hey, makers of automated voice systems

how about starting off like this:

our offices are now closed, but we offer a number of automated options you can access now. to hear our hours, press 1. for automated access, press 2.

i'd like that better than spending 5 minutes navigating your system, hearing all kinds of automated payment information, and then being told your offices are closed when i'm finally presented with an option to speak to someone.

end rant.

updated MB Pro benchmarks

i visited the apple store again and re-ran XBench for the 13" 2.66 GHz mb pro, providing results that i think are closer to reality (correcting that out-of-whack UI Interface value).

	MB Pro 2.53GHz C2D (Nov 2009)	13" MB Pro 2.66GHz C2D (Apr 2010)	15" MB Pro 2.53GHz i5	15" MB Pro 2.66GHz i7
RAM, gig	4	4	4	4
Overall Score	128.33	139.19	166.23	174.52
CPU	181.45	190.23	201.96	221.38
Thread	309.72	280.11	491.01	539.79
Memory	190.57	196.82	314.76	330.08
Quartz Graphics	197.14	164.88	209.01	233.53
OpenGL Graphics	90.44	168.13	198.13	204.90
User Interface	278.42	199.38	324.52	353.68
Disk, Overall	47.99	51.67	52.55	53.42
Disk, Sequential	95.06	100.12	107.92	116.04
Disk, Random	32.09	34.82	34.73	34.69

XBench figures for April 2010 MacBook Pro lineup

i last did this back in November, but with this week's release of the new laptops, I thought it was time for new benchmarks.

So tonight I stopped by the AppleStore tonight and grabbed some figures, with the same version of XBench (1.3). Again, usual caveats apply wrt variances from test to test, most notably with the User Interface score for the new 13" MB Pro. Sadly, I did only one run. More sadly, they didn't have all versions of the machines, so I grabbed what I could.

For comparison, I included the MB Pro 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo from last fall. Interesting how it and the new 13" 2.66 are not much different, performance-wise, despite the doubled RAM and "improved" graphics card. The move up to the 15" i5 seems a clear step up, though I'm thoroughly unconvinced I need or want a 15" form factor.

	MB Pro 2.53GHz C2D (Nov 2009)	13" MB Pro 2.66GHz C2D (Apr 2010)	15" MB Pro 2.53GHz i5	15" MB Pro 2.66GHz i7
RAM, gig	4	4	4	4
Overall Score	128.33	71.97	166.23	174.52
CPU	181.45	190.54	201.96	221.38
Thread	309.72	214.07	491.01	539.79
Memory	190.57	198.92	314.76	330.08
Quartz Graphics	197.14	157.52	209.01	233.53
OpenGL Graphics	90.44	170.67	198.13	204.90
User Interface	278.42	20.29	324.52	353.68
Disk, Overall	47.99	48.02	52.55	53.42
Disk, Sequential	95.06	89.78	107.92	116.04
Disk, Random	32.09	32.77	34.73	34.69

not a Lotus!

from down the street, i had misidentified this Tesla as the chrome orange Lotus Elise i would love to have. good looking car!

a little sore

not unsurprisingly, my walking tends to decrease during the winter months in Chicago. i really try, year round, to avoid driving/being-in-a-car on weekends, much preferring to run errands by walking, shopping locally, etc.

yesterday i had to be in Uptown and decided to walk. combined with the rest of the walking i did yesterday, i logged about 5 1/2 miles. sadly, much higher than i'd been doing since last fall. and i did the bulk of that on a smallish breakfast of bacon and eggs.

my energy was really good, no fatigue at all. my only complaint, near the end, was the inevitable lower back pains i get when doing that much walking. by this morning, that has pretty much cleared up, and i'm left with some soreness in my thighs and a niggly little pain in my left foot.

but overall i'm really pleased and hope to log many more miles until the next winter.

a little back patting

i'm about one month away from my first year of Eating Better. labels are always a bit tough here, as the Food Plan doesn't really fall neatly into any already-named category, but loosely what started as something like South Beach has become something like Primal.

i can't argue with any of the results, the standouts being weight and some other lab-measured values.

as a side note, Google docs to the rescue when i needed to convert some spreadsheet data into a chart. after struggling for longer than i care to admit with an ancient copy of Excel (nice chart, but it wouldn't let me scale the y-axis) and AppleWorks (nice min/max on the y-axis, but it kept running the dates along that axis), i spent about 5 minutes in google docs uploading the file and generating a satisfactory chart. huzzah.

update: i uploaded a new chart with all my historical weight data, but due to 1) lack of early data points, 2) a consistent weight for two consecutive days counting as one data point, and 3) not finding any way to tell the chart-generator that the x-axis is time and it should examine the dates and draw the chart accordingly, it's still a bit skewed. maybe the 22nd century will have better software...

finally, i left off the first data point (april 8 2009) as it was a whole month until my next data point, and that may 8 one was an actual weigh-in (the april was a guesstimate).

you can't get there from here

youtube has a nice warning system in place, letting me know recently that my version of Firefox would soon no longer be supported by their site. And they made some recommendations, including FF 3.5.

so i went to see what version of FF i was running on my (vintage 2004) ibook: FF 2.0.0.20.

okay, that's a little old, let me go to "Help / Check for Updates..." and see what I can get. Mozilla makes it easy to upgrade FF versions, downloading/installing in one step and even restoring your open windows. nice touch.

it updated me to 3.0.15. Not even close to the 3.5 I would need to keep using youtube. At this point, I began to get a little worried that my hardware, and OS (Tiger), are a little too outdated to run the latest of FF.

So back to "Help / Check for Updates" and BAM it installed 3.0.18 for me. Try again: BAM now I have 3.6. Try again: I'm at the latest.

I assume there's a good technical reason that i couldn't go straight from 2.0.0.20 to 3.6, but I'd love to know what it is.

Now when is that damn Macbook Pro refresh coming?