This weekend, I’ve started the process of moving away from Dreamhost and onto Linode. I’ll post about why I decided to move later, but in if things look odd around the blog for the next day or so, it’s probably related to the move (I’m having to reconfigure all kinds of things).

I’ve been using the mac for just right around 5 months now. In that time, I’ve found that there are a handful of applications I use very regularly, so I thought I would share in case any other switchers are looking for apps to check out. Here are my current top 5 (in no particular order):

• TextMate
• Things
• 1Password
• Delicious Library 2
• Quicksilver

Other Noteworthy Apps

• Adium
• VMWare Fusion
• NetNewsWire
• CyberDuck
• Transmission

Since I moved to Tennessee, I’ve wanted to go try out skiing - mainly because it’s relatively close to where I live, so it alwayed seemed like a good thing to try while I’m in the area.  Well, yesterday, I tried skiing for the first time…

I went to Ober Gatlinburg with a couple of co-workers.  I haven’t heard great things about Ober, but it took less than an hour to get there and we all had free passes for the ski lift because of a Hardee’s promotion earlier in the week.  My friends let me borrow the basic items that I’d need (other than the skis themselves) so the whole trip really only cost $13 for skis…although I did buy a pair of goggles while I was there, but I could have done without them.

The overall ski experience was interesting.  I’ve never waterskied, so this was my first time on skis period.  After falling down the “ski school” slope a couple of times, my friends decided it was time we all take the ski lift up to a long, but easy run.  I didn’t think I was ready for that, but eventually I went anyway.  Those ski lifts are harder to exit than I would have thought - in fact, I never was able to successfully exit the thing without falling (I could slide away, but never got very far).

As far as skiing down the mountain, well, when the snow was fresh (it was snowing a lot while we were there), I could control my speed pretty well in general.  I still fell a lot, but it was usually because I hit a steeper area and I’d lose my balance when I sped up too much.  I never really figured out how to turn with the skis, I did figure out how to wobble a bit so I could shift my weight slightly to turn just a little, but never got the hang of doing a regular turn.

As the night went on, I think the slopes got more icy.  It certainly got pretty chilly, but by the last run I made, I could barely control the ski speed even though I was doing the same thing I did before.  So my last run was relatively fast, but a bit more painful since I kept falling faster and pretty repeatedly.

Today, I’m totally sore.  I kept falling in the same position, so I banged up one side pretty good (but I was never going very fast so no lasting injuries or anything)…some good bruises though.  I wish I got the hang of skiing and I’m sure it’s just like a friend was telling me - I just had to let go when I started going faster and just go with it.  The problem is that I’m not a big adrenaline junkie - so I don’t want to go fast or feel that out of control, so I never could quite let go and I’m pretty positive that is what made me fall so much once I started going at a good pace (because I know I kept leaning back too far and my skis came out from under me).  Overall, I’m glad I went since I’ve wanted to try skiing, but I don’t think I’ll be going back.  Skiing just isn’t for me, but it was certainly an interesting experience.

Now seems as good a time as any to post my a list of goals I want to accomplish in 2009. I think everything is quite realistic. So, I now have 364 days left to:

Financial

• Fully fund 2008 & 2009 Roth IRAs
• Pay off second mortgage OR refinance into single mortgage (with much lower rate and no PMI)
• Get my side income up to the point I could live off of it if the need arose (NOT trying to get this to replace my actual income level…although that would be fantastic if it did)
• Maintain at least a 3 month emergency fund (currently at 12 months, but expect some of this to use used for other financial goals)

Health

• Get weight to 190 or lower and keep it there (~25 lbs to lose)
• Decrease caffeine intake - and keep it down (target is around 1 12oz can of soda per day or less)
• Drink more water (no particular amount - just when I’m thirsty, grab a water instead of a soda)
• Cook (healthly-ish) meals at home more than I eat out (including lunch)

Personal & Professional Development / Other

• Read at least 1 non-fiction (but not computer related) book a month
• Read at least 1 fiction book a month
• Attend WWDC 2009 (contingent on other financial goals being met/on track in May)
• Get my passport
• Write at least one blog post per week on this blog - just to start writing more

Well, 2008 is almost over and overall, it really hasn’t been that bad.  This year I:

• Switched to using Apple OS X as my primary desktop environment (after I purchased my first Apple computer - a 13” MacBook)
• Remodeled my kitchen (well, mostly…a couple of minor things are still on the TODO list)
• Canceled my Lowe’s credit card after having absolutely terrible service from them (during my kitchen remodel)
• Totally paid off my student loan debt
• Celebrated my grandfather’s 80th birthday and then attended his funeral less than a week later
• Sold my first “real” software product - Budgee - a budgeting app for Apple’s iPhone
• Celebrated my 1 year anniversary at my new employer - finally doing software development for a software company, which is what I had been wanting to do
• Lost ~30 lbs by joining a gym & getting a personal trainer (although I’ve slacked off over the last couple of months…time to get going on that again)
• Built up a 1 year emergency fund “just in case”
• Finally got around to visiting old college friends back in Alabama and had one friend finally make it up to Tennessee to visit While 2008 was pretty fun overall, I’m pretty sure 2009 is going to be awesome in quite a few ways…  Here’s looking forward to a whole new year and lots of exciting adventures to come…

Just a quick post to say I’m still around…  I haven’t been updating this blog much because things got quite busy at work and after that settled down, I started working on a small iPhone app that I’ve been wanting for a long time. On October 14th, I finally released my app (called Budgee) to the Apple App Store.  So far, it’s been a blast - I use the app daily, I’ve heard good things overall from those that have contacted me about it, and I have some interesting things I’d like to do with it in the future…plus several more apps that are in the queue.  If you’re interested in seeing what I’m up to in the iPhone world, the blog I’ll be updating for that (and I will be updating it) is: http://blog.cogitu.com (if you want to see Budgee, it’s here: http://www.cogitu.com/Products/Budgee/).

Anyway - not much else to say other than I’m still not going to be posting too many updates to this blog in the near future.  I’m really trying to focus most of my free time getting my new iPhone venture up and running at full speed.

Well, about three months ago, I applied for the Apple iPhone Developer Program so I could build a few apps for my iPhone.  Last Friday, I was finally approved.  I’m not sure why it took so long for Apple to open things up, but I’m glad they finally released the finished SDK and let everyone in.  I’m sure in the next couple of months, there will be some awesome applications out there.  I’ve been working most of the weekend on my first app, but I’ll talk more about that later.

I did notice that one of the top 10 apps (#9 currently) is “iBeer” - it uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to display “beer” on the iPhone’s screen that looks as if it were in a glass when you tip the iPhone up to your mouth.  I think it’s an interesting use of the hardware and all, but I can’t believe it’s a top 10 non-free app.  I mean, this thing costs $3 + tax…  Just amazing what people value these days (but congratz to the developer for coming up with that - paying off big time I’m sure).

Yesterday, I posted about how I was giving up OS X after 3 months of use. Well, after 24 hours of use, I remembered why I tried to switch to mac to start with…activation.  I’m one of those people that likes to reformat a machine when it’s getting too much crud - after all, as a software developer, I try out new things when they come out and that’s not really a good thing for the system if you want to keep it clean and fast.  The problem, is that I don’t really want to tie Vista to my MacBook since I may want to go back to OS X at some point…  I remembered I had my dual core Athlon 64 desktop w/ triple monitors just sitting in a closet, so found some desk space and fired it up.  It’s so much easier to get my .NET development on using my desktop. I’m sure it’s just habit, but it just doesn’t feel right on the laptop (and I miss my third screen).

So, now my MacBook is transitioning back to OS X Leopard (looking forward to Snow Leopard though if they really do speed things up), but my main workhorse is my trusty old desktop.  I really hate not using Vista since I purchased it at retail, but XP just feels better (and Vista doesn’t like my desktop…but XP flies on it thanks to the ton o’ RAM and 10K RPM SATA drive).

I’m really surprised that I didn’t like having a dedicated Vista laptop, but it just didn’t feel right once everything was said and done.  With this new setup, things seem just right…old habits die hard.

It’s been about 3 months since I purchased by MacBook.  Since then, I’ve been using OS X Leopard as my main OS at home - the only exception was when I needed to pop back to Quicken 2006.  Overall, OS X wasn’t a bad experience, but there wasn’t anything magical about it either.

Perhaps jumping into OS X with Leopard was the wrong thing to do.  I’ve read quite a lot about how Tiger was a very streamlined and efficient OS and how Leopard came along and added bloat.  I’ve had very little experience with Tiger (or earlier versions) of OS X, so I can’t compare first hand, however, I can confirm that Vista Ultimate 64-bit runs much faster than OS X Leopard on this MacBook, which is a shame.  From what I’ve seen, Leopard has plenty of flashy effects along with a few nice features (e.g. Time Machine), but the bottom line is that I’m not more productive using a Mac.  I realize that part of that is caused by the fact that I’ve been a Windows power user for quite a long time.  The other part of that, is that Mac apps in general are fun to use and nice to look at, but your options in that software are very limited.  I thought I would like the simplicity of Mail, iCal, and Address Book, but the reality is that I miss Outlook - there’s something nice about having one application open instead of 3.

The other catch is that I’ve stopped doing development at home because it’s a bit of a hassle to switch to the BootCamp partition whenever I want to play around with .NET.  I tried VMWare Fusion and it worked great until I tried to resize the Vista partition, then VMWare got confused and couldn’t figure out how to boot Vista.  I realize these are petty items, the reality is that I’m still tied to MS and using OS X right now just gets in the way (I can buy another dedicated MS PC, but I don’t see a reason to do that at this point). My day job is at a Microsoft shop, my financial software is Windows based, my hobby development is usually in .NET as well, so it’s just so much easier to just stay in the MS OS world.

Secondary reasons for the move are the fact that Vista just plain runs better on the MacBook that Leopard ever did.  Leopard wasn’t super sluggish, but it was never all that snappy.  The other reason is that everything on Mac seems to cost more - the hardware is comparable to higher end PC prices, but it seems like all the basic applications I liked would all cost $30-$70 a pop. Which isn’t that expensive, but it just feels like even the little things are a bit pricy.  Maybe that’s just perception though - I know the tools I use on Vista aren’t cheap either (in fact, they are much, much more expensive than the equivalent Mac software), but the reality is that I already own them.

In any event, I just finished by MacBook reformat so now I’m up and running with Vista and it feels like home - it may not be quite as fun to use, but for me, it’s really about the productivity, and that is one thing Vista can handle just fine.

I’ve been thinking about whether it will be worth it to pick up an iPhone 2.0 on July 11th.  I’ve had the original iPhone for a while now (I picked it up when they discontinued the 4GB version) and I have mixed feelings about it. iPhone 1.0 is certainly the best PDA type phone I’ve ever used.  Everything is very well designed, the battery life is good, sound quality is at least as good as other phones I’ve had, the web browser is fantastic (unless you need to view Flash content), and it’s a great iPod.

So why am I not already getting in line for 2.0?  Well, the first thing is that the 2.0 software will run on the 1.0 hardware.  So any bug fixes, new core application updates (e.g. scientific calculator), and other improvements will work just fine on my original phone.  The only real hardware features that matter for version 2.0 of the hardware are 3G network chip and the A-GPS hardware.

2G is certainly not setting any speed records - but for the most part, it gets the job done fine for me.  I use the web more on the iPhone than I have on any other phone, but it’s still nothing at all compared to my web use on a real PC - so 3G would be nice, but it’s nothing I can’t live without.  The main issue with the 3G support is that my phone bill will go up by $10 per month for 2 years - so $240 total increase on top of buying the $200/$300 iPhone 2.0. It’s not a horrible price increase, but in my particular situation, it’s harder to justify the benefit outweighing the cost there.

The A-GPS is a bit more appealing though.  I have a handheld GPS unit from Garmin, but it’s meant for hiking/geocaching type activities and not for navigation.  I do like the idea of buying a cheap dash mount and then my iPhone could be a very decent auto navigation system that moves around to different cars easily.  Of course, this all depends on what GPS software is released for the phone, but I’m sure we’ll see great things in this area.  The other thing is that we really haven’t had a small GPS device that had an always on broadband-link internet link - that could allow for all kinds of interesting situations that make the GPS ability of the iPhone unlike anything we’ve seen (for better or for worse).

At this point, my feeling is that I’m going to hold off for a bit and see what applications come out that make use of iPhone 2.0 hardware features.  If they are compelling enough, then I may make the jump, but I’m starting to get to that point where I need to see real world benefits from new gadgets instead of just the conceptual greatness of them…  Even on July 11th, the really amazing applications for iPhone may not even be ready because of the way Apple has chosen to limit the developer program - from the latest Apple keynote, it sounds like some developers (and some SDK functionality) won’t even be ready until September anyway.  We’ll see how things play out, but for now, I think I’ll be keeping my $440.