Nerdy afternoon

1. My 2GB USB key drive has been bent for about 1 week so I almost bought a 4GB at Fry’s last weekend for $89.  I hesitated and it’s a good thing.  I went to CompUSA today and saw that they were selling 4GB SanDisk Cruzers for $39.  I went and got one.  To re-iterate what Jeffrey Palermo said, I loaded the PortableApps suite.

2. While I was there I got a 300 Watt ATX power supply for my home server.  It went out about 2 months ago and I haven’t need the box until recently.  I replaced the power supply and was able to access my home server once again.

3. I finished the chapter “Framework for integration tests: Beauty Through Fragility” in the “Beautiful Code” book.  I started it at 9am this morning and finished it.  (Please be aware that I have a 2 year old and a dirty house, cleaning and playing with my son were part of the day too).

4. I also reloaded my first Mac.  One of my wife’s co-workers has a G4 powerbook and it would boot up and then just sit on the apple screen.  I had to learn how to boot to CD first (hold down the letter “c” when the laptop is turned on).  Once the restore CD boots, it will boot straight to a reinstall screen.  It looks a lot like a Linux live CD; it had the look of the normal Mac desktop.  Throughout the file menu there was an option to scan the hard disk and repair if there were any errors.  It failed.  I formatted from that very same tool (all GUI) and then started the reload.  It worked and the laptop is ready to go.

For all the non-Mac people out there:  to right-click, all you have to do is hold down the “ctrl” key when you click the mouse button. :)

5.  I finally posted my next to last ALT.net conference summation post, my last one is coming soon.

6. I wired-up the email sender for my personal MonoRail site.  This was after trying to write the unit test.  I finally succeeded and it was VERY easy with BaseControllerTest involved.  I’ll explain in my next MonoRail post.

A nerdy afternoon/evening.  A good one.