I must be the old guy in this comic because I for one believe in paying for my software. Sometimes I hate to part with the money and most times I feel its overpriced but I would gladly pay instead of stealing.

Drive-in for Mac, this seems to be a real cool setup, its easy to use and also looks nice. I first saw it on the Flip4Mac a few days ago and was immediately intrigued. This is (as of this time) a Mac only program. I have a bunch of DVD’s that like my CD’s I would like to get a digital copy of. For a few reasons but mainly to preserve the media and also to make it portable (for me). I like watch them on my laptop when traveling and hate to use the extra battery power for the cd drive.

This program is currently free and also a Beta program, upon the final release it will be approx $50.00. Let me first say that I understand there are other (free & low cost) programs out there that can rip DVD’s and make them portable or digital. In the past I have used a combination of a few applications to make this work.

1. MacTheRipper - Rips the DVD to your Mac.
2. DVD2oneX - Strips away all the extra junk and just leaves the movie, in turn making the file much smaller and therefor taking up a lot less hard drive space. I do not need all those languages and I rarely watch the extras anyway.
3. Toast - In case I wanted to burn a back-up copy. Used mainly for my daughter (4 years old) who loves Disney DVD’s and I cannot afford to keep buying the same movie over and over when it gets scratched. I buy it burn it and let her play with the copy, just in case. I of course never give the copy’s to anyone. I really believe in buying media, I also really believe in protecting my investment.

So back to Drive-in…

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So I have given into the temptation and finally (yes I am very late) picked up a copy of WoW. I stopped by Target yesterday and was able to grab a copy. Its nice because its a dual operating system cd, meaning it is for both Mac & PC. Or else I would have had to order it online as there are no close Apple store’s here. Tampa being the closest at about 1 hour away.

I gave in at this point because it’s cheap, it was only $19.99 plus tax. With that you get the first month of game play free. Not to bad of a deal at worst I get a month worth of fun for 20 bucks, I have spent more for less!

Back in the day I played a bit of Everquest on the Mac and was ok at it. I am not a huge gamer so compared to most that played it I sucked, but it was still fun. So I am sure I will enjoy this WoW as well, of course I will not play nearly as much as some others, just a little bit here and there.

Well the cd’s (all 5 of them) are now installed and I created my account, time to go and create my character and start having some fun.

Well recently I have been working on getting my Powerbook a little leaner, which by strange coincidence was an article in the issue of this month’s MacLife Magazine. I had been doing the usual, removing old stuff (video’s, pic’s and misc. items) that I had downloaded for one reason or another and do not need to keep.

However an app that I had know about for a while now and just never thought to use came in real handy. It’s called AppZapper. While I have never minded paying for quality software, the $12.95 that I spent for this was WAY more than worth it.

This program makes it simple to remove old and or unwanted apps. With this I was able to clear away almost 2gb worth of old & unwanted apps from my system. If you have a Mac and have not used this program I suggest you give it a shot, they even have a trial that I think allows you the ability to zap 5 apps. More than enough to test it out, I am sure you will like it.

[UPDATE] Let me clarify, I understand that you can remove apps from a mac without using AppZapper. It is fairly easy to do, however if like me you have a bunch to remove you WILL want to use this program. With AppZapper it makes it VERY simple, I was able to remove all those apps and free up all that space at one time with just a few clicks. So the great thing here is the time saver, instead of sitting for an hour or so, it took literally a few minutes.

That $12.95 is well worth the time I saved.

So yes I imagine it will actually be an inconvenience. Granted small but is should have some effect. I got to see mine yesterday.

I always sync my Blackberry Pearl with my Powerbook using PocketMac for Blackberry. While it is not a perfect product it usually gets the job done without to much worry or aggravation.

I had updated my Powerbook with the DST time patch a few weeks ago (whenever it was released), and have not given to much thought to my Blackberry just figuring they would push something or some sort of update to set it right.

We yesterday I was entering a schedule for the week of the 11th in iCal as I usually do, after getting is all set I hooked up the phone via my USB cable and started PocketMac, the sync appeared to go ok, just as normal. However…

After I sync I always give my phone a quick double check, heck PocketMac works but its not perfect. So I browsed the week of the 11th to find all my appointments were an hour earlier. Crap, I thought this was going to be a royal pain in the you know what.

Well it turns out all I had to do was go to http://www.blackberry.com/dst2007 and download a small patch for my phone, at least for me it was very quick and easy, after the patch was applied and all my appointments were showing at the correct time on my phone.

I wish it all worked this smooth.

So I had anticipated going to the Blogger Meetup tonight, had it all set, even spent a few minutes earlier in the day printing directions. Then it all went away.

I had a potential client that I was supposed to meet with tomorrow afternoon give me a call. Thinking he was going to cancel I was a little disappointed, but then I was nicely surprised when he asked if we could meet tonight as he had something come up tomorrow. So then it came down to potentially making some money or having some fun.

Sorry to all the other bloggers, as I am sure there was a lot of fun to be had, but this time the meeting won. Maybe next time I will be able to attend.

[UPDATE]  The fine folks over at the Mozilla Store actually called me to let me know of the backorder. I was very nicely surprised when I received a call yesterday around lunch time, they were calling me to let me know that this item was backordered and also letting me know when it was going to ship.

I did know it was backordered from when I actually placed the email, but it turn out it will be ready to ship alot sooner than I had expected. Thanks Mozilla Store, that was/is excellent customer service.

I just realized that I may have gone way overboard today on the spending. I had picked up my copy of Office 2007 today and had forgotten that I had already ordered this sweet laptop bag earlier in the day. It looks like a very nice laptop bag, it may be a little bit larger than I really need, but it sure does look nice. I even got a deal, $5.00 off, its just to bad its back ordered until March 31st.

Oh well, good things come to those that wait.

So I went out today and spent a lot of money, more than I would have liked to spend. I picked the full version of Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business Edition. However there are a few things that actually amused me with this purchase. So it made the cost just a tiny bit more worth it.

First when I opened the package it appears to be just 1 install cd, as there is only 1 spot for a cd. However there is actually a deeper tray and there are 2 install cd’s that are placed directly on top of one another. No big deal really, but what I found was really funny was the cd’s are not the same. Disk 1 has the nice fancy hologram while Disk 2 is the standard looking painted cd. Funny, why did they not make them the same?

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Well just incase you missed my earlier post, I spoke about the new PayPal Security Key. I ordered it as I was writing that last post.

Well yesterday my Security Key came in the mail, you can seem my Flickr photo set if you want some pics of the package it came in and key itself.

The Key was very quick and easy to activate. Pretty much you enter the Security Key ID #, then enter the first 6 digit code that appears and then enter the next 6 digit code that appears (which takes 30 seconds), after that just submit the info and your key is activated. Very simple took maybe 1 or 2 minutes total time. You can use this key for PayPal and/or eBay.

You do have to activate the key for both sites if you want to use it for both, the directions included provide a URL for both eBay and PayPal activation. Both have the same steps to activate. They also give you a URL just incase you need to get into either site and do not have your key. I have not used this yet but was worried about this. Just incase I happen to be away from home (maybe vacation) and wanted to make a purchase or bid on eBay or simply needed to update my account for any reason. It’s nice to see they thought ahead.

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and by making this post I shamelessly entered the contest. I have to say that it seems to be a cool blog however, and has since been added to my NetNewsWire.