Windows 7? On my PC? It’s less likely than you think!

Because it was so easy to put Windows 7 on my MacBook, I was sure that it would be at least as simple to do so on my Gateway pc. I mean, Gateways are native Microsoft environments, so what could possibly be so difficult, right? WRONG. It turns out that Vista sucks every bit as much as you may have heard, and so, instead of being able to partition my hard drive and make space for Windows 7, I have just spent large chunks of the last three days figuring out how to partition my hard drive. I had 113 GB of free space on the drive, and Vista said that a grand total of 98 MB of that was available to be partitioned.

So what was the problem? Vista has built-in software to do partition drives, but the way that it stores system files means that all my free space is basically worthless. Vista’s default storage area for system files is at the very end of the hard drive, which means that you can’t lop off any part of the drive until you’ve moved those system files further in. It’s not hard to fix, but you can’t do it with tools provided within Vista.

Here’s the tutorial that I used to figure out what to do. Some notes: I used PerfectDisk2008 with no problem (there are many versions of PerfectDisk to choose from when you get to that web site). When you’ve finished the regular defrags, choose the System Files option in PerfectDisk. This will require a restart of your system, but took less than 5 minutes on my system. I went from seeing 3 GB of space (after I deleted my pagefile) to over 100 GB.

I’m having some of the same trackpad issues with Windows 7 on my MacBook that others have had, which is one of the reasons I wanted to try Windows 7 on my pc laptop. I’ll use it for a couple of days and then give my thoughts on both experiences.

lolXtians

I don’t often post about knitting on this blog, but I saw something too funny not to share. I just finished making a pair of mittens for my nephew, and the drastic drop in temperature has convinced me that I need to make a pair for myself, too. I wanted to make a pair of convertible mittens, because although traditional mittens are warmer than gloves, they allow for less mobility of the fingers; I would hate to have to pull off a mitten to reach into my bag for something. I was browsing different mittens patterns on Ravelry, and found a reference to “Mittens of the Beast.” I had no idea what that meant, but the name itself is hilarious, so I Googled it and found this blog, which in turn linked to thisgem of a post.

It sounds too stupid to be true, but a Christian knitter saw a pattern for a pair of mittens that included a pocket on top for a Charlie card and wrote a post on the Ravelry forums about how these mittens were for those who had had their skin embedded with RFID chips. She based this incorrect assumption on an unnamed broadcast she claims to have heard that talked specifically about a mittens pattern for those who had been embedded with an RFID chip. One interpretation of the Book of Revelation states that a time will come when people will have to take some form of microchip in order to buy or sell things in this world. This is known as the mark of the beast, and will separate the believers from the hellbait.

Barring how impractical it would be for any municipal transit corp to embed some people with chips when the current crop of plastic cards don’t even work all the time, think about it: why would someone who already had an RFID chip embedded in his or her body need an external pocket in a mitten to somehow speed along the identification process? How could an extra layer of anything between the chip and the sensor be considered as desirable? This is why people should only denigrate technology that they actually understand. This same principle applies to PC users who wander into Mac threads on Engadget. See what I did there?

The thread on the Ravlery forum in which this discussion appeared is still hilarious to read, nearly a year after the fact (you will have to be Ravelry member to read the forum). It’s now closed, but after the first few Reading is Fundamental types agreed with the original poster’s interpretation of the pattern, some cooler heads prevailed and pointed out the exact purpose of the pocket. Of course, idiocy means never having to say you’re sorry, so no genuine apology or expression of remorse followed, although she did admit that she was wrong about this particular heathen pattern. Several people actually pointed out that this kind of thing is why some non-Christians get such a kick out of laughing at illogical, religious Christians, and why evangelicals get such a bad rap.

Anyway, I know that there is a dedicated subset of Christians who live for opportunities to tie the current world to the end of times (DUN DUN DUH!!!!), but these people (and their unbowed descendants) have been wrong for over 150 years, and I’m starting to think they may be trying too hard to connect unrelated things. In order to help them along, I leave them with one bit of advice.The book is called Revelation. I know you’ve been saying it with an extra “s” all these years, mostly because you’ve never read it, but I’m sure that, with practice, you, too can learn the name of your holy book’s final testament. If all else fails, just remember the commercials for 1-800-Mattres: Leave off the last “s” for sinners.

The story behind these mittens amuse me so much that I believe I will be making myself a pair.

Be still, my Mac-loving heart

So I’m a bit of a fangirl already, and I’ve only had my computer since Friday. That’s right, it got here early. From Shanghai to New Jersey in two(ish, given the extreme time differences) days. Apple keeps going up higher and higher in my book. The learning curve exists, but this system is so LOGICAL, that honestly, after puzzling things out for a bit, you can definitely figure it out yourself.

Case in point: I kept reading about MultiClutch, a piece of software that allows you to use the new trackpad gestures that a built into this generation of MacBooks (and previous gens of MacBooks Air and Pro) and decided to get it. I already like this feature of the MacBook, and wanted to import it to Firefox, the application that I use most frequently. The problem is, MultiClutch came with no instructions. Once installed, it plopped itself in my System Preferences folder and sat there, silently mocking me. Every time I tried to add a gesture, it was assigned the same keystroke combination, which didn’t make any sense to me. How could everything be the product of Command-H? It took a couple of hours of leaving the conundrum simmering on the back burners of my mind, but then I had a DUH moment and realized that there had to be a way to edit the keystroke combo for each gesture. I doubleclicked (won’t give up that one) in that section of the line, and sure enough, it worked! I was able to enter an existing keystroke combination and give the expressed action that keystroke’s functionality. Rock! On!

I’m loving how quickly I was able to transfer all of my songs and playlists from my iPod to my Mac, and how painless it was to then sync said iPod to this MacBook. This was always a particular nightmare on my Windows PCs.

Touching this computer is heaven, it’s smart, it’s stylish, it’s so freaking good-looking that I keep waiting for somebody from Apple to come to my house and demand to have it back.

Plus, I already got geek love from a guy who found out that I own a Mac. Silly, but fun.