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First Day

Started today with coffee in bed until 9am, then got down to business.

Earlier this week, after being notified I would be leaving my employer, I decided to take advantage of the company's Employee Purchase Plan (EPP) with Apple. I walked into the Ridgedale Apple Store and picked out a Mac Pro dual Xeon quad-core 2.8GHz CPU, an Apple Wireless Keyboard, a couple of 20" Apple Cinema Displays, and the 10-user edition of Mac OS X Server. I decided that, as part of defining my work, I needed to make sure my productivity wasn't hampered by under-powered technology.  I want to be able to do some serious computing, and there's nothing more powerful and affordable than the Mac Pro.

I'm happy to say that I'm writing this entry on my new Mac Pro, although I haven't yet installed Mac OS X Server (that'll come later, once I've planned out disk partitioning and digital workspace mechanics).

Working (and Living) Green

One of the things I've neglected up to now is taking advantage of the extensive power management features of Mac OS X (I know, I know, you'll find many of the same features in other operating systems, and I'll discuss Windows stuff in the future).  For starters, I've set the kids' eMac, my Mac mini, and the Mac Pro to sleep at 10pm and whenever the systems have been inactive for an hour (laptops - my wife's MacBook and my iBook)are exempt from sleep schedule as they're almost always put to sleep when not in use).  The screens are already set to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity; if only our TVs had similar features (yeah, I'm sure some of the new ones probably do, but we're not upgrading anytime soon...business and positive cash-flow are top priority now, not entertainment).

Things still on my to-do list:
  • Configure storage on the Mac Pro
  • Install and configure Mac OS X Server on Mac Pro
  • Migrate work stuff to Mac Pro from the Mac mini
  • More things that I can't think of right now...
Watch tomorrow's episode as I engage warp drive and we jump to hyperspace ;).
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Comments

Saqib Ali said…
Wow. That is a fancy machine. What do you plan on using it for?
Sat Jan 17, 03:56:00 PM CST
Tom Hannigan said…
Hey Joe,

Tom dropped by to say hi and hope all is well with you and yours.

Interesting week, I think we talked to the same messenger on Wednesday :).

Keep us all updated on how things progress with the new computer.

Take care, Tom.
Mon Jan 19, 08:25:00 AM CST
Joe said…
Saqib, I plan to run various VMs to test configurations of technologies I'm interested in. Also plan to do some web development and media editing.

Tom, thanks for the comment. Best of luck!
Mon Jan 26, 03:46:00 PM CST
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