This Thanksgiving I had a wonderful idea! Let’s upgrade my iMac from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Why you ask? Let’s start with some history.

I have a 20″ iMac that is our home computer. This machine hosts a Windows VM that is our Exchange server for email. I also would like to have our iPads print to our local printers. That requires some software and Snow Leopard. Right now I have it configured on a MacBook Pro, but that machine sometimes goes to sleep, or sometimes I find I leave it in a state where we can’t get to it. Because of that, I figured I could move the printing duties to the iMac also. With Thanksgiving day upon us and time to do this, I made the leap to upgrade to Snow Leopard.

All the while red flags were going off, but I couldn’t remember why

After the upgrade finished, everything seemed fine. The VM came up and I was able to log in, and it could see the internet. I grabbed my iPhone to check to make sure email was working. That is when I remeber why the red flags were going off.

The iPhone would not connect, and I remember that I didn’t upgrade the iMac because I would have to get the Apache settings configured again. No turning back now. I ventured into the /etc/apache2 directory to find all my config files were back to default. Gah!

I got a bad feeling inside. I knew that my wife would check email soon, and she would get an error and then call me to ask why it’s not working. Not to mention, I was now short on time since we had to leave to go to the family gathering for Thanksgiving.

I quickly got my Macbook and checked to verify that I could access the iMac remotely. I could investigate this later. I got that sorted, and we were out the door. I explained to the wife what I did, and that I would work on it at the family’s house.

Once there, I got connected to my iMac and decided to got to the root / and ‘find’ for any httpd.conf files anywhere. Maybe there is a chance I had copied it somewhere else. After a while of searching with no good possibilities, a ray of hope! One of the volumes that was mounted was my Time Machine backup. ‘Find’ found an httpd.conf down in the time machine database. Luckily, Time machine keeps the file in the database as file on disk. I could simply copy my old configs back. I did that, and restarted apache and everything was working great!

Thank you Time Machine! Thanks for backing up the file, and thanks for allowing me to use normal search tools to find my data, and to simply copy the data I want normally. No Backup software to restore etc… All works properly from a remote shell!

I read over my last post, and I realize I was convinced that Steve Jobs would get better and just be in a different role at Apple. Here are some reasons why I think they will continue to move forward with success:

Good luck Apple.

First off, I sure hope that Steve’s health condition will get better. He has been through a lot, and hope that he can remain as a Chairman at Apple for a long time to come. It is crazy since Apple is back on top. I think all people agree that they are on top because of the leadership of Steve Jobs. I think what I find the most amazing is that they introduced the iPad, and there is still not a competitor worthy to compete with them. A few company have released some tablet/slate devices, but the market did not buy them. Microsoft has said that they will have something for the hardware manufacturers, but it won’t be out until 2012. That is a long time for Apple to gain a lead. However, looking at Microsoft’s history, it is clear that they don’t release something first, they come from behind and take over market share. All will be watching to see if that will happen in this category. I tend to think they will bring something worthy to the market, but they are not showing anything for us to believe. Not yet anyway. I think this time they don’t want anyone to copy what they are doing.

Another interesting piece of information is that HP wants to get out of the PC business! Wow! My first thought is that Apple must be shaking up the market. I have read many editorials on what could really be going on, but as a general customer, it seems odd. I think I felt the same way when IBM sold their ThinkPad and consumer PC line to Lenovo. One editorial mentioned that it takes HP selling 7 PCs to match the profit Apple makes on 1 PC. To me it seems that Apple has really invested in their manufacturing process. They can now make amazing machines and sell them for a low price.

As I compose this one my iPad with a bluetooth keyboard, it makes me wonder what a competitor could bring to the market that would want me to change. They could, just not sure what feature would lure me.

Steve Jobs, good luck in your new role! Keep driving Apple to have a focus on devices and don’t compromise.

The Long Story

This year I have been training to ride this race. I am more of a trail rider, and not really an endurance racer, so training was in order. To train for this event, we had to travel to the town of Old Fort, NC to actually ride the trail. Here in Charlotte, NC we have no hills of any kind that would serve as a training ground. The first time we traveled to Old Fort, I had no idea what I was in for. We did the first two stages and it took four hours. The climbing was crazy hard compared to what I was used to around here in Charlotte. Once we got that done, the next time we traveled to Old Fort, we would start at the bottom of Curtis Creek. Wow! I had no idea how hard that could be. Curtis Creek was a 9.5 mile climb. There is no down at all. From the bottom of Curtis Creek all the way to the Parkway. That proved to be another hard day, and another 4 hours. At this point, we have completed all of the race, just not all at once. In my head, I was thinking 9 hours or so should be ok.

The Bad News

Now that we had all of the trail ridden, we decided to do an 80% ride. We would do the first part of the race, and then go up Curtis Creek. This would give us a taste of how the race would feel after riding hard, and then attempting Curtis Creek. Unfortunately I had an accident on Kitsuma. while riding slow, I lost my balance, and fell over the side. It would be considered a bad fall. I fell approximately 10 feet down the side, and in the process, I injured my legs. My left shin smacked against the rocky side, and my right leg suffered the most injury. I am not certain what happened to my right leg, but I thought at the time it was a charlie horse, or some tree hit my leg hard. I climbed back up the hill and then walked for a while to try and shake it off. I continued the ride and made it down Kitsuma, and then a mile or two up Curtis Creek, I had to walk. I ended up walking about 6 miles that day, and my leg got worse. At about the 8 mile mark on Curtis Creek, I turned back, and rode to the car. At the time I didn’t know how bad the injury was, but the it seemed to be getting more painful.

Pain

Driving home from that ride was very painful. I couldn’t really push the gas pedal, so cruise control was my friend. When I got home, my wife had to help me out of the car, and for the next few days, I was icing my leg, and sitting in bed. This happened the last week of May, and the race was July 24th. I figured I had time to recover. We went to the beach the first week of June, and I spent most of my time sitting on the couch with ice on my leg. Turns out my leg continued to hurt up until two weeks before the race. I believe that my leg hyper extended and hurt all the tendons. That is what took so long to heal.

Decisions

Because of the pain, I was ready to sell my entry to the race. As my friends looked for places to stay in Black Mountain for the race, I was searching to sell my entry. One weekend in July, I decided to try a long ride. I went to Sherman Branch, and attempted 3 laps. I felt that if I could do that, I could possibly try ORAMM. That day was a good day, and I easily did three laps. I did a 1:07, 1:09 and a 1:13 lap. I felt that was pretty good and that I could be back in shape for the race. I talked with Jason Epperly and we came up with a plan. Don’t leave each other, and finish the race together. That was the decision.

Race Day

We stayed the night in Black Mountain, NC and arrived at the race start about an hour early. Our plan was hatched to take it easy up Kitsuma (walk) and go slow to save ourselves for Curtis Creek. We succeeded in our plan. The problem was that we ended up walking a lot on Curtis Creek. For me that mean I got blisters on my feet, and my bottom was completely chaffed. At the top of Curtis Creek, we experienced rain. A complete downpour started, and we had to ride down in the rain. We went from hot to cold in a few minutes. My teeth were chattering. We made it down, and then we made it up the next climb and down to checkpoint 5. At this point I was done. Mile 52 was good enough for me. I had major blisters and my rear was sore. when we got to the checkpoint I got to see my wife Jackie again! She would not let me quit. So, I trudged on. All the while the race sweepers were right on my tail. It seems that Jason and I were dead last. We had to climb Kitsuma again, and come down the technical singletrack again, this time with reduced light, and it was muddy from the rain. I made it down, and we finished the race. I can’t believe we did it, and we finished together. Almost 13 hours on a bike. It was painful, and I don’t think I will attempt the race again. Our friend Mark finished the race in 5th place for Single speed in 6:15, and our other friend Brett finished in a little over 7 hours. Our other friend Jeff finished in 9 hours. Craig and Jana finished in a little over 11 hours.

It was a hard day, but I am glad I finished. Not sure what the next challenge will be, but l will start riding again soon when my bottom heals

Here’s to 2011: the year of the iPad 2!

The times are just so different from when I was a child. I think 2011 will see change come more rapidly, and I am happy to embrace it.

Welcome 2011!

Here is a pic of the car on jack stands in the garage…

After taking the wheel off, I cleaned the part that will touch the rotor. It was rusted on..

Here is the rotor when I just got started on it. you can see how discolored it is along with piles of rust.

Here is the rotor almost finsihed. Most of the rust is off, but I still have to work on the discolored parts:

Here it is complete. Notice how much darker it is after cleaning.

And here is the front rotor completed.

Enjoy….

And this:

After taking off the wheel, I could see that there was more rust than I could see:

After using a drill with a wire brush attachment, I was able to get all the rust off and return the rotor back to its original color. Here is the changed rotor:

And then putting the wheel back on it looks much better:

I still have 2 more to go, but it looks so much better to me.

Unsure based on the author. This is definitely a doom and gloom piece for Microsoft.