So let’s say that you have one or more OS X applications that you have to support and/or test on a daily basis in order to pry a paycheck out of your employer’s clutches. In order to support or test these applications, you’ve got to switch preference settings around in order to try and replicate potential problem states.

There’s two basic ways to do this, and both of them are a pain in the butt. The first way is to go into your application preferences and set them as needed. The downside to that method is that you’ve got to change everything back when you’re done, if it’s an application you use for yourself.

The second way is to either install multiple instances of the application, or create multiple user profiles, and switch between them when you want to test some particular settings. This is also a hassle, and generates cruft like nobody’s business.

The rooSwitch and rooSwitch Lite utilities ease your pain by allowing you to create and switch between multiple application profiles within the same user session. Wow! Biff! Socko! Very cool. Very cool indeed.

There are always a host of changes to deal with when setting up shop with a new employer. Most are routine, mechanical things; new phone numbers, the location of the fridge, and so on. Sometimes there are one or two completely new and bizarre things at your new gig that take a lot of time getting used to.

For me, it’s the Sun. There is sunlight during my morning commute. After four years of dark, lonely commuting at zero-dark-thirty in the morning, the Sun is a strange and frightening object to see, a sinister red orb looming up over the eastern horizon. It’s been a week and I’m still not used to it.

Before the advent of antibiotics, disease was one of nature’s primary tools to cull weaker members of a given species.

With that in mind, I find it amusing that the raw spinach contaminated with E. Coli O157:H7 has been traced back to a company named Natural Selection Foods.

Things don’t always start smoothly.

Yesterday I arrived at UC Davis, fresh-faced and ready to start my new "hippie job" (as one of my friends put it). The first matter at hand (after growing my neckbeard and tie-dying a dozen t-shirts, of course) was my formal ingestion by the University’s machinery, signing a slew of equally boring forms for various esoteric and bureaucratic purposes. The pencil-pushing was followed by a visit to the all-powerful Transportation and Parking Services office to buy a parking pass.

When I finally arrived at the office, it was in a state of moderate pandemonium wrought by the aftermath of changes made to University mailservers over the weekend. The entire staff was getting pummeled with calls when the FNG showed up in the middle of the mess. So what happens to the FNG when he makes his entrance during a crisis?

You stick him in a corner, pray he doesn’t somehow fuck things up even worse, and ignore him until it all blows over. And that’s how I spent the rest of the morning, sitting in a corner counting ceiling tiles. At one point I was so bored I started reading an obsolete BBEdit manual just to try and kill the time. (It didn’t work very well.)

Things finally settled down enough for me to be shown to a desk cleverly hidden under an inch of dust, where I was given a dead 14" monitor and a computer that ultimately needed a clean OS install before it would boot reliably. But such has it ever been; the FNG always gets the scraps and has to be thankful for them. I expected that.

What I hadn’t anticipated was being left to my own devices since then. Maybe it’s one of those informal psych tests; dump the new guy unceremoniously in front of a desk and see what he does. Will he start asking for things to do? Pore over whatever documentation is at hand? Fuck around with friends on IM? Just sit there and look sad?

Or maybe—in a worst-case scenario—the little fucker will start blogging about his first day on the job.

There seems to be some weird problem with the site right now preventing comments from being added to posts. After logging in and being redirected back to the post you were attempting to add a comment to, you’re not logged in any more.

The database seems stable, and early experimental fumbling indicates this may be specific to Firefox. I’m unsure why. If you have any problems posting comments or have any brilliant insights, by all means, send me a message.

The rumors are true. I am leaving PowerSchool for a position with the IET unit at the University of California at Davis.

Though I have enjoyed most of my PowerTrip, the confluence of several factors, not the least of which was a 130-mile daily round-trip commute, led me to decide it was time to steer in a new direction.

To my PowerSchool colleagues: I know it is cliché to say that I will miss many of you; it is, however, true. You’re all a bunch of horrible, misanthropic bastards, and the remembrance of our collective misdeeds will forever touch a responsive chord within my icy heart. It’s been a slice.