How cool is it that the new version of iPhoto handles movies? I always wondered why it didn’t recognize them as viable media, and I was always worried I’d erase movies that it didn’t copy over. Nice. (It’s also about 300% faster on this machine.)

Widgets: Sweet.

Apple; THANK YOU for getting rid of those dropped off the network. And THANK YOU for fixing/modifying Windows logins to recognize my Keychain. Not having to enter a password every time I mount a shared drive: Priceless.

Built-in Superdrive (CD/DVD-writer combination): Sweet.

The screen on this machine is easily twice as bright as the screen on my Pismo. That could be from age, or damage, or the fact that the technology is just better. And the keyboard feel is wonderful.

I’m happy to bid adieu to the old hockey-puck power adapter.

I don’t like gambling all that much. I always thought it was kind of stupid to go to someplace like Vegas and actually spend money to lose—especially because everybody realizes it’s rigged. It’s kind of like expecting a politician to be honest. I spend too much of my life trying to make money to be stupid enough to give it to people I don’t like. That having been said, I don’t get the new poker craze that seems to be sweeping the nation. Card games are fun. Poker is fun for about fifteen minutes, until the assholes show up and ask to play “Texas Two-Card Flipside Straight Holdem”. Um, What? I’ve just finished my fourth beer, and you’re asking me to learn a game more complicated than my SAT’s? Sure, you can play nickel and dime leagues, and that’s cool, I guess, but I just never got into the whole thing. I think it’s because I’d rather be doing something active with my free time, like sleeping.

When I was twelve, our camper broke down on the way to our summer vacation spot, and we limped to a repair shop on a Friday night. Having nothing else to do for two days, my parents taught us Canasta, a particularly complicated card game involving multiple decks of cards. I think this was probably to keep from having to kill us. If you asked me to play it now, I’d be hard pressed to remember the first thing about it other than the cramps in my hands from holding all those cards, but I’d probably enjoy it. Plus, my Gramma Dugan was a Canasta genius, and she was fun to play cards with.

I think the only thing worse than losing money playing poker could be the people that go to watch other people play poker. It’s kind of like watching people play pool. If I’m watching somebody play pool, it’s because I’m waiting to play after them. Pool is ancillary to being with friends and drinking beer; it’s an activity that makes the evening more exciting than sitting on somebody’s couch and watching reruns of “Desperate Housewives”.

I suppose it’s fitting, then, that all the comment spam I’m getting here at Idiot Central comes from “party poker” sites and online casinos. Here’s an industry built around the need to play poker against a computer. Nevermind the fact that it’s a computer in Costa Rica, it’s programmed to keep you playing long enough to lose lots of money, and it’s tied in directly to your credit card. I guess I just want to know: What occupation pays well enough to be able to afford to lose so much money gambling? Because I need that job. Maybe it’s got something to do with moving to Costa Rica and opening an online casino…

My iBook made it all the way from Suzhou, China to my doorstep last night, courtesy of our friend Sara and her educational discount. It’s white, it smells like new fresh plastic, and it looks beautiful. I booted it up, it walked me through the migration process (Firewire Target Disk Mode is awesome), and within about 45 minutes I was pulling email down from my server on a familiar desktop, where all my files and contact information were in their rightful, normal place. The iBook sync’ed up with my phone in five minutes. That’s about the best result anybody could ever hope for.

However, an attempted upgrade to Movabletype 3.2 didn’t go as well as planned. Hopefully everything is functioning normally again as of 12:30PM after a cleanup of my cgi directory; I’m going to have to follow some better directions than the ones supplied by Sixapart and do the whole thing over again.