I never owned a Mac before.  My
brother (a far smarter guy then I) has had one for a few years.  When
I was given one at ILUG I honestly wondered if I would like it at all?
 I do know that I was getting very tired of battling with my OS (windows)
and dealing with the issues that strike us all from day to day.  So
then this Mac is now part of the Mooney geek collection.

First things first.  The look and
feel of the Macbook is unlike any other computer I have owned.  It
is incredibly light, and designed by an artist.  The screen is wonderful
and even the ports along the side of the laptop go in order from largest
to smallest.  The keyboard is AMAZING.  It invites you to type
more.  I don’t know what it is about having a Mac, but from the moment
I started to play about with it, I began to look around my house and decided
I need to redecorate.  Its like my home is not good enough for the
machine.   Maybe it will be better if I just hang the Macbook on the
wall.

So taking advice from the Mac weenies,
I started small and did not throw everything at it.  For the record.
 I have NEVER owned an iPod or used iTunes.  I kinda used iTunes
once on the PC and to be honest, hated it.  So music is out for the
moment.

I have installed Adium for chats

Skype

Firefox

VMWare Fusion

Lotus Notes 7.02  (no 8 beta is
a pisser)

Citrix client for Mac (critical for
my primary customer)

Foldershare

I am trying to stick with google as
my RSS reader, but I may not stick to it.  Google Feed reader just
doesn’t do it for me (yet).

I have played with MSOffice on it and
its works well.

All of them work and work well.  The
whole Mac interface is bizarre to me, but I am slowly getting used to hotkeys
and shortcuts.  Duff sent me a good book as a gift on it.  I
won’t go into it in detail as I am not finished it yet.  I ordered
more memory from crucuial.com.  When that comes in, I will start to
play with parallels.

So for the past 2 days, it has been
my full-time machine.  Volker recommended that I keep it for fun only,
but I know I will just get pissed off changing computers etc.

So, is it fantastic?  Well, pretty
much yes.  Everyone is drooling over the interface and it seems to
be a pleasure to use.

Is it that easy to get used to?  Well,
not really – the interface is different, and that is a challenge (even
one mouse button is a challenge).  But it feels worth it.  I
imagine that if I never used a computer before, this would be easy, but
I have to unlearn… unlearn…

Has it crashed?  Yes. Once.  But
it even crashes with style!  And I had installed everything without
a single reboot at that stage and chucked over 30GB of files onto it.  So
I let it off.

Am I a Mac convert?  Not yet, because
I need to understand more about how it works, and some of the products
I have not even touched yet.  But…. it could easily happen.

So again, thank you all.  You may
have changed me for life.  I planned on getting a new desktop at the
end of the summer.  That’s when the decision could be tough….. Mac
store ?  quite possibly.

I do not have a "lovely South Carolina
accent" as per one of the comments in a session I gave in Boston.
 I don’t even know what a "lovely South Carolina accent"
is.

The holiday auction ended at €200
for the trip
to Malta.  Winner wishes
to remain anonymous.  It will be donated to Eileen’s
Charity site today marked "Trip
for Malta".  On a side note, the personal interaction from Integra
for Notes should not be ignored
here.  These guys saw this as a good
cause.  Nothing else.  My
deepest thanks to them for reminding me that there are good businesses
in the world these days.

So, if you attended ILUG, and have 10
quid to spare, why not put it to a good cause.  Donate.

Made
me laugh.. .Thanks Susan.

Currently in Logan airport.  Managed
to get through security quite quickly and paid for some wifi time to play
catch up on the emails.  The event ran well and smoothly, and according
to the organisers, overall feedback on the event is excellent.   Warren,
Bill and I, at this stage look pale and weak.  The past few months
are catching up and about to overtake.  I didn’t adjust to US time
zones at all, and found myself awake at 2.30am every day… and staying
awake until the evening.  So now I barely know what the hell is going
on!.  

From an event perspective… Admin2007
ran very well.  Some of the people were very enthusiastic and on the
"beat the geek" nights, we usually had a queue of people with
questions.  I have already received a stack of emails with follow
up questions…. be patient.

Its also great to meet up with the usual
suspects so soon after ILUG.  Spending time with (and co presenting
with) Francie Whitlock was excellent.  It must be said that Francie
the vast majority of work in that presentation, and put extra time into
getting good crash examples for the delegates.   That stuff takes
a lot of time and she kept working on the examples up to the last minute.
 Last night about 15 of the geeks went to dinner in Boston, followed
by a LOT of booze and back to Bill’s room.  A few summary points:

• Taking the piss out of Bill
  because he broke
  his Blackberry is fun…. Of course
  this becomes less funny when I lose my Blackberry in a taxi.

• Three consultants having to rely on
  a HTC wizard (windows based pda/phone) for communication is scary

• A group of guys in a put causing so
  much noise that it leads to complaints from the beggars outside the pub
  is kinda odd.

• A restaurant that handed out a page
  entitled "our pledge to you" to 15 drunk people kinda get surprised
  when the 15 drunk people stand up and recite it.

• Admin 2007 organiser staff are good
  fun.  Some of them took a lot of abuse from me on stage. Repeatedly
  (sorry Susie).   I think we have to get used to each other’s styles
  but they are very very accommodating guys.  They work hard for the
  delegates… I appreciate how hard those events are these days post ILUG
  (even if our gig is way smaller).

• Beat the geek is fun… writing "will
  answer admin questions for beer" on the table makes it more fun

• Leaving "will code for food"
  on the Julian’s desk is even more fun

• A lot of people are now regretting SAN
  deployments

• Miller
  is a gifted speaker.

• Show Schedule……. (insider joke).
• Boston people are very friendly, and
  are willing to salute on demand

• I need to figure out a way to stop my
  voice being destroyed at these events.  Its starting to annoy me.

• Mac stores are pretty.  Staff are
  very very helpful to people that admit they know NOTHING about Macbooks.

I believe that Admin2007 Europe is going
to be in December in Barcelona.   Hope to see you there.  At
the moment, I am blackberry"less".  So phoning/email is
not going to happen.  Be patient.  This kinda suits me in a weird
way.  After the past few months, I am planning to throttle back now
for a while.    Hopefully no work outside of the day job and
evenings not plugged in are needed.  If anything, I will be playing/blogging
mac questions.

zzzzzzz

I know I have not blogged about the
Mac that I now own.  Reason is simple.  After ILUG, there was
only a few days to finish prep for Admin2007 and I tried to resist opening
the Mac as much as possible.  My Dell laptop has all the vmware sessions
I need, and all software I need for this event.  Risking all that
by brining a new computer, and operating system to a conference would be
nuts.  Bringing two computers over here would be just dumb.  So
the Mac is at home.  Expect "idiot" blog posts about it
soon enough though.  For the entire week, which continued to be many
late nights of prep, the black Mac was calling me…. but I resisted.

So I have a question for all you Mac
nuts.  I already asked Rob, and he gave me pointers, but wanted to
see if you guys had any opinions (when do you guys not have opinions!).

If you were me, and was in the US, and
going to a Mac Store tomorrow, and you have a new macbook… what accessories
would you consider a "must have".  Is there anything I should
simply not leave without?  I know there is a VGA adapter thingy that
is needed to make macs work on projectors, so I will get one of them.  Anything
else?

Also… any suggestions on a name for
the machine will be taken aswell.

An enjoyable session with some interested folks… Some of them did not believe I blog the attendee pictures….

Well, here you go