Stuff acquired, book on target

I just got an iPod. Yes, yay yay, but this is all offset by the fact that the sexy collar-clip remote seems to be DOA. Rrr. I lack the time and energy to schlep it back to Micro Center (once again dodging student-driven UHauls all the way), and I don't absolutely need the remote to enjoy it... for a few days, anyway. Doubtless I'll have to ship the whole farging unit to Texas or whatnot in order for them to replace that one bit. No fun for the me. Enh... maybe I'll just deal with Apple myself. With luck they still do the Airborne-Express-from-your-door deal. Mm, I'll also phone Micro Center later and ask if they'd cotton to a simple exchange. Once the UHauls go away, though.

Also it comes with a Breakout game, which amuses me on multiple levels.

Got a printer, too: an HP LaserJet 1200se. The Plan is that we'll plug it via parallallallel into one of the many morgul.net Linux or BSD boxen, upon which we would install some nice CUPS server software, and then all the Morgudlians can share and be happy. I expect to be the principal user, especially in the days immediately ahead, as Chuck and I have until Sept. 9 to take the book -- which, at this time, has all of its chapters accounted for in first draft form -- and turn it into something I'm not ashamed to ship off to tech reviewers. I'm really excited about the TR phase for this one... the ranks, as constructed by both Chuck and myself, include: Tim and some other ORA people, some Apple people, Zarf, the MINT/Arcus gang (three guys who have each switched from Linux to Mac OS X as their working envirionment in the last year), and the author of my favorite Cocoa book. Maybe a couple others, too.

I say "Chuck and I" because he wrote himself in as a co-author after I wrote him a pessimistic letter last weekend, and before I managed to deliver as promised anyway. (Amusingly, he went all-out and wrote a page-long acknowledgements section underneath mine, which currently reads "Text Goes Here".) While we're not sure whether or not his name will stay on the cover through the final draft (either way is fine with me, to be honest), it's true that he's going over the book's earlier chapters, some of which I haven't had time to touch since I got Jaguar, and updating things accordingly. I appreciate this immensely. Furthermore, the book's big command reference chapter is likely going to be an even bigger team effort, but of this I shall speak no more today.

Goal is to have the thing out by MacWorld SF. The shocking thing is that, despite all my teeth-gnashing and breast-beating about pain pain pain, the project still more or less on the same track as it was two months ago. This is a Feature.

Click!

Aha! According to this tech note, you have to push in the remote's connector extra-special hard in order for it to go "click!" and start working. Pushing it in only until it's flush with the unit (as one normally does with plugs of this variety) will allow music to flow through but the buttons won't work, which is the phenomenon I was observing.

I dunno. This seems like a misfeature to me, since it's not really obvious that you need to push down on it so hard when connecting -- the included paper doucmentation doesn't mention this at all.

But, I'm happier with my purchase now.

No tech note for this

After two hours or so of use, the iPod's belt clip has just flown apart, the plastic part of its hinge snapped in two places. Hmm. I doubt I'd be able to talk anyone out of a new one in this case.

It's too bad, but I am hesiatnt to buy another, for obvious reasons. I wonder if third parties make any sturdier clips.