FreeBSD, Unix, Apple and other goodies alike
I bought what seems to be the most recommended book in the area: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X - Third Edition, by Aaron Hillegass.
Although I’m not a programmer by profession I started coding in C when I was 12 and C++ some years later so I’m hoping Objective-C won’t be a showstopper.
I already have 2 projects in mind, more on that later.
I expect to have a review of the book in a few days.
My buddy Romeo died late last night, of a undetermined condition. He’d been sick for over a month.
I named him Romeo after I found him very young inside the suspension of an Alfa Romeo.
He was the youngest of 3 cats in the house but still managed to teach something to the other ones: he knocked on the door.
The garden door on the back of the house had a ring like doorknob. He streched all the way to the doorknob and (always) knocked 3 times with it so to get our attention and get in. If no one opened the door promptly he would (always) repeat the knocking with a different speed. Amazing 
A very good friend on cold nights and a real pain in the ass on hot nights. Not only he slept on the bed but had to sleep inside it and glued to me.
Oh and I often caught him sleeping on top of my MacBook Pro. What can I say, it was hot and apparently comfortable.
So long my friend, you’ll be missed.
Here’s an interesting article on Onlamp where Federico Biancuzzi interviews two dozen FreeBSD developers responsible for several of the new enhancements in the 7.0 Release.
I’m mostly proud to see a fellow Portuguese on that developer list, Rui Paulo which I’m lucky to know.
It seems our Spanish neighbors are preparing a BSDCon in Barcelona, on the 19th and 20th of April.
I’m waiting for some interesting presentations in order to decide if I’m going.
Low cost flights to Barcelona can’t be the excuse not to go 
I have accepted a new challenge: a job at CSO - Chief Security Officers
I actually started last week, but preparing to move to a new house is taking my free time.
ps: CSO is looking for someone (junior) with a Networking/Security profile. If you’re interested or know someone drop me a line.
That’s right, even SSL Gmail can get sidejacked.
I used a Firefox extension to force https access to Gmail for a while but that only covered Gmail, so I went back to what I used to do: ssh tunneling to one of my machines at home
Following up on my previous post, I have a brand new battery on my MBP
Here’s my tail on the warranty process:
I went directly to Apple IMC Portugal, and they stated I should contact Apple Support first.
Contrary to other countries, we get 2 year warranties in Portugal, and Apple forces it’s customers to call Apple Support first after the 1st year.
Problem #1: The support line is Brasilian Portuguese, which is in somewhat different from European Portuguese.
I would have prefered an English (American) speaking assistant if given the choice.
Mix that with what seemed like a VoIP connection to Brasil with the lowest QoS priority on a congestioned link. Sometimes you hear it, sometimes you don’t. On both calls in different days.
The first line support assistant aka T1 was being teleguided by a T2 ( they were talking in English) and was following his guidance to the extreme, even when he asked me to install Battery Update 1.2, when Leopard which I said I was running comes with Battery Update 1.3
Now that I have a case number with a go for battery replacement in the process I must go to an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
Problem #2: Apple doesn’t allow Service Providers to stock exchange parts as part of their new semi presence in Portugal, so you always have to wait for the arrival of a new part, 3 to 4 days usually. It’s way better now, in the past it took at least 3 weeks so I was told by one of the Service Provider companies I contacted.
Problem #3: I had to leave my old battery until the new one arrived. I asked the service Service Provider if they are going to test it or something. No, just waiting there till the new one arrives and only then it gets sent back to Apple.
I’m pissed. My battery capacity went from 3+ hours when new to <1 hour with a problem. And then my laptop turned itself into a desktop because of the support process. Isn’t support suposed to make things better for you? I got just the opposite.
Contrast that with being able to schedule an appointment to the Genius Bar on an Apple Store and exchange the battery on the spot.
