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This is a pretty cool (and ridiculous) bug I ran into today. I wanted to resize an image using preview from 140px wide to 100px wide. Preview wouldn’t ever save it when I clicked OK. I think I figured it out - take a look at the Resulting Size.
People wonder why I don’t use Microsoft as much as I have in the past. Some people think the entire PC/Mac thing is just a joke. I thought the PC versus Mac thing was just a joke, too. It’s not. I’ve been on a Mac now officially for one year.
And I’m spoiled.
The worst thing about working on a Mac is having to work on a PC as well. I do so every day at work. I recently loaded Vista (it still bluescreens after hibernation) and needed to download and reinstall Microsoft Visio Standard Edition. Easy, right? I purchased it from Microsoft online so I’ll just go and download it again, and reinstall it.
I go to the logical place, Microsoft Download Center. There’s a Silverlight beta of Microsoft Download Center so I go for it! I simply type “Visio” in the “search downloads” field. Here’s what comes up first with 119 results:
What’s the first ranked result? Not Visio at all… it’s the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS. Huh? (I’m not even going to try to figure out why the first result was rank #31). So, I read and sort and read and sort and expand to show 100 results… I can’t find Visio anywhere… just some viewers and a bunch of other crap.
Off to the Office site! Since I purchased Visio online, I figured I’d be able to get back to the store through the Microsoft. I fumble around a little, but I find it… Visio Standard Edition. And on the left sidebar… Previous Purchases! Yahoo!!!!… er… I mean Wahooo!!! I click Previous Purchases and my invoice number pops up. Yea!!!! Almost there!!!! I click the purchase and this is what I get:
Ouch. I’m using Internet Explorer 7 even… not even risking this one on Firefox. I clear my cookies. I navigate back, click on my invoice… and….
You suck Microsoft! On and off the web… you suck! Now I can’t get my project done today with the software I’m disappointed in that you made me upgrade that cost me another $150 that I can’t download and can’t use.
People really wonder why I’m on a Mac.
No wonder why the Microsoft Brand is in decline. I’d be surprised to learn whether or not Microsoft employees had to even use their own products, online or offline.
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It seems a fitting day for this to happen. On the day that Apple releases the iMac - a beautiful computer, a friend of the family gave us it’s older cousin, the eMac. The eMac is really the CRT version of the iMac. It looks like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey - I think it’s more a piece of art than a computer.
It’s a pretty swift little (big) computer, though! I’m impressed. We’re going to upgrade it to 512Mb of RAM and find a place to show it off in out house. My home is fast becoming an Apple museum - with an AppleTV, a couple of iPod Shuffles, a G3, a G4, an eMac and a MacBookPro. Yikes. (The G3 and G4 aren’t up and running yet).
One of the missing pieces to the eMac is the ability to add a Wireless Network Card. Apple sold AirPorts back then and you could connect to those via an Ethernet Cable. They still have AirPorts now, but in true Mountain Dew spirit - they are AirPort Extremes - running the latest and greatest 802.11g. I already have a great Netgear wireless network so I don’t want to upgrade yet.
What to do!? How would one without an AirPort go and get this beast up on the Internet? My son came up with an ingenious answer to that question. He went and got an XBox Wireless unit that we weren’t using and wired it up… Voila! It’s nothing but a wireless ethernet bridge for the XBox to hook up to the network - the same thing we were trying to do with the eMac.
It worked! Here’s a picture of us streaming a movie via the XBox wireless ethernet bridge.
No, we’re not going to keep things this way. Mixing Mac and Microsoft feels a little dirty to me (though I do it a lot!). My good friend, Bill, had an extra Linksys WET11 wireless ethernet bridge that I configured and got up tonight. The XBox wireless unit is going back to it’s rightful owner… the XBox.
I’m going to need a server room soon.
