Quick fix for smudgy MacBook

So I have one of the new aluminum Macbooks. I love it. It has traveled the world with me since I got it back in November. But this morning I was using it in direct sunlight (not ideal, but I was in a place I had no choice) and I noticed what looked like fingerprints smudged under the glass that covers the screen. It made it look cloudy in those areas when there was sunlight back-lighting it.

I tried cleaning it, just in case, but it was under the glass. I had noticed smudges in that corner before under different light, but always assumed it was on the outside and I cleaned the glass (while inside under less light) and everything looked fine. This time, I did the whole thing with sunlight to my back and I was shocked to see it was under the glass.

I made an appointment at the Apple store to get it fixed, and hoped it would not be a problem getting it fixed. I showed up to my appointment (made within an hour of my screen smudge discovery thanks to the ProCare membership I spent $99 for) and was helped by a friendly Apple Genius named Michael Brown.

We walked out into the sunlight so he could see the smudges, agreed it was a problem, checked it in to be fixed and said I would most likely have it back this afternoon. I knew that ProCare was supposed to expedite repairs, but I really doubted that I would have it back same day. He (Michael) even verified that they had another screen to replace mine with. I gave him the laptop and went on my way.

Five hours later, I got the call my laptop was done. I am typing this on my now smudge-free MacBook while watching my son at a karate class.

Three cheers for Apple service and Pro Care.

Facebook

So I realize I am really late in the game here, but I finally joined Facebook. I have had a number of invitations to join over the last few years, and the lure of getting work from joining finally made me do it. (Someone looking for photogs on Facebook to bid a job. I got the job... and a good paying one at that.)

Facebook is like some entire other life that obviously I have not been living. As comfortable as I am on computers, using IM, Skype, etc., I guess it is sort of weird that I would be so slow in just jumping in... but I think I've proven that some of my concerns have some validity.

One of the reasons I held off on most of these social networking sites is that I have quite a bit of face to face and telephonic social networking that I do already. In terms of communicating with the computer, there is email, and of course this blog (and anyone (all four of you) who have been looking at my entries here and/or the dates I made them knows how hard of a time I have keeping this up on any sort of a regular basis) not to mention AIM and Skype... plenty of ways to communicate.

Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with a few people who I have lost touch with and I truly am happy to have made contact with them again, but then there are those folks who I am happy to have as "friends" but who keep flinging groundhogs and things at me for no apparent reason, other than to be cute.

I certainly don't mind cute, or off the wall, but I don't like feeling forced to act. Now you chucked a mongoose at me... why do I have to pitch one to five other people? The fact that Facebook says so? No.

Plus, if I single out five other friends that I want to annoy with a hurled small mammal, and any of those five ask me why I did it... I'm not sure what my answer would be. It reminds me a bit of elementary school where you like someone and because you are seven or eight, you lack the social skills to go up and make interesting conversation, so you do something annoying like throw a kickball at them. I guess the thinking then was any attention (including negative) is better than no attention.

So I'm not sure how the lobbing of a small imaginary furry animal is intended to benefit me... nor do I see how it is going to enhance the life of those around me who agreed to be my Facebook "friends."

Now there are some cute Facebook apps as well. There is the one for the photojournalist who gets an unpleasant assignment that made me laugh, but there is the insider catch there that you and I are both photographers, so we both are going to think that is funny having shared that experience of a bad assignment or two over the years.

For one thing, time is a precious commodity. I find that my time is stretched pretty thin. Work, family, church, teaching, and the friends I do hang out with already make my days pretty busy as it is. So how I add another commitment and make it fit. This is the challenge I am facing.

So look me up on Facebook... but please don't fling any small furry creatures at me.

Switching Menu Bar Items

I just found something cool on my MacBook Pro by accident. You can switch the order of the menu bar items on the right (clock, battery power, airport, etc) by turning them off and then turning them back on in the order you want in the System Preferences. The first thing you turn on is at the far right, the second is just to the left, the third is to the left of that, and so on.

This becomes even more helpful if you have your menu bar littered with stuff they way that I do.

I love iStat Menus which tells me all sorts of stuff about my computer while I am using it like the internal temperature, how much memory is being used, and what processes my computer is working on and how much data is being uploaded and downloaded.

By turning them all off and then turning them on in the order you want, you can customize your menu bar... and I figured this out by accident.

Charging laptop batteries

It is 3:45am. I am sitting here in my hotel room at the Radisson SAS Kuwait (which, incidentally has the best breakfast buffet I have ever had at a hotel... it is really something) looking at my laptop and three depleted batteries. After the 4 1/2 hour flight from San Diego to DC, and the 12 hour flight from DC to Kuwait, I have emptied all three batteries I brought with me.

One of my first orders of business is to recharge all my batteries. I travel with one of the new unibody aluminum MacBooks because it is a lot smaller than my 17" MacBook Pro and it is small enough that I can actually use it comfortably in the airplane... even if the person in front of me reclines their seat all the way.

So now I am at the hotel for an overnight stay and have to try to get some sleep and recharge all my batteries. Recharging this many batteries is always a hassle when you are trying to do it overnight, because you end up having to wake up every few hours to switch batteries.

I really dislike doing this, especially here, because Kuwait is 11 hours ahead of California time. That means that when my alarm goes off and wakes me up at 1am to switch batteries, to me, it feels like 2pm (I got here about 10 hours ago) and I just can't get back to sleep (I have that groggy I just woke up from a nap feel). So now I get to sit here watching my battery charge on the laptop... groggy but not going back to sleep.

With the unibody MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro, there is a battery cover that comes off under the machine to replace the battery. Initially I thought this was a pretty good idea. It saves weight on the batteries and on previous laptop models, I always seemed to end up with one Apple battery that didn't match the tone of my laptop. It was a few shades too light or dark. Not that this matters, since few other people peer at the underside of my laptop... but I knew... and it always bothered me.

Oh yeah... back to the MacBook battery cover... after a few times of sitting on the plane, with the laptop upside down on my lap and juggling the old dead battery and trying to avoid knocking my cranapple juice off the tray in front of me while trying to line up the little slots to get the batter cover to close back up, it makes me miss the simplicity of the older-style battery. All you did was use a coin to turn the switch under the laptop, the battery pops out, click the new one in, and you are back in business. It was a one handed process. There is no way to get the battery cover seated correctly on the laptop without two hands.

Hmmm. My mind wanders a bit when I am sleepy....

Something cool that I found at MacWorld this year was the U-Charge by FastMac. It allows you to charge your spare laptop batteries without the laptop. You plug in their brick (about the same size as a MacBook charging brick) and then attach the cable right to the battery terminals themselves.

Currently it will charge the older style MacBooks and MacBook Pros as well as Powerbooks and iBooks. FastMac said that their charging cable for the newest MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro is in production and will be available very soon. The cable is going to be about $20 if you already have a U-Charge unit and will be priced about the same as the existing unit if you wait and buy it when the cable is available.

It won't solve my battery door issue (minor as it may be) but at least I can be charging multiple batteries at one time... and hopefully getting more sleep when traveling.