The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

1. You can’t go to the bathroom without your cell phone.
2. You check your email hoping to catch incoming messages *before* the beep.
3. Every meal out is expensable.
4. You can’t think of more work to do.
5. You feel your phone vibrate even when it’s nowhere near your body.
6. You answer the telephone “hello, how can I help you?” to your mother.
7. A good night’s sleep means dreaming you are productive.
8. When you wake up the first words out of your mouth are “I’ll be right there.”
9. Your boss actually recognizes you.

Tech Republic published a quality list of 10 signs you’re not cut out to be a tech consultant. Some of these may inspire self-doubt, some may inspire confidence, most IT consultants will appreciate the list on one level or another. Here’s one excerpt forwarded by an associate back to me:

“All clients want you onsite quickly. Even though many will resist securing your services on retainer, they’ll request you arrive within an hour whenever they encounter the slightest error or interruption. You’ll move several previously scheduled appointments to accommodate them, research and repair the issue (often by having to track down a little-known issue or obscure fix), and then wait months to get paid.”

Post at 01.com’s blog:

http://blog.01.com/?p=325 

As you may have noticed by now, I’m pretty serious about this project. I have been ripping DVDs every day since the tv was initially announced back in September under the code name “iTV”.

I had no idea where I would end up when I started, but now that I am finished with Parts One and Two, I know what I need from here. I will share with you know some things to consider.

At this point, you are either finished with, or well on your way to having all of your media ripped into Quicktime format, and assembled into a massive iTunes Library. You will start to get an idea of how large your Library will be, and should be planning accordingly regarding a means for storage (more on this in part 3).

Right now, we are going to focus on organization - getting all your music and video in the same library, and properly tagged.

Living not far from Oz Park in Chicago, when reviewing the lopsided percentage of our web traffic using the Apple OS or at least not Explorer, I’m reminded of the cinematic refrain, “O what a world, what a world? Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”

Microsoft is not the Wicked Witch. Apple is not a good little girl. And yet it might make you think for a second when you look at our statistics, that Microsoft just doesn’t matter that much, at least not to our visitors, with only about 30% of you on the Microsoft platform, and fewer than 1 out of 10 using Microsoft Explorer on a given day.

Forwarded to me by an old friend of mine and my parents who has worked for the IRS for many, many years, this is True, although it’s been floating around by e-mail, and I had doubted it, if you’re a US tax filer, it will make you at least $30 if you follow its straight-forward instructions. What’s more, if you’re a business, you can get quite a bit more. “Businesses get a bigger refund, based on the actual phone bills,” says Greg Mermel, CPA, whose column on the subject will be posted on 12/22/06.

At last I met the new Apple Xserve, at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual conference in Chicago last week, where Apple showed up with a team of knowledgeable specialists, 2×24″ iMacs, and a posse of MacPros running a variety of relevant software. Not only is there art and science in the new Macs, but also Apple is into Science, calling OS X “The Platform for Discovery.” Movies and pics of what was discovered follow. Come, visit the Apple booth at RSNA with me!

Ever wonder what the /Library directory is for, and why there’s more than one of them?

The time has come. The time is now. I’m reviewing the basics, getting ready to recertify as an Apple Certified Systems Administrator (ACSA) for 10.4, Tiger, yes, just about in time for Leopard, 10.5 to come out (Spring actually seems very, very far away at the moment). It actually doesn’t come at too bad a time, I’m working less this week to help my wife with our new, third baby, and I’ve got time at all sorts of odd hours now to review technical details, and share tidbits with you!

Among the principles that may guide your deployment of enterprise collaboration software (aka “groupware”) such as Zimbra, many experts agree having a sense for the value of such a solution to your company should be your first priority.

Your team may be just you, your laptop and PDA, or it may many coworkers spanning the globe… how do you not only measure your company’s ability to communicate under day-to-day, common, often less-than-ideal circumstances, but also understand the prospective value of investments meant to improve collaboration?