Live Out the String

I haven't vanished. PERS news is slim right now. The only thing disturbing this period of quiescence is the fact that PERS seems to be sending out recalculation notices at an incredibly rapid pace these days. My guess is they are trying to get as many people as possible recalculated before Judge Kantor issues his ruling on what PERS is permitted to do. If Judge Kantor rules that PERS is NOT permitted to recalculate benefits, then PERS can drag its feet recalculating them back to what they should be according to the Supreme Court ruling in Strunk (Sartain). I can see it now: California wideboys standing before Judge Kantor smirking and telling him that these are really difficult calculations and that PERS just can't do it quickly. We beg you Judge to permit us to delay just a tiny bit longer. And I hope Judge Kantor has the huevos to tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine.

To entertain myself in this period of lull, I'm upgrading my entire home network to Apple's new operating system "Leopard". Leopard is Apple's answer to Windows Vista, except done correctly IMO. It took me nearly two weeks to upgrade a single computer to Windows Vista from Windows XP. Microsoft had so many different versions of Vista that I kept getting the wrong one to match what version of XP I had before. Apple, on the other hand, has a single version of Leopard that includes the same features for all users. They even sell a family pack that allows installation on up to 5 computers. How convenient: my home Apple network has exactly 5 Apple computers. And I don't think Apple counts all that closely. The first computer took just slightly more than an hour to upgrade. As far as I can tell, it was flawless. I found a couple of programs that require upgrades before they will run properly under "Leopard", but none are critical. Most programs just run as is. My second computer upgrade was on my primary network server. This was a leap of faith but I had three backups of the system in case something disastrous happened. I can't say the upgrade went flawlessly, but it only took me one perusal of the Apple newsgroups to figure out how to fix a problem created during the upgrade. It took a little bit longer to download all the needed upgrades to various pieces of the network software and all the utilities I normally use to make life easier. I've been using the updated system for about 6 hours now and I've only run into one piece of software that just plain doesn't run. This piece is important to me, but there are a dozen alternatives I can use in the meantime. While I'm writing this, system number 3 is "doing its thing". I expect no problems there either.

So, if you're bored, have a recent model Apple computer, and want a way to live out the string on a Saturday afternoon, pick up a copy of Apple's Leopard and install it. Your life will be much improved .