i have a spare laptop that has been collecting dust for a while now and i haven’t been able to figure out how to make it useful. but over the weekend, i have finally found a good cause for it.
the ultimate testing machine has a bunch of VMs on it.
1) Windows XP w/ IE 6
2) Windows XP w/ IE 7
3) Windows XP w/ IE 8
4) Windows Vista w/ IE 7
5) Windows Vista w/ IE 8
6) Fedora Core 11
all windows VMs also have Firefox 2.0, Firefox 3.0, Firefox 3.5, Safari, Chrome, and Opera.
the host OS is Mac OS X, where I have installed Safari, Firefox, and Opera. so if there’s a browser/OS config i want to test, i think i have the popular platforms covered. now, if there was only an easy way to have different versions of flash installed…i guess i can 2x the number of VMs i have…
is windows 7 really the name that microsoft is going with? and can anyone else remember what all the versions were? does anyone remember windows 1.0-3.0? i don’t think i ever used it. i do remember using a windows run-time and i think then windows 3.1. anyway, i wonder how the windows 7 name came about…
i decided to give windows 7 a whirl. i am using my windows partition primarily as a gaming partition, but there could be a few programs that i might need to run while on the mac side. that being said, i wanted to make sure that if i did set up a boot camp partition for windows that i would be able to boot it as a VM.
there were a couple of hiccups trying to get the VM to work, but it turns out that vmware doesn’t play nice when you try to reinstall windows on your boot camp partition. clear out all of the previously installed stuff and it worked great.
it’s been a while since i wrote an epinion, but on a whim, i decided to login and check out my profile. it turns out that i am a “popular author” and i’m in the top 1000 epinion writers. i found out that i’m actually #737. considering my lack of activity for the last several years, i wonder if that means that the epinion writing population is really, really tiny or if i am really that popular. i sort of suspect that it isn’t the latter. =P
what it probably means is that there are lots of contributors who don’t contribute a lot so they don’t get as many hits as others who tend to write more epinions.
btw, i also wrote a new review on the canon 85mm f/1.2L in case you were looking to drop a few thousand dollars on a lens…
there’s probably something wrong with just how much joy i get from eating a taco from a taco truck, but today i ventured over to the very often recommended el taco de oro taco truck to sample some of their tacos. let me tell you…fantastic.
i’m tempted to go there again tomorrow to try a burrito in their sit down restaurant, but these tacos were tasty. small, but for $1.25 each, they were great little explosions of flavor.
i’ve never found much reason to go to alviso, but now there is a solid reason.
i need a haircut…bad. since i’ve gotten married, i haven’t had to go out to get my haircut in a long, long time, but now that christi is very pregnant, i don’t think she can reach over to cut my hair anymore. this means that i have to go out to get my hair cut by someone.
the last time i paid someone to cut my hair, it was years ago and i have since moved. i don’t know where to go anymore. i think i will just have to find a barber somewhere and just tell them to go at it. i’ve been trying to put it off for as long as i can, but it is so annoyingly long now that it is really hard for me to deal with it.
it’s definitely a problem when my bangs are long enough that they can touch the tip of my nose. usually, they barely touch my eyebrows!
people are calling it sympathy cravings, but i had two very strange cravings today. the first was froyo which is weird because i never crave froyo. i only tolerate froyo, but don’t usually go out of my way to get it.
maybe what got me craving it is that @cafeyolicious followed me yesterday and i decided to try out their BOGO (Buy One, Get One Free) offer. just mention twitter and they say that you buy one and you get one free. it’s really more like BOSOGOF (Buy One, Sort Of Get One Free). i bought a small froyo with 1 topping and they gave me 1 mini froyo with 1 topping. still, not a bad deal compared to other froyo shops, but still a little misleading…
the froyo was decent, but the selection of fruit was small. the chopped mangoes looked sad, but the blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries all looked good.
the other craving i am having is sushi. i really, really want some good sushi, but am sad that i won’t be able to indulge in sushi at home for a while.
it always starts like this:
1) buy a camcorder.
2) make videos.
and i thought i would be done there. but once i started to make videos, i realized a few things:
problem: audio quality with the built-in mic is awful.
solution: buy an external mic.
problem: camcorder’s hot shoe mount is not standard.
solution: buy a mini shoe=> standard shoe adapter.
problem: video quality is great, but is really shaky and dizzy to look at.
solution: buy some kind of steadying device. buy a manfrotto modosteady.
so what started off as an already largish $600 camcorder purchase became a $600 camcorder + $100 external mic + $30 hot shoe adapter + $100 modosteady purchase.
man, it is never easy, is it? these home videos better look awesome!
But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?