You know you’ve got the Best Grandma Ever when you come home from classes and find that she’s mailed you a homemade birthday cake (and it didn’t even get mangled in the mail, thanks to some truly impressive cake-packing technique). And you’ve probably got the Best Boyfriend Ever when (in addition to buying you badly-needed furniture for your birthday) he sneakily covers the cake in candles and sings the birthday song just for you.

Classes were fine - or rather class, since I only have one on Tuesdays. I’ve got a heap of Kierkegaard to read for Thursday, but I feel sure I’ll survive. After all, even existentialism goes down a little better with some carrot cake.

Well, Warcraft III and continued unpacking in the wake of the Move From Hell have finally devoured the last of my winter break, and classes start bright and early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow also happens to be my birthday, so if you’d like to ease the suffering I’ll be in from having to get up ass-early and being another year older - well, you know what to do.

As part of a review I’ve been writing on the new Panther edition of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, I had the chance to get David Pogue to answer a couple of my questions on Panther in general and the book in particular. And here they are:

ES: What are a couple of your favorite new Panther features?

DP: I’m just nuts about the secret buried just-for-fun features: the secret graphing mode of the Calculator; the choice of surface textures for the pieces in Chess (including Marble and Jaguar Fur!); the way you can Option-drag in Preview to copy only one column of text without snagging the adjacent column in the process. These are the kinds of grace notes that really distinguish the Macintosh from the more boring operating systems.

ES: Anything from Jaguar or earlier that you particularly miss?

DP: ALMOST all of the stuff that disappeared from Mac OS 9 has now come back into Mac OS X: labels, the clean install, spring-loaded folders, randomized desktop pictures, and so on.

A few niceties still haven’t returned, though. Occasionally I miss the Put Away command, SimpleSound (for quick and dirty sound recordings), and the ability to encrypt a folder on the fly without leaving the desktop.

ES: Do you think that Apple’s decision to more or less give up on writing their own manuals is a wise one?

DP: Well, as someone who’s making a living filling the gap Apple left behind, obviously I have a vested interest in this point.

For myself, yes, I rather wish my software programs came with printed manuals–they’re infinitely superior to online help. Whether it’s “wise” or not depends on whether you’re a shareholder, programmer, customer, product manager…

ES: For those just switching to Mac OS from Windows, should they go for Mac OS X: The Missing Manual or Switching to the Mac? (Or both?)

DP: At this point, “”Mac OS X: The Missing Manual,” Panther Edition. Because I haven’t yet updated the Switching book to reflect Panther.

ES: What’s another Mac book you’d recommend?

DP: There are many books that pick up in technological depth from where mine leave off. For example, if you’re interested in digging deeper into the Unix underpinnings of Mac OS X, I hear great things about Mac OS X Unleashed. And if you want to become a Mac OS X programmer, of course, the whole O’Reilly line of Cocoa, Unix, and Java books await.

At the risk of having my site turn into AndySerkisBlog: Andy did an interview with Leonard Lopate on WNYC yesterday. The archived show will be up for streaming for a couple of weeks.

As for Panther: so far, I like it. I had to reinstall coreutils, wget, and all that good stuff since I chose to do a clean install, but I haven’t encountered any of the bugs people were bitching about when 10.3.0 came out (I updated to 10.3.2 as soon as I installed). Exposé is great, of course. I didn’t expect that I’d like the Sidebar (and had already looked up how to remove it before I even installed Panther) but it’s actually pretty inoffensive and more than a little convenient. The only thing I’m really unhappy about is that Olympus hasn’t released Panther drivers for my digital camera, so neither iPhoto nor Image Capture can tell that it’s a camera. It still works as a regular external USB drive, of course, but I’m bitching to Olympus for drivers nonetheless.

And as for the new apartment: I actually got a bunch of unpacking down yesterday, and we’re moving into the organization and decoration phase. The next big pain-in-the-ass thing on the horizon is, of course, buying textbooks - classes start Tuesday.

Number of boxes and/or bags moved: 37
Number of boxes and/or bags unpacked: 18
Number of disassembled furniture objects moved: 6
Number of reassembled furniture objects: 4
Number of times Emma has left the house since Sunday: shut up

I wonder how long it’s possible to live out of big black contractor bags full of clean underwear and clothes? Because I’m totally going to find out, at this rate. It’s not even (entirely) that I’m being lazy about unpacking - I decided to leave my crappy, broken dresser at the old apartment and I haven’t bought a new one yet, so even if I wanted to put my clothes away, there isn’t anywhere for them to live. But I’ll manage. I’m a philosophy student, we’re a resourceful bunch.

Today I’d intended to spend all my time finishing up some reviews and miscellaneous freelance work owed to various overlords, but I spent more of it reading the books I’m supposed to be reviewing (which is still probably a good idea), knitting, and doing some half-assed unpacking. There’s always tomorrow.

I haven’t really done any unpacking yet, but I have installed Panther. I have to say, the dreaded Ass Metal isn’t quite as awful or pervasive as I’d expected - I still wish it would go away, of course, but it isn’t everywhere, and the Sidebar and Exposé make me happy enough that I’m even willing to forgive the metallic Finder. I’m still playing around with everything, but I’m pretty happy with it so far.

Andy Serkis stopped by the Union Square Barnes & Noble tonight to discuss and sign copies of Gollum. Apart from getting our books signed, we were treated to a performance of that schizophrenic Gollum/Sméagol monologue (dialogue?) from The Two Towers. Hearing normal-sounding Andy switch to freaky-sounding Gollum and back again was fascinating, as was the rest of his discussion of the evolution of Gollum’s character.

The book itself is short and a light read, but at ten bucks it’s probably worth it. I read half of it while waiting for the signing to start and liked it. I’ve never really been a Serious Fan of the films because my interest in them stems from a love of the books, but there’s a lot more to Gollum’s role in the movies than I’d expected. I think the most impressive thing is that I don’t remember being constantly aware while watching them that he was a CG character - that kind of transparency is unusual but ideal.

Well, after two trips in my dad’s pickup, two calls to the police about the crazy lady (who, shitfaced drunk at 11am, came after us with a knife), and enough moving of boxes and furniture that even the muscles in my feet feel sore, I’m finally here. It took 32 boxes of various sizes and 5 heavy-duty contractor bags full of clothes and bedding, as well as miscellaneous milk crates and bulky objects. Chris proved that he is in fact actually The Hulk, carrying my mattress and getting it on top of the truck without any help whatsoever (although it was my parents who got to try to keep it tied there during the drive).

I had a celebratory brunch with my family this morning, and then Chris and I spent the rest of the afternoon in a frenzy of cables and power supplies that resulted in my computer being the one and only thing in my part of the apartment that’s unpacked and set up. After all, you have to have priorities. Tonight we’re taking advantage of our various new computational options - since we’re both saving rent money, we’ve finally got broadband. Also, since I’ve got a burner and he’s got an external drive, we’re both taking the opportunity to back up our systems and upgrade our versions of Linux and OS X, respectively. At some point, I suppose I should start unpacking - but surely I can live out of boxes and bags for a little while.

While Chris and I usually have a healthy disdain for tv in general and reality tv in particular, we started watching Queer Eye a few weeks ago and we actually like it, this past week’s slightly disappointing episode not withstanding. I admit that at least part of the fun for me is seeing how simple it is to sex up an apartment with a little paint and some stuff from IKEA. I’ve never lived in a room that wasn’t white, but I’m thinking of doing something to the room in the new place that will serve as my study or office or what have you.