The Digital Life

1.  Try to install Adobe Captivate on my new Mac Mini. (I've got an important 'sceencast' that's got to be done pronto.)
   But Captivate only runs on a PC.
   
   
2. Load Captivate on my old Dell Notebook.
   But it's too much for my old Dell Notebook. The thing keeps crashing.
   
   
3. Load Apple's Boot Camp on my new Mac Mini. With Boot Camp, you can run both Mac and Windows!
   But Boot Camp only runs with Windows XP Service Pack 2 ('SP2'). My copy of XP (from my old Dell Notebook) is older than that.
   
   
4.  "Slipstream" (i.e. integrate) the updates from SP2 into the earlier version of XP and produce a new bootable CD.
   But 'Slipstream' doesn't work so well on OEM (as in Dell specific) versions of XP.
   
   
5. Walk three miles to a friend's house. Grab his copy of Windows XP, go home. Install it on my Mac Mini and finally load Captivate on the PC partition.
   
   Does this sound like a productive weekend?
   (And I didn't even mention the part where I completely erased my backup drive. Don't ask.)
   
   UPDATE: The fun continues....
   
   
6. Try to add an audio track to the slides in Captivate.
   But my new Mac Mini only has "line" input -- which as anyone who's ever been through Audio 101 knows, isn't the same as a mike input
   
   
7. Rush out of the house. Go downtown to the Apple Store, buy a Griffin iMic, and just because I've become paranoid at this point, duck into a Best Buy on the way home and get a Logitech headset with build-in mike that plugs into the USB port.
   
   
8. Mission accomplished!

Old News

So I just installed MS Office 2008. (It's nice -- nothing special that I've noticed so far.) Anyway, apparently there's some messaging system that comes with the package. Here's the reminder I got. (And yes, I have a legal copy of Office.)

Famous Last Words in IT

1. What do you mean we need a paper record for our Electronic Voting Machine System?
2. Sure, it only works on Windows. What's the problem?
3. Let's just use Mr. Sid!
4. Trashbin to delete files?  Typing 'DEL' plus the file name is so much better!
5. But it breaks the 'back' button!!!
6. People don't want all that eye-candy on the Web, they just want information.
7. Welcome to our Scholars' Workstation Gateway Portal Social Network!
8. Does anyone ever read the manual?
9. Dear User: Your password is required to be at least eight characters long and contain at least one small letter, one large letter, a number and a punctuation mark. You are required to change your password every six months. (This last is dedicated to the IT people at NYU.)