Archive for October, 2008

Reformatting my MacBook Pro

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

My MacBook Pro has been acting up since the hard drive upgrade. So coming from such a strong Windows background, the natural answer is to reformat the MacBook Pro.

I’m backing up my personal data right now, I think it will take another hour or so.

(About five days later…)

I was a little busy and postponed the reformat until this past weekend. Everything is running great! Since I decided not to restore from a backup, I needed to reinstall some applications that I use daily.  So here are some apps that I think are must haves (that Apple has not provided):

  • Adium – I prefer Adium over iChat because it integrates all my Instant Messenger accounts, although the video chat on iChat rocks!
  • AppCleaner – This is a great tool to have, it’s even better if you never have to use it.
  • Firefox – I love Safari and use it often, but the allure of the Awesome Bar!
  • Flip4Mac – For the occasional .wmv file I come across.
  • Growl – A fantastic notification tool.
  • Perian – Video codecs for the Mac, must have.
  • Quicksilver – Spotlight is awesome, but you can apply actions to Quicksilver!  Not only can you launch iTunes, but with the right plugins enabled–you can even start playing music!
  • Skype – Essential to video chat with my sister or my friends in other states / countries.
  • Twitterrific – I love to tweet, I love to receive tweets, but I hate refreshing my browser all the time.
  • VMware Fusion – If you have any need to virtualize at all on the Mac, get Fusion.  My Windows and Linux VMs come in super handy.

Let me know if you have any must haves that I should check out!

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Thoughts about Disneyland at night

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

I have not been to Disneyland in over six years. For those of you with season passes and know this already, why didn’t you tell me this before?

I’m writing this post while waiting to go on the Finding Nemo ride at Disneyland, so this will be short and sweet.

If there ever was a good time to go to Disneyland, go at night! The lines are shorter, you’re not burning up from the heat, and most of the kids are gone!

Spend your day at California Adventure, you can totally drink there, the park is less crowded than Disneyland, and there are some good rides.

Anyways, enjoy your weekend!

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Upgrading my MacBook Pro

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

I started writing this post about two weeks ago after receiving my NewEgg order.  I was blogging from my other computer while upgrading my MacBook Pro.  I had visions of a grandiose post filled with pictures and perhaps a video to show just how easy it can be to upgrade your own computer!  (I should note that it isn’t very difficult, my experience was just more frustrating than others.)

From my original post:

It’s been about eleven months since I bought my MacBook Pro and although I do not have any complaints about the performance, I am kicking myself for not buying a bigger hard drive.  A year in photographs, music, movies, and ripped TV shows later I’m left with decisions about what to delete on a weekly basis.  That is no way to live!

I came across this article about upgrading your MacBook Pro’s hard drive a while ago and finally decided to take the plunge.  So I went to newegg.com to purchase:

  1. Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB Hard Drive
  2. G.Skill PC2-5300 4GB (2×2GB) Memory
  3. Vantec NexStar CX External Hard Drive Enclosure

The first step is always the longest: Back up your data!  A computer is not personal without YOUR data!  Make sure to have a backup!  For this process I used Carbon Copy Cloner, a free alternative to SuperDuper!  It took 02:34:59 to clone roughly 112GB of data.

Correction, the second step is actually the longest: After my hard drive finished copying, it was time to remove the screws holding my laptop together.  This isn’t normally a frustrating thing for me, and it started out pretty smooth.  I removed the battery to access the screws underneath.  The RAM door screws slid out with ease.  On to the screws in the battery bay, the first screw came out without much effort.  The second screw, otherwise known as the source of all my upgrade frustration, remained unmoving.  I tried for an hour that first night trying to remove that screw.  Ultimately I gave up and decided to just upgrade my RAM.

About a week and a half later, I mentioned my problem to someone and we decided to give it another shot.  Ultimately it took five people and countless sets of tools to get that one screw out.  While comparing that screw to it’s counterpart we discovered that the stuck screw was almost all blue while the other just had a little ring around the threads.  Apparently Apple had put almost twice the amount of loctite on that one screw than any other screw on my laptop!

After removing that, the remaining steps weren’t all that difficult.  Upgrading your MacBook Pro hard drive isn’t something I would recommend to everyone, but if you are running out of space and are comfortable taking apart your laptop–I would absolutely do it!  And if your MacBook Pro is running a little sluggish–try upgrading your RAM, it’s super easy and quick!

One other note, unless you are planning on reformatting your MacBook, make sure you use a block copy instead of a file copy while cloning your drive.  A file copy will work, your computer will boot and be just fine, but if you are using Time Machine–it will reset the archive flag and Time Machine will redo that initial backup!

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