iStat Menus Main Screen

As most of you know, I live and die by my Mac…and because I come from the PC world (several years back) I always need to know what is happening with the internals of my computer as I’m using it.  I want to know how much memory I have left, what my hard drive capacity is, if my hard drive is being accessed, what the CPU utilization is and some other very geeky stuff that I really don’t need to know.  I have been using iStat menus for well over a year and love the info it puts up on my menu bar.

The new version changes iStat menus to a standalone app instead of a preference pane.  They have added a few thinks like moon phases, public IP, battery levels for your laptop and wireless keyboard/mouse, fan speed control and a bunch of other stuff that is cool, but I will probably never need.

For $10 you can’t go wrong!  Check it out here.

My Menubar and iStat CPU Menu

So after sitting and standing for almost an hour the Apple store manager came out and greeted everyone. She was extremely nice…in fact everyone that worked there was suspiciously nice…like, almost too nice. They brought out coffee for everyone in line and said the doors would open at 8am and they would bring in small groups of people at a time. 8am hit and everyone applauded and as another friend in line said in his Twitter update, I think I heard several nerdgasms.

I got into the store at about 10 minutes after 8 and was ushered to another line inside the store. I waited there with other anxious nerds wondering how many phones they had. Well, they wouldn’t tell me, but they had an asston of phones at that store. The Zoloft-filled sales rep asked me which phone model I wanted (16gb white of course) and they grabbed one for me from some secret store stash and continued to take my info for transferring my old iPhone account to the new one. I paid and then was ushered by the 4th Apple store employee of my transaction to the “activation” part of the store. I caught the last part of a speech by the store manager that basically said that the iTunes activation was down and they didn’t know when it would be back up. Holy crap! You mean, you deactivated my old phone and now I have a cool, new brick? Lovely.

I went to work and unboxed my new precious iPhone with a couple of co-workers. We all gave our ooooohs and aaahhhs and went back to work. I tried activating all day and finally at about 2pm, I had a working phone.

I ended up selling my old phone on eBay for more than I paid for the new one. How you ask? Because there is a demand for iPhones that aren’t tied to any cell phone contracts. Those nasty hackers can make the iPhone their bitch with a couple of clever hacking apps. Good luck to them!

I enjoyed my time in line with my fellow nerds. I saw young and old people alike. I think most people were there just to catch the excitement of standing in line for an over-hyped product. That’s why I went…and to get my bitchin new phone.

Everyone is great in the family. We took a quick trip to see everyone in Phoenix in November and the trip was way too short. It has been unbearably cold in Minnesota this winter. Today the low hit somewhere around -18F (yes, that’s below zero). Weird things happen when it’s that cold. Last night as the temp was diving down, my house started making some loud banging sounds. I searched around and still don’t know what it was, but I do know it was loud and it made me very nervous.

That’s it for now. Check back often. I will try to post something at least once a week. Take care and drop us a line.