Since I installed the latest version of Firefox on my Mac Mini this weekend I am having to force quit it every 15 minutes or so, just freezes up for no good reason. A little investigation of the forums suggested it was related to the anti-phishing feature so I disabled that but it already froze again. Maybe this is the time to switch to Safari or Opera?

In other news, I see that the ebay auction prices for PS3 and Wii are coming down. Most of the PS3 auctions were in the $900-$1400 range which is still a tidy profit but not the crazyness we saw on launch day.

I’d never heard of O.J. Simpson before the murders but I gather he was some major celebrity in the sports world until then. Obviously you have to be more than a little crazy to butcher your family, but what the hell is going on with this new book and TV interview that is coming up? Fox has aired some pretty awful material but this has to be just the worst thing ever and of course it will be popular because people can’t not watch such a thing. Ugh, the whole thing is totally beyond me.

A family member’s iMac has been acting up so they asked if I knew how to fix it or would mind taking it to the Apple store for a repair. The problem is software related - the dock has gone AWOL, applications won’t start up and the finder won’t let you browse the hard drive. I’d say something got installed and broke the startup of an essential file service but whilst I know Unix, I don’t know the specifics of the one behind OS X.

I carry the boat anchor that is the iMac around the mall, wait for 30 minutes only for the guy wearing the t-shirt saying “genuis” to tell me to reinstall the OS. Jeez, I could have gotten that answer from the “genuises” at Frys. I thought Macs were supposed to be more intelligent than that!

Well, I have a week here in San Diego to study the OS and fix it myself if. And if I can’t, then we’ll reinstall at the weekend.

Oh, and the trip cost me $100 as I was forced to buy a new keyboard and a new mouse for my mini.

I blogged earlier about the new iPod developments, and I was most excited about the new search feature, thinking that since this is all software it would be trivial to deploy it on all iPods, not just the new ones. Well, I am sure I am not wrong, I get new firmware pushed to my player all the time but Apple, in their finest capitalist moment, aren’t going to do it - only the brand new models will have the feature. Presumably they think I’m going to rush out and drop $300 on a new player but instead it has me more inclined to look elsewhere when my current battery dies.

I suppose that if CostCo has Christmas decorations for sale in September, I should not be surprised that the local stores have switched to “winter fashion” and its now impossible to buy a short-sleeved shirt anywhere. Only long sleeve lumberjack shirts and nice wool-knit sweaters for sale now. Don’t worry that the temps are still in the high 90s and, lets face it, aren’t going much below 90 even in the “winter”. This is Southern California and, dammit, we’ll wear scarves and down jackets even if its still 75F out, even if we do look stupid.