I left SQuirreL-SQL running last night, so it was running while I was "enjoying the wireless (battery-powered) life" on my iBook today. I found out that I left SQrL running because my battery seemed to be running down quite a bit faster than usual. This happened on my iBook 500 eventually, but apparently b/c that battery's juices gave out. Apparently not so quite yet here -- the culprit was the 10-15% drain on the processor SQrL constantly lodges, whether it's connected to anything or not, even if it isn't being displayed!

Why can't Java on Mac be as good as other Java imps? For what they lose by not being Sun, you'd hope they'd gain by being Apple.

In other news, got in a wreck today (sandwiched between some other vehicles), and the insurance shop runs claims through what's pretty obviously a DOS system running in a full-screen window on Windows. This is where I borrow, yet again, the phrase, "as if code rusted." You'd think we'd do better in industry to concentrate on making the app run great in hardware designed specifically (and increasingly) for the task at hand rather than continue to play push-you-pull-me with soft- and hard-ware. Why should every industry have to retrain their employees simply because Microsoft decided every developer should buy .NET? My insurance co. doesn't buy it (yet). As long as I get my cash fairly and quickly (don't hold breath) -- or at least as quickly and fairly as most everyone else in the same situation (gasp!) -- they should stick with what they've got.

Most workers "need" email, possibly a browser (though I'd argue that for many), and an industry-specific app or two. They don't need general-purpose PCs. Recently on one of the StarMax lists to which I subscribe some fellow posted that upgrading for him wasn't an option. He'd been using some app on his StarMax for years and it wouldn't run in OS X. Macs are particularly bad for backwards compat, but he has a point. What in the world did new systems have to offer, other than software that worked differently? That's not always a good thing. (Wish I could find the danged post...)

And finally, what in the goodness makes iTerm suck up so danged much of my proc's power when I'm hacking five or six php files in syntax-highlighted VIm? I love the transparency, but goodness. iTerm has now passed World of Warcraft as the app most likely to get the iBook's fan started.