I spent this afternoon at a geek convention of sorts - Games Workshop held their "Conflict" day at Leederville Recreation Centre (where I play soccer). It was a minature gaming tournament and for $10 entry I went and had a look at it. To their credit, they had a lot of other things happening alongside the games including an "Iron Painter" competition where you had a minature, 20 minutes and a specific colour that had to appear on the model, introductory games, gaming organisations and clubs, tutorials and displays. I like the little men, and wish I had the time to paint an army and fight other people. There's a fair bit of thinking and tactics that go into a game and that's the part I like the most. Anyways... I digress...

Because of the unfortunate glass incident, I was not able to compete in this morning's City to Surf race. Whilst it sounds like a good excus, especially when I tell you the rest of my story, anyone that has run with me in the last few months will (hopefully) tell you that I was excited and keen for the race.

I've been walking on my sore foot as normal as the pain was not too bad. It was always there, but not screaming at me. For some reason I've left it alone over the last few days and thought that it was time to have another dig. The human body's pretty cool, as mine had pushed some of the glass out to a point that the nail scissors were scraping the glass again making that nasty glass-on-metal sound that I'm sure you all know. I pulled a small shard out without any hassles and started to get excited - maybe I could get the rest!

I cut away a bit of the skin that was dried and could see the glass shard poking out the end. It was as if my scissors were magnetic or there were tiny people in my foot pushing the glass out because it seemed to just slide out when I put the right pressure on the right areas.

My mood changed from "hell yeah, take that you glass-shard-nard" to"crap, why didn't this happen 24 hours ago?" Hence the title - it's a little bittersweet. Next time I think self-amputation might solve the problem head on.

I figured that to be fair I should, after a few days, comment on some of the things that I did like about this Powerbook.

First up, suspend works like a treat without any tweaking or fiddling. The battery life is nonderteminate (or should that be indeterminate?) because I don't know how long this Mac's been on the rental circuit, but I'd guess it's about 12-18 months old. It's telling me that it has just over 2.5 hours on a full charge, which is what my ThinkPad got/gets with the old battery. I got a new battery only last month and it gives me 4 hours. So yeah, shutting the lid and having instand suspend working is kinda cool. I picture myself at the coffee lounge snapping down the lid and walking away, not waiting 10 seconds for the "beep" and hoping that it doesn't crash on bootup. Not to mention, I chew through about 10% battery/hour under Ubuntu. Enough on suspend already...

Bluetooth worked first time with both my mouse and my phone. Word on the street is that Ubuntu's Breezy Badger will have great Bluetooth support, so I'm kinda reluctant to bag Linux for that just yet. Right here, right now (as Fatboy Slim would say) though the Apple kicks ass.

For the record, thumbnailing works by enabling it in Finder :) I don't think it can handle video thumbnails, but I'm probably wrong about that.

Somewhere (maybe in my head/dreams - Edit: 28/08/2005 03:08PM: No wait, it is a comment awaiting moderation. Done.) I thought that Hale had said Powerbooks don't have PCMCIA slots. This one certainly does, on the left side of the keyboard. It's got a sexy little metal cover.

Last up, styling. Of course I knew that the machine was going to look good, but it is apparent just how much effort Apple and their design teams have put into this. It's what a computer should look like. I remember Adam or Mark commenting about K-Mart fashion, and saying how it didn't cost anymore to make a nice looking shirt over a crap looking shirt, assuming materials are somewhat similar. I think the same can be said, partly, for computer hardware design. Even if the build cost is slightly higher, the Powerbook's shown people are willing to pay for it.

My laptop came back from the repair shop today with nothing fixed and a quote that cost almost $140. And all they did was confirm what I'd told them.

Early on in the piece Adam and I had talked about how not having the laptop was going to hinder my work and we decided that if there was any uncertainty with how long it was going to take to get repaired that we'd hire a replacement Apple PowerBook. OS X is Unix based so I get all my tools out of the box. If push comes to shove I can install Ubuntu on it an know that the hardware is fully supported (minus the wireless, which I can cover with a PCMCIA card I have floating around).

So far it's fun to play with but there's a few things that I'm not liking. First up the keyboard lacks a nipple, which means that I have to use the trackpad. This is seriously uncool. I've connected my Bluetooth mouse and it works OK but is a little slow to respond. That might just be normal though, as I seem to recall the same thing under Windows (all that time ago) and Linux. Having one mouse button is fine, but highlighting doesn't automatically copy the text to a buffer.

The wrist guard is a little hard on my wrists and I wonder how extended periods of hackery will fare on my poor hands. It is very smooth, and shiny. JPEGs don't thumbnail like they do in GNOME. I have much less screen real-estate, though with Expose this is is a reduced hassle.

I'm expecting that a lot of what I'm not loving can be changed with configuration tweaks, but not knowing my way around the OS might make that hard... not that I'm scared of getting my fingers (and someone else's PowerBook) dirty in the process.

This morning I got a huge piece of glass wedged in my foot between my little toe and my second-smallest toe on my right foot. In our house we have lightbulb covers that are made from thick frosted glass and when Maggie got home from Melbourne the kitchen one blew up and shattered splinters on the kitchen floor. Half of the lightbulb is in the holder too so I need to swap that out.

From what I can see Maggie cleaned the tiled area but the carpet is covered in hundreds of shards and it wasn't until one wedged and snapped in my foot that I knew they were there. I'm not sure how she's gone three days without impaling herself. I think Emma has our vacuum cleaner so that might explain why Maggie left it.

It's quite a thick glass, and it's deep into my foot. I've dug around with some nail scissors and can feel the glass scrape on the metal (what a lovely feeling that is) so I know there's something still in there. I thought it might just be the gaping wound that was hurting, but I think it's both the sore and the glass.

Soccer is definately off for tonight, and I'm not going to get a practice run in before Sunday. Right now I'm really doubting that it will even be fixed for the race on Sunday, which is so damn annoying because I'd been training and looking forward to this for a long time.

It feels like this last week I've had my fair share of bad luck. I hope it stops soon.

I'm in Melbourne with Adam for another few hours - we fly out tonight at 9:00PM. I've been here since last Thursday night when Maggie and I flew in. She left on Sunday night, and Adam flew in from Sydney.

On the flight over I took my laptop out of the bag and found that the LCD panel no longer worked. What a bummer! I noticed that when the laptop was going through the X-ray machine at the airport that it stayed in there for a long time. The operators swapped shifts when meant that my ThinkPad was getting bombarded while they signed in and out. I don't know that it's related, but it made me mad. Tursday night I rang IBM support while Maggie had a shower. The dude was helpful but basically said I was stuffed. It was a 5-business day wait to get a quote to me, which I then had to pay $130 for and had to approve by FAX within 6 hours. It would then be 14 business days before the laptop was returned to me. "Umm... I am only here until Wednesday, which isn't even enough time for a quote" I said. He told me that for $190 an hour I could have an onsite technician, but there was no guarantees. Brick wall.

Friday morning we woke up fairly late and I made a few calls about the laptop. I found a place about 2kms from the hotel that could look at it straight away, so I left Maggie getting ready and took off. I went to the Melbourne Notebook Service Centre and the tech there was helpful. In the end he thinks it was the powersupply to the LCD as he swapped the panels out and it didn't solve the problem. Also, you can see a very faint image on the screen, so it's not broken, it's almost like it's not powered. His diagnosis matched what I expected, but again parts are going to be delayed so it will have to wait util we get back into Perth.

I raced back to meet Maggie and Rob for lunch. It was great to see Rob again; we were becoming close mates just as he left for Melbourne, having always been friends (since he was born!)

Maggie and I went into Melbourne city and did some shopping. I checked out Minotaur and Outré. I bought some GI Joe graphic novels from Minotaur, and a stencil art book by Banksy for Ben. He's been a wicked mate lately, and it's his birthday soon so it's a perfect excuse to shell out some dosh on cool people.

I picked up the laptop in the afternoon in the rain and caught a cab with Mags back to our hotel.

We got ready for dinner and went to Lygon street, which is the food district in Melbourne. Dinner was OK, but things were just not 'right.' We'd made plans to go out that night and hadn't heard about what was happening from my friend that was organizing it. In the end, after travelling around and following all the clues things didn't work out, and at 1:00AM I went back to Maggie in the hotel room and we had an early night. We were kinda down 'cos things hadn't worked out, but it was our own fault for setting expectations. My friend was appologetic but it wasn't his fault at all. These things happen...

Saturday was a different story, and we got breakfast and hit Chapel street. I bought some shoes, a pair of jeans and a muscle shirt (now I just need the muscles). Maggie shopped until her feet hurt and we got a late lunch at around 3:30.

We then came back into Melbourne and met Kristy (Rob's sister) for a coffee and a chat. Again, it was cool to catch up with her - I miss her and enjoy hearing what she is up to. Her magazine is going well, apart from some political problems within the management camp, but that's business (unless you work for TFG :)

Mags and I said our goodbyes and went to see Wedding Crashers which started about 40 minutes after we got to the cinema. I read a 2600 mag and Mags burnt some more cash on things she meant to get the day before. The movie was really funny, and it was nice to be sitting and relaxing for a few hours. Go check it out. Good idea with some funny actors and interactions.

That night we went to the casio for 10 minutes and then onto the Spearmint Rhino. Mags and I had a ball, which is all I'll say. ladies, and gentlemen, check it out when in Melbourne. Classy and quality.

Sunday morning we went to Chapel street again and got some breakfast. Maggie and I shopped some more, infact this is when I bought the shoes, not Friday... We came home and had a rest (it was a late night at the 'Rhino) before getting a taxi out to the airport and putting Maggie on a plane back to Perth.

Her flight was fine, which was a relief. She doesn't like flying, but doing it on her own would have instilled some confidence in her which is great. Confidence rules.

I shot over to the Virgin terminal (Mags wasn't on Virgin, she flew QANTAS) and collected Adam. Ben came and got us in his WRX STI and it was a quick trip back to our hotel room.

... and that was the first half of Melbourne. Stay chooned for more.

Disclaimer: No spelling or grammer checkin'. i'm pumping this out as fast as I can. Deal with it.