Let me preface this by saying that I absolutely love my MacBook Air.

But…

I’ve owned it for over a year now, and ever since its purchase it has had one big plaguing problem. It has a tendency to overheat when doing mildly intensive tasks (mainly video/flash playback, or other intensive tasks). Now I know this is an ultraportable machine designed for use on the go, and its not intended to be a main workhorse computer. I do use this as my main machine, mainly because I hate having to keep track of all my files across various machines. For me, I don’t generally do many graphics or processor intensive tasks. I do encode video (tv shows) for playback and storage in iTunes on my television, however I store those on the Mac Mini that is attached to the tv and it has a faster processor; so it gets to have that fun. With my photography I do edit photos, but I absolutely hate Photoshop (mainly due to its complex nature, and all the classes I’ve taken in photoshop have taught me nothing) so I use Pixelmator (which runs so much better on any machine). So as you can see the only problem I should be having is storage, since this machine was only available with a 60gb SSD or 80gb ATA (and I have the 80gb). I’d love to have an SSD but thats a story for another day.

Now this overheating issue use to be much worse, Apple has issued a firmware update that helped mildly. No longer did it simply shut down one of the cores to cut back on heat problems, now it just scales back processing so bad that watching youtube videos are impossible. Playback becomes so choppy that you can’t make it through an entire video. It would get so hot trying to play freaking farmville on facebook (flash content) that it got out of sync with the server because of how slow it was loading.

On to this magical fix; and no I didn’t buy a Rev. B or C MacBook Air to replace it. There is a utility called CoolBook that allows mac users to effectively under-clock the processor. This utility lets you specify the voltage the processor is getting when its running at different speeds. This doesn’t change the speeds, just the amount of power its consuming, therefore keeping it from getting nearly as hot. This also has a side benefit of using less battery power and giving you more time away from the plug. The utility is $10.00 and its attached to the computer you are using so it isn’t transferrable, its tied along with its serial to the machine. I installed it earlier today, and while it has gotten warm, it hasn’t gotten nearly as hot. I’ve been able to watch all the things on youtube I’ve missed out on! Hell i’m tempted to install iMovie and see how well it’ll create them.

While I am in the minority for people that own Airs, I still have to say its a wonderful everyday main machine for my uses, and I love it. Just now, I love it even more.

Ok, I seriously have a problem with this; and it really pissed me off. So I want to know if others feel the same as I do. This person sent me an instant message on aol, from the screen-name “rmburdett”. Now normally I wouldn’t call out people by their screen-names, but this person deserves the world to know the crap they are pulling.

So anyways, this person messaged me earlier that I have never talked to, nor have heard of or from before; and asked several odd and personal questions. He then proceeded to ask me if I had a boyfriend, and I replied, yes I do. He then asked well “it” says your single. I then responded, “what is ‘it’?” (apparently I didn’t change the relationship statues on my myspace to single in the ‘details’ field that isn’t even visible on my main profile page. Also my profile says explicitly on it I’m just looking to meet new friends. The dude then, now knowing I’m not looking for anyone, stops talking all together, so I of course turn into super bitch, and say “soo… since i’m not single and looking you don’t want to talk anymore?” and he then blocks me.

What is even better, is before messaging me this guy, fuck it hell his name is Rob from Lawrenceville, and he’s 23, requested to be my friend, and his profile says he’s in a relationship, with the most wonderful person in the world. So what the fuck was he even messaging me for in the first place!?

Oh and in asking what part of Lawrenceville I lived, I gave a reference point like I do when most people ask, I live by Discover Mills, this dude told me in reply the name of his freaking neighborhood, who does that? God people are so sick and sad when trolling for hookups; makes me sick.

So please everyone, feel free to message that screen name and tell him how much of a sleeze he is. And I hope his boyfriend finds this and learns what he’s up to. Unless they are trolling for a three-some, then they’re both just sick…

Bah.. People suck.

-Kevin

Life always seems to surprise you when you least expect it. Also at the most inconvenient of times it will throw you a curve-ball. This would have been the second year in a row that I would have gotten the holiday’s off from work, and I was really looking forward to it. Actually this year was going to be a bit nicer than last. We were supposed to work tonight (Monday night) and have the rest of the week off for Thanksgiving, and then like last year we were getting the weeks of Christmas and New Years off as well. I save up about two weeks of vacation time each year to use for Thanksgiving week, and Christmas week, The week of New Years is considered next year to payroll, so I just take it without pay, which isn’t a big deal. We always schedule an out of town week right before Christmas so that we will get a larger than norma mileage check to make up for the week without pay. This year we were doing both of the last two weeks before Christmas in Alabama, so it was going to be a really nice milage check for us.

Unfortunately things don’t always pan out the way they are planned. Corporate has decided in their infinite wisdom that they want to save as much money as they can during the holidays and over the last few weeks of the year. So they have decided to cancel all the scheduled inventories for Period 12 (basically the next three weeks). Which means that I now have 93 hours of vacation time to spread across four weeks of no work. I have the option to go and work in a store for extra hours, but since I haven’t worked in a store in over a year and a half I really don’t want to. Plus everyone has hired all of their seasonal employees and won’t have any labor hours to spend on me either.

I guess in a nut-shell I was laid off today.

Best of all, no one actually has any information about next year. So as far as we know we are employed with the company but have nothing to do (i.e. get paid to do) and might, or might not come the first week of January. So lucky me, no job for a month and I can’t even file unemployment. I got the best ’severance package’ as we’re calling this cashing in our vacation time to cover as much as we can. My boss and co-worker only have 40 and 33 hours (respectively) of vacation time to spread across this coming month.

Needless today tonight at work we weren’t working at full speed. For two reasons actually; one in disbelief, and two we needed tonight to take as long as it could so we could get as many hours on the clock as possible.

So if anyone has any free time here in oh say the next month and wants to hang-out, let me know. I’ll be available and bored. I should probably start practicing doing naughty things on web-cam again for money incase I loose my job entirely. =)

It’s really sad that that’s as positive as I can be…

-Kevin.

…that I get some big thrill out of deleting people off my friends list? I need to find someones neck to suck the blood out of later…

-Kevin.

I need birthday ideas for the Billy. His birthday is Monday, and I have no clue what to get him, and he does have a clue either. *perplexed*

-Kevin