The Occasional Blog of Jonah Weiland

One of the big changes I made to my life in 2007 was beginning the switch from PC to Mac. When I began reading about the new Windows Vista Windows system, I was quite turned off and began thinking this might be the moment when I need to make the switch. Then, when I actually got to use it, coupled with reading the nightmarish reports of people upgrading to Vista, the choice was made – the switch needed to happen.

In February of 2007, I bought a refurbished 1.83 Ghz Core 2 Duo Apple MacBook with a 60 gig drive. Buying refurbished meant I was saving about $200 and it being a low-end machine meant I wasn’t making a major investment in this wild experiment called the switch. I had never really used a Mac before – sure, I had played with friends machines, but never really worked on one regularly – so who knew if I’d like it.

Well, about nine months later in November I finally took the plunge and moved my e-mail from my desktop PC to my Mac. This was a needed move as I was about to go up to Vancouver for a couple of days and would need access to all of my e-mail when I was up there. Transferring 9 gigs of Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail from my PC to my Mac wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do – it’s not like there’s one easy program that will do that for you – but it went relatively smoothly. After the data was transferred it took about two hours of massaging to get all the e-mail indexes working properly again, but I now had my e-mail up on my MacBook – I could finally truly work from anywhere in the world.

Once I got my e-mail transferred successfully, I knew the switch had begun. Now it was just a matter of becoming more familiar with the machine and finding equivalent programs for the Mac that I used to use on the PC and with the help of my friends Jacob and Stephen, this really hasn’t been a problem at all. I’m now a proud Mac owner – I also have a Quad MacPro desktop – and can’t ever imagine going back to a PC full time. That said, in order to get my billing done, I have to maintain a PC desktop. Bah.

But now, my 60 Gig MacBook which was basically an expensive experimental toy, was now my primary computer. Which was fine – the speed was plenty for most of my needs, but the disk space was a big problem. I was constantly running out of disk space and having to move files to my MacPro constantly. It was really eating into my productivity.

So the thought came to mind, “Wow, maybe it’s time to upgrade to a MacBook Pro and sell off the MacBook.� I mentioned this to Jacob who asked why I’d do that when I could just swap out the old hard disc for a new, bigger one. I’ve owned five or six PC laptops and never once considered opening any of them up to do anything other than maybe upgrade the memory. Laptops are solid bits of machinery and I never thought of doing such a thing, but he told he it was relatively simple on the MacBook.

Now, I’m a fairly technical guy, but I also have enormous amounts of fear when it comes to potentially loosing the use of my computer for more than a couple of hours. I knew I could probably manage the swap out of the hard disc, but data loss and down time was not something I was looking forward to. I didn’t know if I could trust myself to do it.

Despite the fear and with Jacob’s guidance, I took the plunge. I bought a 200 Gig Hitachi 2.5� drive off NewEgg.com for $180 ($200 something with tax and shipping), bought a 2.5� USB 2.0 enclosure ($20) to use to transfer the data from the old drive to the new drive, a firewire cable ($10 – yeah, I overpaid) and a ratchet set ($15) with all the bits I’d need to handle the upgrade.

First things first, time to transfer the data. I hadn’t installed Mac OSX Leopard yet, so I didn’t have the use of the back up software Time Machine to move the data. I was reluctant to upgrade until I knew I had a solid back up of my desktop. So, Jacob suggested I download Carbon Copy Cloner, a free piece of software that will clone one hard disc onto another. I installed this software on my MacPro. Next, I took the firewire cable and hooked my MacBook to my MacPro and powered up the MacBook holding down the T button. While I don’t know what the technical term is for doing this – I’m still new to the Mac, yo – it launched my MacBook so that it just looked like a network drive on my MacPro. To my MacPro I connected the new 200 Gig drive in its enclosure. With both drives now mounted on my MacPro, it was time to tell Carbon Copy to copy the data. 53 gigs of data took a while, even with the speed of firewire, but it copied without any problem in I think 90 minutes.

Now to the “hard� part – swapping out the drive.

I Googled “MacBook Hard Disc Replacement� and came up with this super easy to follow PDF document from Apple (interestingly if you spell disc with a k, as I normally do, it does not come up on the first page in Google). The instructions were plainly written and the accompanying pictures made it obvious that this shouldn’t be as hard as I thought it would be.

Following the instructions, I removed the battery and then unscrewed the screws that hold in the RAM door. I’d done this once before when I upgraded my memory, so this didn’t worry me too much. Once that was out, I simply pulled on a paper tab that held the hard disc on the left. Far simpler than I thought it would be. I removed the torx screws from the hard disc enclosure, swapped in the new hard disc, slid the disc back in with the paper tab tucked underneath, screwed back in the RAM door and powered her up. Success. All told it took about 10 minutes to make the swap and it was incredibly easy.

The great thing about the upgrade isn’t just the additional disk space, but I also got a nice speed bump. The old drive was 5400 RPM and the new one is 7200 RPM. The speed bump in loading programs is quite noticeable.

If I had gone with my original plan I would have spent over $2000 bucks for a MacBook Pro and would have had to deal with the hassle of selling my old MacBook. And I wouldn’t have been happy because I really like the smaller size of the MacBook. Instead, for $245 I got a lot more disk space and a little speed increase to boot. Looks like I’ll be holding on to this MacBook for some time and the switch from the PC to Mac has definitely taken hold.

Local news in Los Angeles sucks. Wait, that’s not entirely fair. Local news pretty much anywhere in the United States sucks. That’s nothing new, but it’s why I never watch the local news. Yes, bad things happen in our fair city, but I really don’t need to watch details of random murders, assaults or drive by shootings on a regular basis, especially when they don’t really reflect the true nature of my city.

That said, when it rains in Los Angeles, I always watch the local news. It becomes wildly entertaining as each channel begins their Storm Watch Team Coverage and get absolutely hysterical about the rains.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I realize the rains can have serious consequences for the areas ravaged by fire months ago, but then why are they doing live shots from Old Town Pasadena or Hollywood, where there were no fires? Because there’s people there you can interview and have say stupid things during your cast.

Channel 7, the local ABC affiliate, has some of the funniest names for their coverage. While everyone else goes with “Storm Watch,� they choose to go with “Storm Track 2008 Team Coverage.� Storm track. What the fuck is that? Then of course there’s the weather guy who has at his disposal Live Mega Doppler 7000 HD radar to track the coming Armageddon. Live. Mega. Doppler. 7000. HD. Mega? 7000? Jesus.

But the funniest had to be the other night when Channel 11, the local Fox affiliate, went with a live shot not far from my home. There’s an intersection in the NoHo Arts District that sees three different roads converge. I don’t scare easy, but that intersection is what Satan would look like were he an intersection. I’ve seen way too numerous close calls or accidents in that crazy ass intersection.

At any rate, there’s Channel 11, doing their live shot, reporting on the “flooded� intersection (I went to check it out shortly thereafter and it really wasn’t that flooded). He filed his report, filled with ridiculous anecdotes by people affected by the rain (i.e. people who just happened to be walking by) and other stupidity, warning people to just stay in because the conditions are so “bad� outside and then finished his report by saying, “Stay safe. Stay alive.�

Stay safe. Stay alive.

What the fuck? It’s not like we’re anticipating a zombie invasion from Riverside, are we? If we go outside and get rained on, what’s going to happen? Will we get moist? Or is it actually a sign of the coming rapture?

So, yeah, watch the local news during Storm Watch 2008. It’s the awesome.