations and have the authority to make decisions as long as they are parallel with the governing bodies agenda. If a decision needs to be made that will affect the direction of the association, or will divert funding or leverage from the constituents of the association, than the governing body will be called in to make that decision. The governing body represents the group of individuals or organizations (the constituents) that make up the association. In the case of the NCAA, the constituents are ~1,200 colleges and universities who have college sports at their institutions. The governing body, therefore, are elected university presidents and athletic director’s. They are charged with making decisions that are in the best interest of the universities, student-athlete’s, and fans. In my opinion, they do so in that particular order!!

What does all this mean? It means take a long look at what the association represents. Of course financial gain is going to of top priority. One of the longest running debates is whether or not the NCAA should do away with the BCS and move over to a playoff format for determining the national champion in college football. The BCS generates millions for the schools who participate in the bowl games. Yet, every year there are legitimate contenders who get left out because the algorithm the BCS uses to determine who plays for the national championship determines so. Forget the expression “Any given sunday…!!” I honestly believe if the financial gain were less, you would

NCAA Headquarter's in Indianapolis, IN

Damn, ever have one of those “regrettable” weekends. I’m not talking about the “oops, I drank too much and have to blame it on the ah ahl alchohol” type weekends. I’m talking about a weekend where after weeks of discipline - eating healthy and working out - I go and eat things I know I’m going to pay for. The culprets? Pizza & Nachos. The reason? I’d love to say it was because I was out numbered so because that was the food of choice by the majority, I was left with no choice but to eat. BUT, accountability means accepting and dealing with your choices so I have to take the fall and pay for my actions. I easily could have just resisted the temptation and made my own dinner, eaten somewhere else, or eaten two  slices instead of four - but I didn’t. Only person I can blame is myself. Damn.

But oh did it taste so good
No more though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Patillac,

Your a 1st gen MacBook Pro and I think it’s time we accept the truth. Your currently on life support and the prognosis isn’t looking good. You’ve been a dear friend, always there for me when I needed you. We learned things together, had many “firsts” together, and learned each other’s quirky habits so well that we are practically one and the same. In a sense, you have defined me. When your mouse pad starting showing symptoms of uncontrollable shakes, I said, hey I’m going to stick by your side. We’ll just get a peripheral and disable the mouse pad. It’s been ~9 months since we parted w/the mouse pad. And yes, the constant need of the peripheral mouse is quite an inconvenience, but the sacrifices we make for true love are well worth it. Then the fevers got really bad. Your bottom side was burning up like a fire side grill. I couldn’t sit you on my lap like I used to in the good old days when you were younger. The thought and smell of burning flesh were enough to make you desk-ridden for the rest of your life. No worries. Nothing a nice desk and small fan mounted right behind you can’t take care of!! At least we still had each other, right. However, your first stroke really scared me. I trusted that reliable brain of yours so much I never thought of backing you up. External Hard-drive? For what? I have a Mac Book Pro named Patillac that was as reliable as a Cadillac (that’s where you got your name - Me=Pat, You=Cadillac Quality). I was using nearly all 80 GB of your storage capacity…not a byte of which was anywhere else. Some might say that was careless, I just called it trust. But oh that fateful December day was a tough one.

I booted you up like I had everyday for the past few years. I saw the same grey screen I saw thousands of times before. But this time you were showing it to me for longer than you usually had. After about 10 minutes I became a little worried. I did what I thought was the obvious thing to do and forced you back to bed. After giving you a few more hours alone I came back in the room with uber-confidence and pushed the circle of life. Except you were paralyzed again. Something about that grey screen was haunting. It was like a block in the road that we have never encountered before. I hadn’t yet learned of your uncanny ability to share the contents of your brain with another Mac via Target Mode - silly you, that was such a brilliant option you should have told me about that when I first got you. Nonetheless, I spend ~12-15 hours operating on your software and trying everything I could think of. Because we had you at so much capacity the restore option wasn’t an option at all. Sad. So after alot of deliberating I did it. Erase & Install. I lost everything, but the good news was I still had you. You came back to life like a true champ!! I lost alot of important documents, and some photos I’ll never get back. But it’s okay. Memories can be remade and documents rewritten. But I did have to invest in hard drive. The “all my eggs in one basket” approach stung a little. It’s okay, you got along well with the WD 1TB Drive!! I also did a little homework and learned of the Target Mode option to recover all the goodies before giving you the fresh start. FireWire Cable was now on the shopping list!!

Life was normal again, at least for a couple months. One February day you started acting sick. You couldn’t do some of the things we commonly did. Playing with iTunes, Safari, and Mail seemed to exhaust you. No way could we play with all three at the same time. Over the next few days the symptoms got worse. I was usng the right click, force quit medicine many times AN HOUR!!! You used to just let me quit whatever we were playing with. But then it was as if you wouldn’t let me just quit those things we were doing, if one of them wouldn’t respond to me, none of you would. After one of the many forced shut downs you gave me the dreaded gray screen. I knew what it meant. Just to be safe I used the life support cable (FireWire) and saved everything on ur brain. I labeled the folder: Patillac’s Brain - Feb 2009. Like a true companion I walked you through the rescesitation process and brought you back to life. You were a trooper and came back like a star.

Unfortunately, I have four files on that Western Digital that start out “Patillac’s Brain…”. Just a couple days ago you started making a sound I haven’t heard before. Like a purring of sorts. I’ve read about this sound. I don’t want to think about what the next gray screen may bring (you started showing me a “file” with a question mark in it) but I’m afraid the next time you may not come back. I’m okay with the inconveniences. Traveling with a mouse is easy: stuff it in the side of the back pack. The life support cable is small and can fit in my pocket,  but making sure we have access to another Mac is sometimes challenging. The fan is a bit cumbersome and inappropriate for some places, but we find ways to make this one work (I’ve learned that propping your backside up with something keeps you cool a BIT longer…). The western digital isn’t so bad…kind of bulky but knowing you’ll always have a second storage (backup) is reassuring. And the fact that because of the mouse/fan/etc. you’ve essentially become a desktop computer just means no more watching TV and playing with you at the same time - maybe this was a deliberate move on your part!! You were getting jealous huh!! I thought so!! It’s okay, we learned about the wonders of fancast.com so we could do EVERYTHING together!!

But it’s time. It’s time I accept the fact that your on your last leg. The purring noise may be a signal that the time is near. Your successor will have big shoes to fill. I’ve started looking into it and I think the new iMac 24″ will be the one. But I hope you can hang in there a bit longer. Money is a bit tight and I can’t afford to go pick up the newbie for a while. It’s been a blast and I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any other way!! If I can get the newbie in here before you check-out for good, I promise to not get rid of you. You’ll just be officially “retired.” Limited use only!! Who knows, I may get brave and open you up and see what kind of surgery we can do…maybe replace some of the problems and get you healthy again!! Time will tell. Until then, hang tough and keep doin ur thang!!

Check out this article about a trojan virus, so conveniently named iBotnet, that is “targeting” Mac computers:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/22/first.mac.botnet/index.html

There have been viruses that have “targeted” Macs for as long as there have been Mac computers. The problem is, such a small percentage of computer users are Mac users that the publicity that makes viruses so popular have gone largely unnoticed.  Not to mention, why spend the time creating a virus that is going to reak havoc or find some financial gain and then limit your  “audience aka victim pool” to the smallest group of computer users? This article clearly points out the financial benefit to targeting Mac users, gee, thanks for giving giving them the “reason” but I honestly think this article and the hoopla it is creating is intended to be a marketing ploy by Symantec, who make Norton Anti-Virus software and/or McAffee who also makes anti-virus software.

When you produce a product or service that is dependent on bad things happening to innocent unsuspecting people, you almost have to play a hippocrit’s roll. As much as you “care” about your customers computers’ safety, you really are hoping viruses continue to evolve - it’s job security. And hey, if you have one demographic locked down (PC users) and there is another group that is growing at an unprecidented rate, why not plant the “fear” seed to see if you can tap into a market that previously had no use for your services.

And while were at it, why not get into the business of CREATING the viruses…shoot that seems to be a great way to make sure your software is “ahead of the game.” But that’s all a conspiracy theory discussion for another time…Happy Mac’ing!!!