Snow Leopard – The Journey to Find the Directory Utility

Today I was immersed in Snow Leopard,

I would like to start off by saying I am very pleased with the speed improvement in this system. Finder itself looks to have gotten a great speed boost and most of the core apps I tried launched within 2 bounces. Today, I spent the whole day with the new operating system Installing, Troubleshooting, and using it.

I had two Mac Pro’s one new and one from about a year ago, both needing to be upgraded to Snow Leopard and both needing to be bound to our windows network. The upgrade on both machines went smooth but on one machine I had to migrate the users data back onto it from a clone I made before the upgrade procedure. Migration couldn’t have been easier it even transfered the CS3 design premium. I then found out that the migration assistant also cause a few of the migrated apps to stop working. Klondike, IMovie, and Illustrator had all quit working. But that was not a big deal to fix, I simply removed their preferences and they launched. My next step however, proved to be more difficult than expected. I had to bind the computers to our Windows domain so that the users could access all of our internal resources.

Normally, I just open the utilities folder, open the Directoy Utility and Setup the Active Directory Portion. Viola! Done. Well… not that easy this time.

In Apple’s defense it is a ton easier and more logical the way they have it now but it sure did cause me about 5 minutes of grief as I tried to search spotlight for directory… yeah there where a ton of results I even downloaded Pacifist and tried to install the Directory Utility that way. But alas I could never get it to work. So I went to the second machine and it wasn’t on it either. So now I knew there wasn’t something wrong with my install as these where two separate installs. So then I started digging through the new features page at Apple.com and saw the new ICal integration. So I opened ICal and Ahoy… there is a connect to an exchange server option.. whoohoo I thought. So I went through the motions setting this up and it sure did pull in the calendar of the user and even associated Mail to their username. But alas there was still no connection to log-in users to the domain. So my next step lead me to the system preferences and Accounts tab. and finally at the bottom right of the login options screen I found an item that said “Network Account Server” so I clicked it and there was my directory utility. Finally I Found it, plugged in the info and then it worked like normal.

I will try to post some pics tomorrow, I am sorry I don’t have them tonight I just thought it would be best to get this info out there just in case there was a user going through the same problems as me.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Sickly

This week the wife, Daniel, and me are all sick. No progress will be made on the bathroom this weekend and I hate to say that I probably won’t be making great strides in web development either as I will have to back my wife up in Caring for Daniel. I also want to let you all know that it Is not the swine

See you next week
David Bates

My Trip to Denver, CO

Earlier this week you may have noticed that I did not post much or tweet a whole lot. This is because I was actually in Denver, CO touring RFMD’s Broomfield facility. I was accompanied by my Colleague

I started my journey on Tuesday at 4am and flew to Atlanta we stayed in ATL just long enough to huff it across the terminal and catch our flight to Denver. The flight to Denver was over 3 hours long and we flew over 500MPH. The coolest part of the trip was watching the GPS while we flew. Cities flew by as though they were street names, it was very cool. We landed at about 11 our time and we grabbed our rental car and headed for the hotel.

It is about a 20 minute drive from the Airport in Denver to the hotel in Broomfield. While driving to the Hotel we both noticed that there where no mountains. In fact we both looked at each other and said “Where are the friggin Mountains?” There was not a single mountain in site for the entire drive and me and Kim both were disappointed that we would not see any. So we got to the hotel and checked in.

Pictures of trip to Denver from Airplaine:

Once we got settled at the hotel we then drove to work. We were told before we left that there would be a cookout at the facility at 2:00 so we rushed over so not to miss it. We got there at the perfect time I went straight through the line being sure to meet the people that was supposed to show us around. The menu was hamburgers and sausages… yes sausages and they were delicious. They even had put Jalapeño’s on the line. While I was stuffing the sausage into my mouth we met the main guy we came to see, he asked how our trip was and if we liked Broomfield. I said the food was great but that we were disappointed because we couldn’t see the rockies. Surprised he exclaimed… What do you mean you can’t see the mountains? I then asked if he had a place close by that we could go to see them and he said sure just turn left out of the parking lot. Now I gave him a strange look because I had just drove from that way and I figured that if there had been a mountain there I would have seen it… Right? So I agreed to follow his direction once we got out of the office. We spent several hours then touring the facility and video taping several areas of the building. The office had a meeting at 4:00 though and after that all of the workers were dismissed so me and Kim took off to find some mountains, and mountains we did find.
This is the view just to the left of the parking lot for RFMD Broomfield:

It turned out that it was just foggy when we drove in and the mountains were covered. I guess it was God’s way of giving the mountains a majestic reveal.

That night we had the most amazing dinner at Carraba’s and I went back to the hotel and got in the Jacuzzi… Wonderful

Day 2:
On day 2 we got up and drove quite a ways to the nearest IHOP and as we were telling each other that we had traveled to far we noticed this great spot to film the mountains from… take a look below and see if you agree:

we then ate at IHOP and went in to work. we filmed until about 2 and then headed for the airport.
This time we were routed through Cincinnati to get back to Greensboro but it was a fun flight.
A Pic of the flight back:

All in all it was a great trip and I had a great time.

Thanks for reading:
David Bates

Apple’s Response to the FCC

Have you read Apple’s response to the FCC’s Letter? Is there any part you feel was wrongly explained? Read the response here

Why Apple

You can’t deny it with the introduction of the IPod, IPhone, IMac, and now Snow Leopard Apple is gaining and gaining fast on Microsoft. Everybody that I have spoken to admit’s that they secretly want a mac… they talk about apple as though it where an affair, as though it would be cheating on their pc to get one. They simply lust after Apple’s Products. (ok admitedly a little extreme but still you get the point.) Mac’s are here and everybodys talking about them. Why you may ask? because they are sexy, they are top of the line, and the advertising behind them is undeniably better than Microsoft’s. I am not only talking about the two guys pretending to perpetuate to be computers or the many people saying they want a mac on Microsoft’s ads. but also the advertising on their websites. Take a look at the screenshots below.

Click for larger image
First let’s say the obvious do you want a computer to build a resume? Or do you want a sexy cat with snow on it
Second Microsoft is not featuing it’s products on it’s homepage. Other than the tabs across the top I see no mention of windows, no pricing, I see no features. I see no mention of how fast windows is or how it supports a ton of hardware compared to the Mac. All I see is the news section where it even references Apple showing off it’s new version of office for OSX.

There was a toyota commercial that summed it up for me… “Everybody keeps saying how they were like the Camry so I bought a Camry” Makes sence to me… I have an IPhone for that very reason.

Thanks for reading
David Bates