Raible Designs

Wednesday February 03, 2010

17" MacBook Pro Stolen from Living Room Almost 3 years ago, I bought a 17" MacBook Pro. This laptop served me well for several years, mostly as a home computer. A few months after I bought it, I started working at LinkedIn and got a brand new laptop as part of my first day on the job. After working with LinkedIn's 15" for almost 2 years, I grew to love the form factor and purchased another one almost a year ago. I found the 17" was too big for planes and the 15" fits me perfectly.

Fast forward to last night.

I attended the first half of the Ignite talks at DOSUG and left around 7. When I arrived home, I suspected something might be out of whack when my front door was unlocked. Julie had come over to pick up Abbie's dance shoes around 6, so I figured she must've forgot to lock the door on her way out. When I got inside and saw my coat closet open, I justified it by thinking she grabbed one of the kids coats out of the closet and forgot to close the door. When I walked into my living room and saw my space heater's remote in the middle of the floor, busted open with batteries out, it clicked that a stranger was in my house. The first thing that jumped into my head was "Where's my laptop?" As I looked at the bare mini-desk in my living room, I realized it had been stolen.

I called Julie and asked her if she left the front door open. She said no, but when she arrived at my house (and came through the back), the garage's light was on and my back door was wide open. I asked her if she saw the busted remote on the floor or if the closet door was open. She said no. Putting all the pieces together, it appears that the burglar was actually hiding in my closet when Julie came into my house. Naturally, she's a little a freaked out by this, but she also saved the day by scaring off perpetrator before they took anything else.

This isn't a new trend for me and this incident is mostly my fault. I left my backdoor unlocked. Two years ago, my truck's stereo was stolen and there's a good chance I left the doors unlocked (and didn't turn on the alarm). Last year, my bike was stolen and the lock was still there, indicating I missed the frame when locking it up. So getting robbed in the first part of every year seems somewhat par for the course.

With my truck's stereo, it worked out well because the rig needed a new stereo. My bike last year? There wasn't any silver lining to that incident, so I made myself earn a new one. With this laptop incident, there is a silver lining in that I've been thinking about getting a 27" iMac for a home computer. Other options include a Mac Pro for my office (and use my laptop for traveling/home use) or a Mac Mini for home and hook it up to my TV with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The home iMac seems like the best option, but I'd also be interested to hear what others recommend. Of course, I'll be keeping my doors locked from now on.

Monday March 02, 2009

New 15" MacBook Pro with SSD Just over a month ago, I reduced my computing machinery from 3 to 1. Since I was running to work, this quickly presented a problem of how to get my laptop to/from the office. I decided to go for the "no home computer" about half the time and it was a fairly pleasant experience. It's hard to stay up late and hack away on open source when all you have is an iPhone.

To be perfectly honest, I only made it about 2 weeks before I ordered a new laptop, but I cancelled the order shortly after. Last weekend, I re-ordered and my new 15" MacBook Pro arrived this past weekend. Here's the specs:

• Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

I also chose the solid-state drive (SSD) because I'd heard it's faster. I did some rough performance comparisons against my old laptop (a 2-year-old 17" MacBook Pro) and found it's quite a bit faster.

For these tests, the computers have exactly the same software and OS (I restored my new MBP from my old one). For the tests below, I used Java version "1.5.0_16" and had JAVA_OPTS set to the following:

-Xms512M -Xmx768M -XX:PermSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Djava.awt.headless=true -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC. 

From these numbers, you can see that it's around 20% faster for building AppFuse (2.1-SNAPSHOT) and almost twice as fast at copying files and building the GWT project I'm working on. Needless to say, I'm impressed and pleased with my purchase.

Update: New MacBook Pros came out today with a faster CPU (2.93 GHz) and 256 GB SSD. I was able to call Apple and get a full refund on mine. Thanks Apple! Posted in Mac OS X at Mar 02 2009, 07:24:28 AM MST 14 Comments

Monday January 26, 2009

Bye Bye Dream Machine This evening, I'm shipping back one of my favorite machines of all time. I received a fully-loaded Mac Pro as part of my employment with LinkedIn last June. It was necessary to run the LinkedIn application locally and I thoroughly enjoyed using it for the last 6 months. With 12GB of RAM and two 23" monitors, it was a great employee perk.

When I became a contractor again, they let me take my dream machine home. I promptly plugged in my 30" monitor and I've been loving my home work environment ever since. I could have bought the machine from LinkedIn, but I discovered I can buy a brand new machine with similar specs for less than their asking price.

The good news is I'm now able to answer the question I asked a couple years ago: One 30" monitor or two 23" monitors? IMO, one 30" monitor is definitely better and two 30" monitors would be awesome.

In addition to the Mac Pro, I'll also be shipping back the 15" MacBook Pro they gave me. This leaves me with my 17" MacBook Pro and an old HP Pavilion with Windows XP. I was hoping to plug my 30" into the HP, but I discovered I don't have a DVI card that will handle it. Over the next few months, I do plan on buying a new MacBook Pro (for work) and a Mac Pro (for home). With my running commute, I need to leave one machine downtown and I like to have one at home for the kids + late night hacking.

I'm currently having a hard time deciding if I should buy a MacBook Pro now or make do with what I have and just buy a new DVI card for my Windows box. I'm leaning towards a new 15" MacBook Pro (17" is too big to travel with). If I could get one with a 256GB SSD, I'd definitely be sold.

What would you do? Posted in Mac OS X at Jan 26 2009, 10:18:33 PM MST 19 Comments

Tuesday July 15, 2008

My iPhone Review Today I picked up a 16GB iPhone at the Park Meadows Apple Store. As far as I can tell, I got it with a stroke of luck. Last night, I was searching Apple's "Concierge" application to see which store (there's 4 in the region now) would look at my Mac Pro (averaging 4 GSOD per day). Most had a 24-hour lead time at the Genius Bar, but Park Meadows had an 8AM available.

This morning, I hauled the box into the mall and doubted the store would be open at such an early hour. Apparently, the store isn't really "open", but the Genius Bar is and they have a camp for kids from 8-10. After submitting my machine to the Genius Bar, I asked a guy about iPhones. He said they got a shipment the night before and they had 16GB White iPhones in stock.

LinkedIn has an Employee Discount for AT&T, so I asked the sales guy if I could use that. He said I needed to buy the phone from AT&T if I wanted to use any sort of "business" discount. I called the downtown AT&T store (they angrily told me they were out-of-stock) and walked by the one in Park Meadows Mall (didn't open until 10). I then rationalized that buying an iPhone from an AT&T store could take weeks. After an hour of contemplating, I decided to go ahead and purchase the white iPhone, even though I wanted black and I wouldn't get the employee discount. My reasoning:

• Employee Discount is 8% which amounts to about $8/month. My last T-Mobile bill for my Blackberry Pearl was over $200. Going from $200 to under $100 makes $8 irrelevant.
• When I bought my Escalade, I liked a black one more. When I bought my last iPod (May), I wanted a white one, but ended up with black (no white in stock). It seems fitting that I'd get a white one when I'd want black. My previous black vs. white purchases haven't bothered me post-purchase.
• These things are hard to find - I should just buy the damn thing.

So yes, I thought about the decision way too much, but managed to talk myself into it. It's a good thing too - they were sold out by the time the store opened at 10. I bought mine at 9:30.

So what do I think of it? I like it, but not for the phone or fanciness of it.

Pros: The main reason I like it is for its iTunes Remote application. With an Airport Express + Bose System at home, I've been wanting this for quite some time. I would've paid $200 for this alone.

Cons: I love the Pandora app, but was disappointed to find it didn't work with my car's iPod connector. I was hoping for Pandora-in-the-car, but no dice. The iPod feature of the iPhone works, but charging via my car's iPod connector doesn't. The enabling-of-charging feature may be software related since there's a "charging won't work" message that pops up when I plug it in.

So 12 hours after purchasing the device, I'm happy with it, but not thrilled. However, it seems like the kind of thing that grows on you and someday you wonder how you lived without it. Should be a fun ride.

Update 24 hours later: I really like that the iPhone has a speaker. I've always wanted a radio in my bedroom at night and now I have one. On the downside, the battery life is abysmal: it was fully charged at 8AM this morning and completely dead by 8PM tonight. Posted in Mac OS X at Jul 15 2008, 10:07:26 PM MDT 6 Comments

Thursday June 05, 2008

New Mac Pro It sure is cool when dreams come true. Look what arrived at the Denver office today.

Update: Believe it or not, I rebooted my MacBook Pro the same minute I plugged in my Mac Pro. Upon reboot, the MBP choked and I've been looking at a gray screen with a spinning icon for most of the day. I'm soooo glad I have Time Machine. Let's hope I can do a restore on the MBP tomorrow.

Update 2: I was able to successfully build the Mac Pro from my latest MacBook Pro backup on Time Machine. Sweet! Let's see how this works:

$ echo $JAVA_OPTS
-Xms512M -Xmx4096M -XX:PermSize=384m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Djava.awt.headless=true -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -server

Posted in Mac OS X at Jun 05 2008, 11:21:17 AM MDT 13 Comments

Wednesday March 19, 2008

I Got Lucky Earlier this evening, I decided to upgrade my work laptop to Safari 3.1. Shortly after restarting, I was greeted with the Gray Screen of Death. To fix, I rebooted. Same result. 3rd time is a charm, right? Nope.

/me this is really going to suck, I'm going to have to give up my laptop for several days to get it fixed. Furthermore, this is my only machine authorized to VPN into LinkedIn's network. Looks like I'm going on vacation for the rest of the week.

Rather than trying to rescue the OS or upgrade it to Leopard, I decided to watch TV for an hour instead. When I came back, I disconnected the machine from its monitor and tried rebooting on battery power. Voila - it worked!

Now I'm in the process of using my old friend SuperDuper!.

I got lucky... when was the last time you backed up?

Thursday March 13, 2008

My Entire Family is now on Macs I bought my first Mac in January 2002. I had dreamed about a PowerBook for years before buying it and was very excited when it arrived. A couple days later, I discovered it was practically worthless because it was so slow for Java Development. I used it for pictures and music, but not much else. Through the years, I owned a couple more PowerBooks, but rarely found them fast enough to use on a day-to-day basis. I kept doing most of my development on Windows.

In January 2006, everything changed. I kept my Windows box around at home, but mostly because it was connected to my 23" monitor and I didn't feel like switching things out. When I moved last summer, I put my Windows box in a closet and bought a 30" monitor. I've hardly touched that Windows box since. Of course, it helps that I have Parallels installed on my Mac.

Now I have two MacBook Pros (a 17" I bought and a 15" that LinkedIn gave me). Last year I convinced my sister to buy a MacBook. Time I've had to spend in the last year helping her fix it: 0 minutes.

Yesterday, I took my Dad to his local Mac store and helped him buy a 24" iMac.

The Raible Family is now an all-Mac family and I work at an all-Mac company.

Life is good. Posted in Mac OS X at Mar 13 2008, 11:27:17 AM MDT 7 Comments

Thursday December 20, 2007

Part Apple Fan, Part Geek I like to think I'm not too committed to anything (except my kids and skiing). The following quizzes seem to indicate I'm on the right track. Moderation is good.

52%How Addicted to Apple Are You?
48% Geek

Proof that the holidays are treating me well? I'm heading to the hills for 2 days of skiing with my sister tomorrow. Forecast: Powder. Posted in Mac OS X at Dec 20 2007, 01:26:53 PM MST 4 Comments

Tuesday December 11, 2007

Life with a 30" Monitor Back in August, I asked if it was better to have one 30" monitor or two 23" monitors? After many comments, I concluded:

After reading The Large Display Paradox, it seems like I should either find something like WinSplit Revolution for the Mac, or get 2 monitors. I agree with everything that Jeff Atwood says about maximizing windows, that's why I originally thought two 23" monitors might be better.

For some reason, I threw this conclusion out the window in September and bought myself a 30" monitor. Within minutes, I concluded He who says 30" monitors are no good has never owned one. It's simply one of the coolest computing devices I've ever purchased. It makes developing in my home office simply awesome.

Below is a picture of my home office. The fireplace and "AirTunes to Bose System" make it one of my favorite offices ever.

Posted in Mac OS X at Dec 11 2007, 12:03:24 PM MST 14 Comments

Tuesday November 06, 2007

Going to see Fake Steve Jobs Tonight One of the perks of working at LinkedIn, and being out in Mountain View this week, is I get to attend a talk tonight where Guy Kawasaki interviews Fake Steve Jobs. It's my first trip to the Computer History Museum, so it should be a fun show. If you're not able to make it tonight, it looks like they'll be live streaming the event from the LinkedIn blog.

My only question is - do you think FSJ will act like Jobs or himself? I'm hoping for the former.

Update: That was an awesome event. Thanks to LinkedIn for hosting it and for Fake Steve for the great stories behind his journey.

Update 2: The LinkedIn Blog has videos from the event. Posted in Mac OS X at Nov 06 2007, 02:41:15 PM MST Add a Comment