As I type my MacBook Pro is downloading and compiling the necessary source code for ImageMagick. I'm building some Ruby on Rails-based software that requires file uploads and I'm using MacPorts to install the necessary code. My processor is getting a chance to stretch its legs.

At home I'm ripping and encoding Sex and the City episodes for Maggie. Each episode takes about 90 minutes to process on our Ubuntu server and this morning I queued up three ISO files with 6 episodes each, so it should be crunching away for just over 24 hours solid.

As a geek I get a certain sense of satisfaction when I actually push my machines. Because I don't play PC games and my laptop is used for web development that doesn't happen all the time.

I've always reasoned to myself that I liked programming because I'm smarter than a computer but it's infinitely faster than me. By combining our "skill sets" we can achieve great things. Maxing out the CPU makes me feel like the computer is living up to its end of the bargain.

Does anyone else feel that way?

Edit: Almost 24 hours at full throttle:

Q: What's the hardest part about rollerblading?

A: Telling your parents you're gay.

We got a new Transformers. Indiana Jones came back. They're currently filming G.I. Joe as a feature length film. Now I hear that Top Gun might be getting a sequel.

Today may well be the happiest day of my life.

This afternoon I picked up a latte from Epic on the way through West Perth. I was pretty late getting into the office today and really missed my caffeine hit. Ever since Epic was featured on Today Tonight a few weeks back they've been consistently busy, even during periods where you'd expect the opposite, like at 2PM in the afternoon. It's like that band that you liked before everyone else, except when other people started lsitening to them it's not like you had to wait longer to hear their tunes.

Anyway, I grabbed my docket and wandered over the road to Joe's Pie and Baked Good Emporium to get some bread rolls to compliment my office-bound soup. It took about 6 or 7 minutes round-trip.

My coffee was still not ready! I got chatting and found out that Epic was broken into last night. Their doors were levered off and the bolts circumvented. Apparently the crooks only took some cash and because they didn't trash the place it meant the Epic crew were serving coffee. However, their second machine was down for repairs so things really weren't going Epic's way.

I asked them to let me know if they found out who burgled them and I'd round up a posse to deliver some tough justice. Vigilante style.

At least the barista told me a funny joke to pass the time:

Q: What's yellow and sits in the corner?

A: A naughty bulldozer.

If you are able to laugh when you're down then how bad can life really be?

My brother doesn't use his laptop that much, mostly because it's old and slow and riddled with viruses. He has an old Toshiba Satellite A50, which has a capable 1.6GHz Pentium M processor and a crippling 256MB RAM. It has a disgusting keyboard and trackpad, and the screen only does 1024 x 768. 

I asked him what he used it for, when he does use it, and it's the typical low-tech requirement of "web and email." And I think his email provider is Hotmail anyway, so it's really "web and web."

Last night I backed up the small amount if data that he wanted to keep (all of his digital photos are on an external drive) and installed Ubuntu 8.04 for him. Unfortunately the installer required 256MB minimum, and when push comes to shove he only has 240MB because the video card steals 16MB. This doesn't cause the installer to bail though because, as far as it can tell, the machine is up to the task.

To help the installer out I switched to the console (ALT-F2) and created and mounted a swap partition. This helped the installer dramatically and meant that it could actually get the job done. I also found in the BIOS that CPU-frequency scaling was enabled, but the installer didn't know how to handle it properly so the machine was locked to 600MHz. I disabled it in the BIOS and it screamed along at its top-speed.

I rummaged around our "bits box" at work and found my old IBM ThinkPad. I popped the back panel off and pulled out two 256MB memory modules. Andrew's machine had room for one more so that got jammed in and now the laptop is much more responsive.

Turning off the Compiz fancy-pants visual stuff made a big change too, making the machine usable, but the extra RAM made it actually pleasurable.

The wireless and sound worked out of the box - it just took me a few minutes to find the external volume control knob.

The combination of more memory (more than double when you consider it's gone from 240MB to 496MB), a pedal-to-the-metal CPU frequency and a decent operating system has meant this old girl has a few more months (years?) of service in her yet... after which I'll definitely be recommending a Mac ;)