I am now the proud admin of a Mac OS X 10.4 web / ftp / wordpress server. My boss can’t go 10 minutes without saying “Podcast” or sending me three emails about the so-called phenomenon and he asked me to set up some space to test the technology.

So I grabbed a G4 533 with 896MB and an 80GB hard drive, wiped the disk, and installed OS X 10.4, followed by Wordpress. That is one hell of a webserver.

No, it’s not live yet - we have absolutely no content to podcast, presently, but when I get the static IP punched through, and the site goes live, I’ll pass along the link.

The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service, at a hotel in Asia, which was recorded and published in the Far East Economic Review:

Room Service (RS): “Morrin. Roon sirbees.”

Guest (G): “Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service.”

RS: “Rye..Roon sirbees..morrin! Jewish to oddor sunteen??”

G: “Uh..yes..I’d like some bacon and eggs.”

RS: “Ow July den?”

G: “What??”

RS: “Ow July den?…pryed, boyud, poochd?”

G : “Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please.”

RS: “Ow July dee baykem? Crease?”

G: “Crisp will be fine.”

RS : “Hokay. An Sahn toes?”

G: “What?”

RS:”An toes. July Sahn toes?”

G: “I don’t think so.”

RS: “No? Judo wan sahn toes??”

G: “I feel really bad about this, but I don’t know what ‘judo wan sahn toes’ means.”

RS: “Toes! toes!…Why jew don juan toes? Ow bow Anglish moppin we bodder?”

G: “English muffin!! I’ve got it! You were saying ‘Toast.’ Fine. Yes, an English muffin will be fine.”

RS: “We bodder?”

G: “No…just put the bodder on the side.”

RS: “Wad?”

G: “I mean butter…just put it on the side.”

RS: “Copy?”

G: “Excuse me?”

RS: “Copy…tea…meel?”

G: “Yes. Coffee, please, and that’s all.”

RS: “One Minnie. Scramah egg, crease baykem, Anglish moppin we bodder on sigh and copy….rye??”

G: “Whatever you say.”

RS: “Tenjewberrymuds.”

G : “You’re very welcome.”

Apple has released the new video-capable iPod with a 2.5″ LCD. And it comes in black. 60GB, still $399. How many do you think they are selling right now?

There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese.

-Coach Finstock

Mac OS X is the best desktop OS ever. Seriously, it is. The newest offering, OS X 10.4, is slick beyond comprehension at times.

The migration app included and run during the post-install setup program is the coolest thing I have ever seen. Check it:

I bought a new dual G5 2GHz for a coworker a couple of weeks ago. Usually, when a new machine comes, I set it up on the network, install the suite of apps we use (Adobe Creative Suite, Macromedia Studio, QuarkXpress, et cetera, et cetera), config the user account, enable sharing on the needed directories, and so on. It takes usually 4-6 hours. But not any more.

Now, I boot up the new Mac, next to the old one, and turn it on. It starts the setup program, and along the way asks if I am migrating from an old machine. When I say yes, it waits for me to connect a FireWire cable between the new machine and the old machine. I then power on the old machine, holding down the ‘t’ key. This boots any recent Mac into Target FireWire mode, allowing the old mac to basically become an external FireWire hard drive. Once that is done, the new Mac begins transferring user information and programs to the new machine. It took about 60 minutes to transfer roughly 50GB of files, user information, and programs, to the new machine. And when it is complete, it prompts me to turn off the old Mac, and reboot the new one. After I rebooted, all I had to do was reactivate Quark, which has a bogus licensing scheme these days, but you can activate through their web site, and it only takes about 10 minutes for themto get back to you with a new ‘Activation Code’.

But seriously, *everything worked*. Printers, file sharing, all programs, the user account was absolutely identical, icons in the same place, everything. Absolutely fucking gorgeous.

Now if only XP could help me out like that….even with F&STW it still takes agonizingly long to get a new machine to the state I need to to be….Three days of free time and my T30 still isn’t absolutely dialed, and that was just a reinstall!