I expect I am noticing it more because I just got back from a job this morning. When I left, before the sun was entirely up, it was just raining. There is less rain now but the wind took me by surprise. I stopped at the dumpster to pitch some garbage on my way down from the truck, and the wind caught the lid and whipped it right up and over the top. I couldn't get enough leverage to get it closed again. Fortunately it's pretty much empty so trash isn't getting vacuumed out and blasted around the neighborhood.
I'm super glad I got the dinghy deflated and stowed yesterday, though. I wanted to give it some time to dry out first, a couple of good sunny days, and I never got them, so I settled for a couple not quite as wet as usual days and decided yesterday it was as dry as it was going to get. Good thing... if I'd left it out last night I would be starting all over again as of today. And the forecast is not promising with respect to aridity.
Fortunately, now that I am back for the day, I have something to mess with inside the boat: a new Mac Mini.
Since moving aboard, I have been needing something with enough horsepower to handle the development environment I run to build Mandy's website stuff for her; I develop in Windows because it's Playskool easy but I run it in a virtualized environment to handle the different machines necessary and to ensure that it's portable. Previously, for example, I ran it all on a home-built Linux machine.
My antique PowerBook had a processor to old to run it all, though, and I'm not in a position to replace it right now. A dedicated Windows machine would have been an option, but a very limited one, and probably would have needed to be custom built to get the form factor small enough, making it as expensive as a Mac anyway. I decided on the Mini as a compromise; it could handle all the development stuff and serve other purposes as well, such as video and sound editing, and function as a boat-sized server when at dock. It's small enough to fit easily into our computer dry box, and portable enough for us to easily take house-sitting. The keyboard, mouse, and monitor are the bulkiest items.
I figured all this out a month or so ago, but rumor had it the Minis were due for a mid-life upgrade sometime soon, and I didn't want to buy one when a better one could be had for the same price in a matter of weeks. So I had been sitting on my thumbs, stewing and not getting much done, until last Tuesday, when Apple finally announced the new version. I was so excited I got up and drove to the Apple Store at University Village, only to find that they hadn't gotten any in yet. I went home and ordered online; it showed up yesterday (free shipping!) and today it's all assembled and running back at the nav station.
I'm having trouble concentrating on code, though, so mostly I am fiddling around getting it set up to serve movies to all the other devices here and getting the virtual machines updated to take advantage of the increased processing power. What with all the racket outside, I doubt I will actually accomplish much on it today. But tonight, when it gets quite, or very early in the morning, when I can't sleep, it will be sitting back there ready and I'll sink into the lethargic fugu of programmers everywhere and hopefully crank out stuff to start catching up with what we want the website to be able to do right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment