Author: Eugene Glover

Long time readers of my blog may recall that my very first generation MacBook experienced every major problem being exhibited by MacBooks. Weird screen problems, sudden power offs, etc.

Now, I’ve got a new one… my MacBook has never had as good battery life as my iBook did, but, I figured it was to be expected as it was smaller, had to drive fans and has a dual-core Intel processor. (Intel never having been known for power-efficiency.)

With those strikes going against it, I didn’t expect that kind of battery life. Still, I never got anything particularly good. 2 hours of operation if I was lucky.

In the last few weeks, that number has plummeted to about 1 hour, and the battery gauge doesn’t accurately reflect the run time. I did all the steps to re-calibrate the battery to no avail.

For a couple weeks, it behaved normally, but with limited battery life. In the last week it has adopted a new symptom. It runs out without warning, and even the battery indicator on the battery itself appears to be wrong.

On our way back from Prescott, since I was the passenger, I decided to give it a complete, documented test.

Conditions:

• Battery fully charged
• Airport turned off
• Bluetooth turned off
• No programs started automatically
• Energy settings set to: Better Energy Savings
• Running one program only, Solitaire XL, continuous use

Here’s how it worked:

• Booted at 12:40, battery estimate 2:10, battery lights 5 LEDs
• 13:44, system shutoff without warning. Battery estimate was about 1:50 remaining within 3 minutes of shutoff! Battery lights, 3 LEDs.
• Booted at 13:45. Battery estimate 1:20, battery lights 3 LEDs
• 13:48, system shutoff with no warning. Battery lights, 3 LEDs
• 13:50, Power Up, Estimate 1:54, battery lights, 3 LEDs
• 13:53, powered off, battery lights, 3 LEDs
• 13:54, power up
• 13:54, powered down before boot completed, battery lights now read 1 LED.

I was actually surprised by how many times I could restart in. In the past (but with much less stringent observation) I had estimated that it was dropping off after approximately one hour. I would check the lights and have 3 LEDs. I would try to start the computer again and it would fail during startup. At this point, it would only show 1 LED.

The question is, is the battery wonky, or is the computer’s energy management system busted. Either way, it’s time again for AppleCare.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Applecare, battery, Computer, Mac, MacBook, OSX, Technology

I’ll give high marks to the Spring Hill Marriott (perhaps I’ll explain why later) but among the good things, free wireless and a real complimentary breakfast, with sausage, eggs and waffles, not just bagels.

After we consumed breakfast, it looked promising that, while still grey, the rain might have abated for the day. We headed out for a walk to get pictures of plum tree blossoms for Irene. Then we headed up a random street towards the top of a hill. When we got there, we found ourselves in Acker Park. We trudged around through the mud for quite a while and finally found ourselves on the south-side of the park. Because Irene had been pushing the stroller through the mud, an environment not friendly to strollers, we decided to circle around on the roads back to the north side and our hotel.

That proved to be a rather circuitous route, but had the advantage of being all downhill. As we approached the hotel, the temperature began to drop considerably and the dark storm clouds began to roll into town again. I left the GPS in the car, but I used Google Earth upon return to calculate our walking distance. Michelle managed to walk the entire 4 miles, which is pretty good for a 4-year old.

Thursday night after our lackluster dinner at the Fazoli’s next door, I’d searched for pizza places and discovered a highly recommended place called “Papa’s”. I dutifully noted the location and paid close attention to the lamentations of several people complaining that they were only open fives days a week (Tuesday-Saturday.)

We hopped in the car as the weather continued to worsen and drove to Papa’s. Perhaps people should haven’t been complaining about the days they were open and should have been complaining about their hours. They weren’t open until 4:00PM. We’d have starved by then and the kids had been geared up for pizza. We returned to a small pizza place we passed along the way: Tastebud’s.

I’ll be reviewing that over at Pizza Locust shortly.

While we were in the restaurant, it really started to dump. Since we were all tired, we returned to the room and I took a nap.

Dinner was almost an equal fiasco, I wasn’t going to get pizza twice in one day, so I knew Papa’s would have to keep for another trip. We headed out to exercise the kids some more and find food. Due to the obscene influx of people into Prescott over the last decade, all the “usual suspects” for family dining were here. I wanted a hamburger, so we finally drove back into the center of town to Kendall’s Famous Burgers & Ice Cream. We arrived just as they were closing.

We drove around mostly aimlessly until I gave up and suggested Red Lobster. Irene was please to get seafood, and they’ve always got a New York Strip steak and a good caesar salad waiting for me.

More pictures follow:
(more…)

VisualHub, a program I live and die by on my Mac has updated to a new version that encodes videos directly into the format needed for Apple TV.

Guess it’s time to buy an Apple TV before March 31…

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, MacBook, Technology, Television, Video

Telegraph => Ancient lizard used ribs to fly

I haven’t had anything about paleontology in a while and in keeping with Primeval’s total lack of dinosurs, here’s another “not a dinosaur”.

A Chinese team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that this creature had a wing-like membrane spread between eight elongated ribs to the left and right of the lizard’s body, an unusual arrangement only seen today in the dragon lizards of southeast Asia.

The fossil specimen described by Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeonanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and colleagues shows the complete skeleton, including the splayed ribs, and imprints from the skin of a lizard that lived in the Early Cretaceous period.

The six inch long skeleton of the insect eater was found in the Liaoning Province of northeastern China, and the species of lizard was named Xianglong zhaoi, after the Chinese for flying dragon and Zhao Dayu, one of the founders of the Liaoning Palaeontological Museum.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Dinosaur, Dinosaurs, Paleontology, Science

Series 1 comes to a close with a few new anomalies – in the script.
(more…)

If I do say so myself, my daughter is very smart.

Her language skills, in particular, are very advanced and even though she’s just in preschool, she’s capable of handling second grade material. (It doesn’t hurt that her mother is a teacher and that my mother, father and I were similarly advanced as children.)

In any case, she recently took her assessment testing and scored perfect scores on both language and math skills, so we decided to take her our for something fun as a reward.

We’ve been having a miserable early heat wave these last couple of weeks and the temperatures are already into the 90’s so we decided to take her somewhere indoors. We took her and James to Makutu’s Island, an indoor playground filled with giant versions of the climbing and sliding playgrounds you see at MacDonald’s.

What makes this place great is that it’s OK for the parents to go on the equipment, too. Since they didn’t have these kinds of playgrounds when I was a kid, I’ve been looking to this for a long time! This is why I had kids, just so I could play on the cool toys.

Michelle got off to a slow start, getting up the ladders and then getting frightened. Some of the playground equipment area easily 30-40 feet in the air and it’s easy to understand why she could get frightened. Once other kids started playing with her, she was climbing to the very top over and over with wild abandon. She really enjoyed herself.

James, on the other hand, showed no hesitation whatsoever, unfortunately, he’s a little too small to be allowed on all the equipment. That didn’t stop him, though, and he climbs like a spider monkey. Irene had a full-time job trying to keep up with him!

Afterwards, we finally managed to get to Churchill’s for Sunday lunch of Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding. It’s was a little too fatty, but it’s better than their fish & chips. To my knowledge, there isn’t any other place in Arizona that has Yorkshire Pudding.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

We had a big change of plans Saturday.

Our original plan was to leave the kids with grandpa and go out to dinner, but during the day, James had other plans.

During his afternoon nap, he climbed out of the crib and deposited himself on the floor. He wasn’t apparently hurt but this was the first real sign that he even tried to get out. We had to change our plans and buy him a bed.

Instead of a nice steak dinner, we trundled across town to Ikea and purchased an identical bed to the one Michelle has. (Hopefully, we’ve neatly avoided any kind of bed jealousy by having identical beds.)

I was building (with Michelle’s “help”) the bed until midnight, by which time both kids fell immediately asleep as soon as it was finished.

I think my wife was a little sad that we have no more babies in cribs.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

It was only yesterday when coming back from lunch that I was commenting on the sad state of affairs on TV.

“We need less TV detective teams working with DNA and psychologists and more proper TV heroes like Simon Templar, The Saint.”

And lo, minutes later I was greeted by the news that the cable network TNT was making a new series of the Saint. Despite being gun shy after that insipid Val Kilmer film, I’m optimistically looking forward to this – especially since today’s news is even better.

Today’s news is from Burl Barer, Brilliant Author => THE SAINT on TNT

The Roger Moore series that began in 1962 used the “glob trotting celebrity” character found in Charteris later short stories, and due to the restrictive TV codes of the time, Charteris lamented that the Saint on TV bore as much similarity to his creation as Winnie the Pooh did to Captain Blood.

Times have changed — restrictions have relaxed. Soooo…this version of The Saint will be the more dangerous and picaresque adventurer, having way too much fun as he takes on recalcitrant and contumacious oppressors while bedding the requisite bevy of beauties — including the mercurial and romantic Ms Patricia Holm. As all Saint fans know, Simon Templar parks his shoes in numerous international locales, but Holm is where he hangs his hat — or halo.

Bill Macdonald asked me to serve as “consultant” to the project, and has honestly taken my suggestions to heart (and page). The show should be really cool, faithful to the character, and won’t have Charteris getting what he termed Graveyard Torque from spinning in his metaphoric grave.

I just hope they don’t call him the “gay buccaneer” anymore… I think that may need be left as a legacy of the 1930’s…

Technorati Tags: Blog, The Saint, Television

KTAR => Appeals Court: No Fake Snow at Arizona Snowbowl

Operators of the Arizona Snowbowl can’t use treated wastewater to make snow, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in a decision that found the procedure would have violated the religious freedom of Navajos and a dozen other American Indian tribes.

The 777-acre resort north of Flagstaff wanted to add a fifth chair lift, spray man-made snow and clear about 100 acres of forest to extend the ski season on the western flank of the San Francisco Peaks that have spiritual and religious significance to 13 Southwest tribes.

It’s one thing to believe idiotic superstitions, it’s another altogether to waste one penny of taxpayer’s money on this nonsense…

In a 64-page decision, Judge William A. Fletcher of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the snowmaking scheme violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and was akin to using wastewater in Christian baptisms.

And why not? It’s a waste of water any way you go about it. Might as well be treated.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Superstition, Rant