These new automated stations at the post office are nice. You can weigh your letter or package, get stamps, add services like insurance and drop it in the box without standing in line.

All this and the machine is available 24/7. The worker in the lobby said he is noticing that a lot of ebayers are using the machine at night.

So about a year ago I was using Apple’s Compressor, a video encoding application that comes with Final Cut and DVD Studio Pro. I was getting weird red blotches, glitches, skipping frames, etc.

After a week of debugging I just gave up, too much else to do. iDVD worked, so alright.

Last Thursday I was showing my friend Julie some iMovie stuff, which ended up as the now famous masturbating keyboard movie, but when I encoded in DVD SP, the video had glitches. “Oh, yeah, this issue I thought.”

So over the next three nights I messed around, reinstalling Compressor, etc. It would work, then I’d launch DVD SP and then the bad video. All the while, the people over on Apple – Discussions – Horrible quality were telling me it was bad RAM.

RAM doesn’t selectively decide that it hates Compressor. Why doesn’t it change “God” to “Dog” in my Word documents?

So after all I could think of, I pulled my RAM. I have 4 512mb sticks I got from the Mac store, all from Viking, bought with the G5 and later. The first bank is Nanya RAM, 64×64PC320016TM. The second bank is Infineon DDR64×64PC3200UT.

So I pulled the Infineon and guess what. It all works now. Every test I can run that would fail often enough to notice now succeeds.

I’ll be calling Viking to find out what RAM I really should have and what they can do about it.

For yucks, I took out the Nanya ram and installed the Infineon. Several apps crashed on boot, I could not export in Compressor and DVD SP crashed while encoding. So I am back on the Nanya ram, after having archived all of the crash logs then deleting them to see if I crash less now

Grrrr@computers!

update:

Viking is replacing all 4 sticks of RAM with memory they say is Dual G5 compatible. As they only cold swap, I’ll be sending in the two sticks known to not work first, then the other two after the replacements come. Viking does not have a hot swap policy. But it looks like I should be good to go and back on 2gb of ram within a few weeks!

What happens when you go to show a friend iMovie HD and then realize it can use your iSight and then an hour later you have dorked around enough to make a stupid movie?

Watch the masturbating keyboard.

The WiebeTech TrayDock looks like a really, really neat external firewire solution. Has anyone used one of these?

The initial entry fee is $170, but then it is a mere $50 per drive after that. You can reuse that 80GB drive laying around for $50. Let it store those FCP projects you were deleting for space. Etc, etc.

I’ve gotten enough requests for a standalone cut of my YMCA bit from Matt’s Birthday Extravaganza that I’ve gone ahead and posted the now infamous YMCA. Watch here, if you dare!

Steve Jobs Lego mini figure announced | MacMinute News: “Tomi–the artist behind the PodBrix Lego figure inspired by the silhouette iPod ad campaign–has created an even more unique Apple-themed offering. “

For JJ:

I. Welcome to Geeks R Us Podcast 2/23 II. Using Pages III. Why I am not listening to podcasts IV. Weather V. New iPods VI. Tae Kwon Do VII. Seattle VIII. Wrap Up

Listen

Apple has introduced new iPod minis and lowered prices. Nice! I like the blue mini myself.

The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time: “Never mind the Apple versus PC debate: Until Apple unveiled this 5.1-pound machine, most ‘portable’ computers were curiosities for technophiles with superior upper-body strength. “

CNET’s Charles Cooper has left the PC world for the Mac. You know, I don’t really care what other people use, but it’s nice to get some positive press for our platform.

Switching to a Mac ain’t ever going back.: “So it’s goodbye protected mode. Shalom Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Auf weidersehen application registry. Meet me at autoxec.bat’s silver anniversary party. “

Boing Boing: Own a Disneyland ride vehicle!: “Disney is auctioning off Space Mountain and Sky Bucket ride-vehicles from Disneyland!”

Today is Valentine’s Week and I have been focusing on something that I have been working for many years – Instead of trying to find love in the world, looking inward and finding love for yourself. I think the more we love ourselves, meaning respect ourselves, make healthy decisions, pay those debts off – Both monetary and emotional, the more we treat others with respect and love and the more we allow ourselves to be ready for that person to come into our lives.

So spend some time this week thinking about how you feel about yourself and coming up with ways to improve your self image. If a decision is questionable, say No. If a decision is hard, say Yes. If you are questioning going to the gym, go.

And above all, love yourself!

I love this man, omg!

Read this article and click the link to download the mp3. OMG! LOL

I have had a horrible experience with allmediaoutlet.com. I ordered some ritek DVD-Rs and there was no notice they were on backordered. I emailed after 5 days and no response. The site says “processing.” I called 2 days later, a full week after placing the order and got told I’d need to talk to the shipping manager, but he was “busy shipping something” and would call me back in 5 mins.

2 hours later no call, so I called again, and was told it might be on back order, then another 10 mins of holding, and oh I need to have someone in shipping call me. So I just cancelled and told them this was no way to run a business.

To make it worse, their hold music is nothing but ads for other products. It is like listening to the anti-TiVo. Not even their own sales or items for sale, totally third party ads!

I should have known when I saw that this dopey review was by a dude who promotes his MSCE training as if it were a good thing. And a DeVry graduate to boot.

“So is the mini a maxi value?  For me, clearly, no.  When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware–none of which are available for the Mac platform”

ok let’s break this down:

• Disk Defragmenter – OS X auto defragments files 20mb and smaller.
• Scandisk – Disk Utility
• Norton AV – We don’t have viruses you dope
• Windows Update – Software Update, I know, it’s tough for a MSCE to grassp, but it’s under that Aqua Apple menu thingy, they did teach you about menus at DeVry, right>
• Ad-Aware – We don’t have spyware

Virex exists and if we do get some form of spyware, something will be written to handle it.

He also noted that Safari is “not standards compliant” because it did not render MSN properly. So I ran MSN through the w3c validator, you know, those people that write the standards, and the HTML source for www.msn.com failed the test. Imagine that.

The quote that shows just how much of a moron this guy is:

“The Mini boots up into a stripped-down operating system which Apple calls OS X, similar to the stripped-down WindowsCE OS found on many handhelds.” I guess FreeBSD Unix should be compared to stripped down Windows CE. Hahaha. Excuse me one second, kind reader. I need to pick my ass off the floor. Hahaha.

Talk about discrediting anything this guy ever writes again. Of course, if the site really is satirical, the average reader would not know that, so this retort is in like mind, satirical.