It Rains In Triplicate

Maybe I’ll save someone an evening of frustration …

Steps required:

1. Download and install version 4.7 of the blackberry desktop software
2. Go to application loader
3. Install the S/MIME support
4. Synchronize your certs using the certificate synchronization application

Doesn’t sound too hard. However, signal amplification is necessary because:

• This process is different than every other blackberry device previously on the market
• Requires a specific version of the desktop software
• Doesn’t appear to be mentioned anyplace else on the web
• IS NOT MENTIONED IN ANY OF THE BLACKBERRY MATERIALS (which assume there is an S/MIME menu item already, which doesn’t appear until you do the steps above)

My iMac, I think, has died. If I use it under any decent load (i.e., firing up handbrake, vmware, or a big eclipse project) is starts throwing screen artifacts and my console log has a long, nasty string of:

Dec 21 20:37:08 ghost-home-dworkin-net kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0×6 = Fifo: Parse Error

Dec 21 20:37:08 ghost-home-dworkin-net kernel[0]: 0000000b

Dec 21 20:37:08 ghost-home-dworkin-net kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0×6 = Fifo: Parse Error

Dec 21 20:37:08 ghost-home-dworkin-net kernel[0]: 0000000b

After a while of these messages, I can’t open any new applications, opening any application or new process will instantly seg fault.

My best guess is that the motherboard is having issues. Unfortunately, that means 900+$ repair, since I don’t have applecare on the machine. The machine is almost two years old. 1000$ on a two year old 2000$ computer seems like a poor investment. I still have my laptop, but I don’t have my good kinesis keyboard attached to it, nor do I have the two 24″ displays.

So, what to do. A few options:

• Suck it up and repair the machine (doesn’t feel worth it)
• Clean up my desk and make a spot for my laptop. I loose the second 24″ monitor, but it might work. I lose the ability to watch a movie while I work, though.
• Buy a current gen iMac (expensive)
• Buy a current gen Mac Pro (more expensive)

Another trip to Omaha done. This trip may be my last for a good long time, since I’m off travel from sometime in January until at least the ICCRTS conference in DC in June.

So, it is nice that hotels are moving towards replacing the crappy CRT TVs in the guest rooms with nice plasma / LCD TVs. They take less power, they tend to work more often than not, etc. However, when all they pipe in is satellite-based (read: poor quality) standard definition programming, what’s the point?