These are my annotated tweets for the week of 9 November 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
Learning Microsoft Access
2008-11-09: My colleagues use Microsoft Access heavily, so I’ve spent the entire day using Vista + Access 2007 on my MacBook Pro.
2008-11-09: I highly recommend Access Data Analysis Cookbook, by Ken Bluttman and Wayne S. Freeze (O’Reilly). Good examples and code samples.
Vista and Office 2007 run very nicely on my 2.2-GHz MacBook Pro. I’m not very enthusiastic about most Microsoft products, but I think Access is a really great tool for managing data.
Michael Crichton
2008-11-09: This is Audible devoted a show to the recently deceased Michael Crichton, who didn’t think global warming is real. It is real.
I am not a fan of Michael Crichton.
Verizon Store Incompetence
2008-11-10: We went to the Verizon store to combine our accounts and buy new phones. Somehow, Verizon couldn’t get it together to help us out. No go.
We were told that we couldn’t combine our accounts to a family plan until we received and activated our new phones. We spent an hour looking at phones and picking out a model. Then we were told that the store was out of stock on that phone, so we would have to order it. And then it turned out that the phone wasn’t available at the warehouse, either, so we’d have to choose a different phone. These scenarios weren’t helpful, so we left. We plan to order our new phones online.
Paul Krugman: The Conscience of a Liberal
2008-11-10: I just finished listening to the audiobook The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman, winner of the Noble Memorial Prize for Economics.
2008-11-10: Paul Krugman got interested in economics after reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. He writes for the New York Times.
Paul Krugman asserts that conservative Republicans want to destroy the protections created by the New Deal and later enhanced in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when Democrats and Republicans did a better job of working together to promote welfare. Fortunately, people have finally figured this out after the eight disastrous years of the Bush/Cheney administration, but there’s a lot of damage to repair.
Resuscitating a PowerBook G4
2008-11-15: Tonight I installed Debian 4.0r5 on my old PowerBook G4, but I can’t get a wireless connection to my Airport Extreme base station.
My wife is a proud owner of a shiny, new MacBook Pro. I took her to the Apple store on Boylston Street in Boston to look at the new models, but she did not want a model with the glossy screen. We ordered the previous model with a matte screen from MacConnection, which has them for $400 off.
I got my old PowerBook G4 back when the new MacBook Pro arrived. It has been a solid machine with no problems, although the case has a lot of dents and dings. I thought I would install Linux on it for experimentation, since my only Linux computer is an old Toshiba laptop with only 1 GB of RAM.
@agbiotec had good luck with installing Debian on his PowerBook, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a connection to my Airport base station using WPA. Another drawback to Debian was that Firefox 2.0.x was the latest version available, and I didn’t really want to have to compile Firefox 3.0.x.
