State of Matt (worklife)
I haven't posted to LJ in a long time. I think my psychology is such that exceptional events are the times to post, rather than various ongoing uses I've dreamed up and consistently not followed through with.
So:
-My morale at HMCo is improved. We are no longer hanging under a cloud of "getting bought out soon" or "IT's getting outsourced soon". The budget this year appears to tolerate the actual spending of money on parts of the business relevant to me. More personally, I got promoted to Senior Systems Administrator (along with a modicum of raise above the standard merit increase that everyone got). They also approved my going to WWDC this year, which is where I am now!
-Today was the Keynote and other plenary sessions. Most of the buzz was about Leopard. It's coming out in October, but the Beta release for developers came out today, and I picked up my copy this morning.
-The new Leopard Finder has some additions. "Stacks" are new Dock objects that organize the desktop better. One pre-configured stack is the Downloads folder (where things will go now instead of to your desktop). The most recently downloaded thing will be on the top of the stack. "Spaces" are Apple's virtual desktop implementation. I've been using a 3rd-party app at work for the same functionality, but I'm looking forward to a built-in version of it... IF it's possible to have windows of an app in several different Spaces at once. For example, I would want every space to have a Termial window and a browser window in it, in addition to whatever else.
-Safari 3.0 will launch with Leopard -- and at the same time for Windows XP and Vista. It has a bunch of upgrades and new functions, enough that I'm going to compare it to Firefox again and make a fresh choice between them. A bragging point was that using the standard iBench tool, Safari clocks in over 2x faster than IE, including on Microsoft's own OSes.
-There's lots more I'm not mentioning, maybe I'll get to them later as I attend sessions in the rest of the week. There's something for me in nearly every block of time, sometimes multiples. It's primarily a developer-oriented conference, but there's still a huge amount of attention put into how to manage all these macs, services, and software, which is what I'm here for.
Now off to install Leopard!
So:
-My morale at HMCo is improved. We are no longer hanging under a cloud of "getting bought out soon" or "IT's getting outsourced soon". The budget this year appears to tolerate the actual spending of money on parts of the business relevant to me. More personally, I got promoted to Senior Systems Administrator (along with a modicum of raise above the standard merit increase that everyone got). They also approved my going to WWDC this year, which is where I am now!
-Today was the Keynote and other plenary sessions. Most of the buzz was about Leopard. It's coming out in October, but the Beta release for developers came out today, and I picked up my copy this morning.
-The new Leopard Finder has some additions. "Stacks" are new Dock objects that organize the desktop better. One pre-configured stack is the Downloads folder (where things will go now instead of to your desktop). The most recently downloaded thing will be on the top of the stack. "Spaces" are Apple's virtual desktop implementation. I've been using a 3rd-party app at work for the same functionality, but I'm looking forward to a built-in version of it... IF it's possible to have windows of an app in several different Spaces at once. For example, I would want every space to have a Termial window and a browser window in it, in addition to whatever else.
-Safari 3.0 will launch with Leopard -- and at the same time for Windows XP and Vista. It has a bunch of upgrades and new functions, enough that I'm going to compare it to Firefox again and make a fresh choice between them. A bragging point was that using the standard iBench tool, Safari clocks in over 2x faster than IE, including on Microsoft's own OSes.
-There's lots more I'm not mentioning, maybe I'll get to them later as I attend sessions in the rest of the week. There's something for me in nearly every block of time, sometimes multiples. It's primarily a developer-oriented conference, but there's still a huge amount of attention put into how to manage all these macs, services, and software, which is what I'm here for.
Now off to install Leopard!