OK, apparently I only actually blog anything here when I feel like ranting. So, I recently upgraded my quite old desktop Mac (1GHZ G4) and bought a nice new shiny iMac. I got VMWare, and wanted to install Vista under it, if only to see what all the complaining was about. It was fine, I even used it for something useful, but then it had to be activated. It won't. I've got a legitimate product key, everything's in order as far as I can tell, but all I get is an error message whose "more details" is that I got a timeout. Company support tells me that this is normal and to be expected. Try again later. It's been a couple of days now I've been trying later. There's a phone activation option, but it doesn't appear to be enabled in my copy. I even found out how to force it ("slui.exe 4" if you're interested, and it just won't let me pick a country).

Microsoft's been running ads lately about the price premium of Apple, but I've wasted something close to a day of my company's time trying to get legitimate software to run, and at this point I'm probably just going to give up on it. The sad part is that it's part of the company's bulk licensing agreement, so Microsoft's already got there money from it, so why should they care if I can't actually run it.

Oh, and if I go to Microsoft's site, I don't qualify for free support. They want US$59 in order for me to activate the product. I'll take Jim Robertson's advice here, and avoid swearing in a blog post. But I do feel like it.

Jim Robertson beat me to posting on this, so I'll just borrow his text. To submit a talk proposal, use the form at http://www.lwnwexpo.plumcom.ca/smalltalk_cfp.cfm

Smalltalk Solutions 2007 is approaching - next year's show is back in Toronto, with the IT360° show. It's April 30-May 2, and the call for participation is out now. That site mentions December 15 as a deadline - we are going to try to get that extended. You should still get your submissions in ASAP. Smalltalk Solutions in conjunction with IT360° (formerly LinuxWorld & NetworkWorld Canada) is seeking conference participants. Show dates are April 30, 2007 through May 2, 2007 in Toronto at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Smalltalk Solution speakers have the opportunity to reach the broader IT360° audiences. As with previous years, one presenter per accepted session will receive complimentary conference registration. Travel, hotel and all other expenses will be at the presenter’s expense and each additional presenter in a session will also be required to register for the conference in order to enter the conference area.

Last week I had a hard disk soft crash. Over the weekend, the laptop seemed to have died, then when I rebooted I would start getting intermittent errors, and some very ugly noises from the inside. My backups not being everything you could want, I started copying stuff off, but it only got part way through before it was consistently crashing.

Then I got a wonderful suggestion off the #smalltalk IRC channel from Andres Valloud. He suggested turning the laptop on its side in order to boot it. I don't know what the logic is - I assume there's somehow less strain on the mechanism that way. Anyway, it booted beautifully, and I was able to copy off all the things that I hadn't considered important enough to back up until I was faced with the imminent prospect of losing them. This included my Smalltalk Solutions slides, which I'd finished (only slightly past deadline) but hadn't yet uploaded. Thanks Andres!