I’ve gotten into the cheesy and annoying habit of looking on the bright side of things lately. Take today for example: I called Apple to learn more about the nails-on-chalkboard sound coming from my shiny new MacBook Pro. My concern was that it would be ruled ‘within specs’ for noise level and Apple would refuse to fix it. Since today is the 13th day after I received it, it was my last opportunity to return the laptop if it wasn’t ruled a defect.

So I called them up, and it’s a defect. There’s a problem with the power inverter and when the processors aren’t drawing a significant amount of power, the screech comes on. So I have purchased a defective computer and I have to send it in for repairs. I’m happy about this because it means I have a year to do so, and I don’t have to return it immediately. I really don’t mind the noise that much, and if it gets on my nerves I can turn off a core or power up PhotoBooth.

It’s hard to get upset about this problem since the laptop rocks in so many ways. Friday night (well, Saturday morning if you want to get technical) I powered up the preinstalled Apache web server and enabled the PHP module. Then I set up MySQL. I now have a full-powered web server. It’s great. Had I actually known what I was doing, it would’ve taken two minutes. Not knowing exactly what to do, it took 10. Not a bad deal overall. Meanwhile the computer is blazing fast with 1.5 gigabytes of PC5300 RAM.

I’m still holding out for the x86 WMV3 video codec for Quicktime to roll out.

Update: 1000th post!