![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ode to uptime
Jun. 29th, 2004 09:25 pmI've been using a piece of software for my PowerBook called SideTrack, which acts as a replacement driver for my trackpad, allowing me to remap the trackpad button (Macs only have one, don'cha know) to a right-click and designate a stripe along the side of the trackpad as a one-touch scrolling area.
SideTrack is beta software, and, as such, the author has built in an expiration date, which has just passed. Returning to the default behavior of the trackpad was surprisingly distressing! I quickly downloaded the next version and installed it.
Now I'm distressed because I have to restart my Mac for it to take effect! One thing that Mac OS X offers the command line user is a nifty command called 'uptime', which UNIX operators will recognize. Mac geeks take great pride in their computer's uptime; mine currently stands at 21 days, 8 hours.
No reboot in three weeks. I never got that with earlier versions of the Macintosh operating system. Even when my boss's bad code ran amuck in my system a couple of weeks ago, chewing up all available memory and bringing the system to a virtual standstill, I could still access the command line to diagnose the problem and the runaway process eventually ran out, leaving my computer unimpaired. Under OS 9, I'd have had to restart.
I love having a machine that I can rely upon, and that this is a laptop, which gets put to sleep several times a day, makes it just that much sweeter.
SideTrack is beta software, and, as such, the author has built in an expiration date, which has just passed. Returning to the default behavior of the trackpad was surprisingly distressing! I quickly downloaded the next version and installed it.
Now I'm distressed because I have to restart my Mac for it to take effect! One thing that Mac OS X offers the command line user is a nifty command called 'uptime', which UNIX operators will recognize. Mac geeks take great pride in their computer's uptime; mine currently stands at 21 days, 8 hours.
No reboot in three weeks. I never got that with earlier versions of the Macintosh operating system. Even when my boss's bad code ran amuck in my system a couple of weeks ago, chewing up all available memory and bringing the system to a virtual standstill, I could still access the command line to diagnose the problem and the runaway process eventually ran out, leaving my computer unimpaired. Under OS 9, I'd have had to restart.
I love having a machine that I can rely upon, and that this is a laptop, which gets put to sleep several times a day, makes it just that much sweeter.
