Rui CarmoI hate Mondays. Still, today there was a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day, even if a slightly blurry and pixelated one. But here are the news:
- There is an update out for Office 2004. I tried it in vain hope that it could fix my Entourage-Exchange connectivity issues (I've been unable to use Entourage since we upgraded to forms-based authentication), but then again, the only way to really fix Entourage is to rewrite it from scratch. I wonder why Microsoft products have a tendency to be incompatible with each other now and then...
- Software patents are still alive. If you need any further evidence that European politicians are copycat idiots destined to repeat some of the United States' worst mistakes (at least in the technology field), you need look no further.
- I've always thought ClearPlay was something too weird to be true, but after looking at the screenshot in this Engadget article and seeing that it allows me to remove all "vain references to deities", I became a believer. Remember, kids, if you can't deal with reality, just wear some Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.
- Motorola keeps trying to create phones that don't suck on the outside.
- Microsoft is apparently preparing to include six brand new fonts with its next Windows release. Nothing that I would call better than the Mac's default font selection, but If you're as sick of Tahoma and Lucida Console as I am, these look rather nice - if a bit too rounded for print work (I'm partial to sans-serif on screen and serif on paper).
- Wing Commander was one of the games I never got into, seeing as it came about during a particular study-driven portion of my life. But now that I have no free time whatsoever, I find myself looking at the Privateer remake wistfully - especially at the screenshot entitled "talk with friends".
Oh, and I have no hot water, which means I will be enjoying a 5C (or less) shower tomorrow morning.
Finally, my iMac just locked up without no explanation as I sorted through a freshly imported batch of photos. It just froze and the fan stepped up to the max until I gave up on it and cycled the power - I have no idea why (there are no crash logs to help figure it out).
For machines that usually give me zero trouble, this is extremely unsettling (especially after the saga I went through to get this machine in the first place), and since the Hardware Test CD persists in finding nothing wrong, I'm considering reinstalling the whole thing next weekend.
Meanwhile I've been investigating, and it looks like half my RAM is different:
Memory:
DIMM0/J4000:
Size: 512 MB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-25440
DIMM1/J4001:
Size: 512 MB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-30330
This is very odd, because I kept all of the original packaging (as well as the original Apple 256MB DIMM), and the casings of the extra RAM I had installed are apparently identical - 512MB DRAM sticks from Kreton.
I guess I'll just have to open the box and confirm this.