n()_cHIEFs Drivel

…are (in no particular order):

1. If you’re utilizing Stuffit (I’m on version 11.0.2 which I think is the newest version) and you suffer from Finder re-starting or dying after you right-click it is the Stuffit context menu module that’s causing the issue. From what I understand there is a fix on the Stuffit web site, but as I never use that Context menu item anyway (I rarely use any that are part of software packages other than Toast’s “Toast It” plugin, I just deleted the StuffitCM.plugin from /Library/Contextual Menu Items. I have also heard it can exist in ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items as well, at least that’s where the fix I read said to go and it wasn’t there so I checked my main Library. You’ll have to restart or logout to delete the file from your trash but it’s a small price to pay for the most annoying thing I have ever experienced with the Mac. What made it so much worse is that I didn’t realize that it was related to right-clicking and then of course the context menu so I’ve been driving myself nuts for the past 3 months or so googling “finder re-start” or “finder dies” “finder problems” on and on! Alas, it’s fixed!
2. I found out today that there’s a new version of Remote Desktop Connect (Beta at least) from Microsoft and it’s WAY better than the old 1.0.3 version. Definitely an upgrade you want. So what’s my tip here? Well occasionally one needs to connect to the console of a terminal server, or if you’re doing remote administration sometimes it makes sense to use the console to remotely login. With the new version of RDC they’ve changed form the text configuration files where you just added a line to a neat new XML pref style configuration file for different logins. This is a good move but how-oh-how do I get it to connect to console? Easy, and I’m sure they’ll update this later as it’s really dumb not to have it as an option in the preferences, in the connect window you type your host abc.xyz.com and add /console to the end, thus “abc.xyz.com /console” and click connect. Unfortunately they didn’t choose to include the functionality of the command-click the connect button, which in the previous version would also allow you to connect to the console (which is much easier than editing the text config file). Anyway, if you save the connection preferences with the /console it will automatically conect to the console when you open that RDC’s pref file. Add some aliases to a folder and pull the folder to the Dock near the trash and you have instant access to your RDC connections.

So there ya go! Happy computer tips of the day. Hope they help someone in the future.

…was OK, nothing huge. I was able to get 2 jack rabbits. I’m really getting pretty good at placing the shots with my .204 now. As long as I don’t get a lot of movement from the rabbit I can pretty much pick where I’m going to hit it within a reasonable distance. Several of my shots that were in excess of 250 yards weren’t really that easy to place because a rabbit (even a big Jack) isn’t big enough to really say with any degree of certainty that you will hit it here or there at more than 150 yards or so. I’m sure there are people out there that can out shoot me, but none of my friends can currently. I’m going to really start to concentrate on the coyote’s now, or at least as it starts to get colder (hunting in the 85 degree heat at 7:00 am isn’t exactly what I call fun. I’d much rather wear a coat at that time of day. I’m going to start going out more and more when the days get shorter again. I have this really ideal space for hunting coyote’s but I still can’t get them to come near me. I have called them up to where they had to have been within 500 yards or so, but I couldn’t get a sight on one, in fact I couldn’t even see one. They don’t call him wiley for nothing!

…this weekend. Looks like it might just be an excellent time. I haven’t been out with the .204 in a few weeks so the population where I hunt should be nice and calm. The weather recently has been cool (which makes the hunting easier on me) and it’s been raining, so there should be plenty of food out there to lure out the rabbits. I may try calling a coyote but I don’t know if I really want to spend the time for the small reward I get in the end. At any rate I’ll try to post some pictures soon. I have several pictures with the distances at which I made the shot (some are fairly impressive for a rabbit, I have two in excess of 250 yards and that doesn’t leave much room for error on such a small target). I still haven’t setup a photo gallery for my hunting photos because I think it should be password protected, not because I’m poaching or anything but because I don’t want just anyone to see the pictures, after all, they might find my spot

I read the following yesterday:

MacUser: Leopard gets UNIX seal of approval:
Apple is only the fourth company to receive this prestigious certification; it joins only HP, Sun, and IBM. InfoWorld’s Tom Yager explains what this means to us average Mac junkies:

There are UNIX pretenders, and there is the real thing. Mac users, realize that qualifying for UNIX is no small feat, especially for an open source, BSD-based OS…Apple is to be commended.
The UNIX 03 specifications cover libraries, system calls, terminal interfaces, commands and utilities, internationalization and the C language. That’s the whole enchilada for ISVs (independent software vendors) porting their server and non-GUI applications to OS X.

Sounds like all good things for Apple in the enterprise market. And for your eight hours of beauty rest every night (not that you need it; we have it on good authority that all of MacUser’s readers are attractive, intelligent, above average folks, who completely understand the above post, even if the writer doesn’t).

So what does this mean? It means that Apple now has the power of the UNIX name to push it’s Server OS. This is an extremely good thing for Apple in terms of the high-end server market. Although I work in higher education where Apple servers are actually fairly common and have been for several years, I don’t think they have near the small market share they have in the PC market in the server market. Since most UNIX server’s are a hardware/software package (meaning the company that has the UNIX OS also makes the hardware that it runs on, Sun, HP, and IBM are all examples of these types of companies) this may mean very good things for Apple, especially since they are now running on Intel chips which means wider software compatibility.

So they’re now, on an Enterprise level, in direct competition with Sun, HP, and IBM in the high end UNIX server market. It’s going to be extremely interesting how they end up performing there. I have a feeling that they will do quite well in the lower end of this market as the server version of OS X is really a dream to setup and use when compared with (at least my last experiences with) HP UNIX and AIX. I think Solaris is really the only OS that even comes close and it’s not nearly as usable as OS X, IMHO. Apple will need to adopt some different hardware if they want to compete in the very high end server market as their current XServe RAID only supports SATA hard drives if I remember correctly (I will update this post with that info when I get to it), and I know this will turn off a lot of IT folks, they really need a SCSI option at least. I think that possibly it would be smart for Apple to consider sticking with the current XServe and XServe RAID but also release a couple higher end servers that have even more disk drive space and SCSI interfaces.

If I were setting up an Internet company right now, I would definitely be looking very closely at the Apple servers and Leopard Server, not that you couldn’t have run an ISP or hosting business previously on XServes, but now that they’re UNIX compliant this really means they have a high end OS and they’re ready for the big time in the server market. Some may say it’s just a label on a product that’s great anyway, but it does mean a lot it terms of compatibility that it carries that title. Very interesting.