Posting and sleeping

This blog was originally created so give myself an outlet when I was having trouble sleeping. With a new child, trouble falling asleep is pretty much at the bottom of the issues list. It also means not a lot of time to post. Good thing I don't have readers, otherwise people might actually be upset! :)
Besides, no philosophical discussions of late. Conversations seemed preoccupied with the weather, what with June in Boston setting a record for rain or some such thing. Good to know I'm part of history by being able to say, "I was there for the wettest June on record!"

Obligatory new dad commentary and update

It's true. It really is worth it. Watching Alex being born is nothing short of amazing. As much fun as it was to parade around a pregnant wife, it's going to be even more fun to parade around my wife and son. His head was shaped like an avocado when born, but that has since settled out. All fingers and toes accounted for.I got to be there for a lot of firsts. First cry, first sneeze, first poop, and first trip to the ICU. Alex had a trouble a couple of times getting enough air while feeding, so they put him under observation for 5 days. Apparently the veins going to lungs are pinched shut during pregnancy, and are supposed to open up once he's born. His did, but apparently not quite enough. Not all that uncommon, but they wanted to keep him under observation. Beth Israel is a fantastic hospital, one that's 1.5 hours away from our house. A single trip for birth isn't that bad, especially when you're doing 80 at 11:00 at night and there's no traffic. But commuting for 5 days was going to be hard. Fortunately, my sister stepped up and let us sleep at her condo in Somerville for the week. Much closer, though the commute still a bit of a hassle when the Red Sox were playing. All in all, it worked to our advantage. We got to spend time with nurses who really knew their stuff, and we only had to stay for 5 days. Most babies in the NICU are there for weeks, if not months. I caught glimpses of babies in other rooms who weighed around a pound. Sad stuff. I don't envy the parents, the babies, or the nurses.Now Alex is home and dictating to us his schedule. All efforts to adjust him to something we think would be a little more reasonable have met with unmitigated failure. I've gotten a crash course in how to hold a newborn, how to hand him off, how to change him, how to feed him, and I've played around with different ways to get him to fall asleep. I've learned how to suppress my swearing when I stub my toe on a bassinet in the dark for the 5th time while carrying him around at 2 am until he falls asleep. I've mostly learned to protect myself when changing him, as little boys apparently decide that's the perfect time to pee. I got to see one of his first smiles. It turned out later to be gas. I later got him to actually smile with a rattle. I can say that was the highlight of the week. It is exhausting, and I sometimes get cranky (ref. stubbing toe at 2 am), but I really can say I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Life reboot complete. God only knows what's going to happen now.

An Apple slam (now with more validation than ever!)

Back in early January I received my first Macbook Pro. It was for work, and they spent the money on a top of the line machine with a nice graphics card, processor, and memory. However, I work in 3D Cad design, for which all tools exist solely for linux or windows, so we installed boot camp and windows XP. "Don't worry," friends assured me. "Apple has the best hardware for windows" they stated with a grin.
I must say I am underwhelmed.
From power on to log in to being able to see the taskbar with no extraneous software installed, nearly 3 minutes. My 6 year old desktop with an excess of baggage from old installs and memory leaks requires 2 minutes to get to a useable desktop. This weekend I brought the macbook home to try and get some work done but forgot my charger. Booting twice, once to check email and once to do a 3 minute edit to a spreadsheet required 15 minutes and consumed a quarter of the battery. My wife's laptop, which is about a year old and runs vista requires less than a minute and 3% of the battery to boot, and Toshiba's are not known for having quality batteries. The macbook cost around $2.5K. The Toshiba? $800, plus I get one new battery free after two years.
The macbook has the new trackpad incorporating the capacitive technology used in the iPhone. All the non-readers will remember my tirade against that technology when it was first announced by Apple because it lacked any haptic response (not a term I used then, but one that has become popular since). Like the iPhone, it's a great idea until you use it. The entire touchpad depresses to serve as a button click. The only problem is that my finger tends to roll ever so slightly as I depress the button, causing the cursor to slide away from the link I am trying to click. On average it takes 5 tries to open a link. And right clicking? Forget about it! Ideally you use two fingers when you press down for it to register as a right click. Except that it only works half the time, and you're even more likely to miss the icon or link you're trying to get to.
Then there's heat. This thing gets hot. Painfully hot. Moreover, the trackpad has trouble detecting how many fingers are pressing down when it's normally running (I suspect due to heat) so many times a single click becomes a double click. Or a click occurs when my hands are nowhere near the trackpad.
Finally, this sucker is heavy, weighing in around 5-6 lbs, almost twice that of my wife's laptop. Sure, it''s machined out of a solid piece of aluminum, not that this helps with the heat situation. That, or I fear for anyone who used one of these before they got the thermals down to a mere 70C in the case.
The software I cannot speak for or against as I've not used it. I'm sure this is where Apple shines. I certainly hope so, as the hardware leaves something to be desired. Alas, there are no tools that I can use made to work for Apple. Thus, I'm going to try to get access to the floating license from home, and leave this boat anchor at my desk. I've got my redfly, which I'm using to write this. Instant-on, with an 8 hour battery, and weighing less than 2 lbs. What more does one really need?