Unison

Since The University of Phoenix‘s on-line classrooms use NNTP I’ve been looking for a good newsreader for the Mac so that I can get away from Windows as much as possible. Well, I think I’ve found it. Panic has a program called Unison which seems to have most of the features I’ve been looking for at a great price. It does threading, understands the write only Assignments group, and seems to handle attachments almost right. The only things it’s missing are the ability to handle HTML in posts (coming from what they said) and the ability to attach a file to a reply. I’m still not sure if I’m going to stick with it or go back to Thunderbird, which does just about everything except handle the Assignments group. But it’s nice to have options.

It’s Here!

The MacBook arrived a day early. I’ve done the basic setup on it and started messing around a little. It’s a lot faster than I thought it would be and there’s no problems with heat, whine, or the display. I’m actually pretty impressed with how good the display looks, the colors are sharp, the fonts look great, and the brightness is amazing.

Now the fun begins, getting everything running on it, especially mail and news so that I can start using it for school.

The MacBook Shipped!

I checked the tracking info on-line and the MacBook has shipped! It’s coming in from Shanghai and the expected delivery date is the 17th. Not bad for half way around the world! And kudos to Apple for getting it out early. The expected ship date was the 16th with a delivery of the 23rd.

My First iPod

For various reasons I’ve been thinking about upgrading to an iPod lately. First, with the MacBook on the way it seems the easiest way to integrate my music with the system. Second, the Creative Nomad that I’ve currently got is not compatible (and yes, I know about the Nomad library project and if it gets closer to 100% I might think about it). Third, Creative’s end-of-lifed the model I’ve got.

So today I went down to the Southlake Apple Store and picked up a 5th generation iPod. It’s a lot smaller than my Nomad, sounds better, has a color screen, and has space for photos and videos as well as music. It’s a pretty neat little gadget and I’m glad I finally got one.

First Break-In Oil Change

The break-in of the new top end is going well. On the way back from work today I finally rolled over 100 miles, 118 to be specific. It’s been tough to keep the revs and speed down, the bike really wants to stretch its legs. But being good now means more fun later. I just finished changing the oil and now have another 382 miles to go!

Ordered My MacBook Pro

I’ve been an Apple fan for literally decades now (does that mean I’m getting old?), starting off with a Laser 128 and then an IIgs which saw me through to college when I started working on NeXTSTEP based computers. Now that Apple has started putting Intel processors in the Macs, I’ve been drooling over them. Well, they just released the 17″ MacBook Pro and I placed my order. It’s scheduled to ship on the 16th and should be here by the 23rd.

It Lives!

I got back over to Crude’s this evening and he’d managed to fix the pushrod leaks. It only took three more tries! I finally got to take it out for a ride after that. Just by seat of the pants I can feel a bit more power there. It’s not as much work to get it rolling and it’s been kind of tough to keep it below 3000 RPM. I put a whopping 8 miles on it today, but it’s good to have it back!

Almost There!

I spent the evening over at Crude’s place putting the bike back together. Lots of fun stuff, lots of things to learn. Filing piston rings in order to get the ring gap set correctly, reassembling rocker boxes, and putting pushrod tubes back in. The last one was the real problem. We got the engine all put back together and fired it up without a problem, but then we saw that there were some pretty nasty oil leaks coming from the bases of the intake tubes. We called it quits at that point (at about 11:30) and will be working on it some more tomorrow.

But it felt really good to hear it running again after so long!