I’m not a hacker. I’ll say that straight out. I might be technical, but it takes me a very long time to understand things, and take direction. So hopefully this is the less-technically inclined version of those other tutorials.

The first thing I got, obviously, was this pink MSI Wind. Yours doesn’t have to be pink, but it helps. Once receiving the Wind, the first thing I did was peel off those hideous stickers on the palmrest. I’m a Mac girl at heart, and stickers take away from the asthetics. Steven would be ashamed at the number of lights and buttons, but then again, he’d be ashamed that I even did this.

That aside, you’ll need some materials.

1. A little .iso called MSIWindosx86.iso. It’s actually not little. It’s about 3.8 GB little. I like this one best because it didn’t kernel panic on me, and pretty much is tailored to work with the Wind. Just don’t update the way you would a normal mac. And you’ll have to find out how to update on your own.

2. A flash drive. Seeing that you’ll need to stick 3.8 GB on it, I recommend a flash drive at least twice that.

3. Chameleon-1.0.11-installer.dmg I originally downloaded some version of Chameleon that was just the source code, and obviously, no good for doing it simply.

4. Here’s the tricky part. You might read on some older articles that MSI Wind needs you to replace its wireless card in order to work with Mac OS X. Then you’ll read other articles that say no, you don’t have to, and you can just use the leaked Realtek driver. Which is okay, *if* your Wind shipped with a Realtek card. Well, mine didn’t. I’m assuming they switched cards or are switching them up, but mine looks like this:

That’s the AzureWave AW-GE780 card. Now, you can try to use the Realtek driver if you want, here and here. Hang onto that just in case, for a later step.

5. This is only if the card that came with your Wind is incompatible, or you just want to get a different one. I’m purchasing this card on eBay. I’ve heard other places that it works, and I’ll give it a try and update this when I know better.

So now that you’ve got all your .dmgs and .isos downloaded, you’ll want to get your drive ready. These are mac-specific instructions, sorry Windows users.

Plug your flash drive into your Mac, and open Disk Utility. It’s under Applications > Utilities. Find your drive on the left-hand side of Disk Utility, and click it. (See the blue below for what you need to click.)

Next, look to the right side of the pane, and select the Partition button. Click the drop-down menu that says “current” under “Volume Scheme” and change that to say “1 Partition.” Make sure the format is set to “Mac OS Extended (Journaled).” Then, click the “Options…” button below.

Select “Master Boot Record” and then click “Ok.” This makes it so you can boot from your thumbdrive. (Almost.)

Click Apply. NOTE: It’s probably already obvious to you, but this will erase your thumbdrive. After all, that’s what formatting is, but I just wanted to make sure you knew that.

After the process is completed, you’re ready to load the drive. Take your MSIWindosx86.iso file, and drop it onto the white space under all those drives listed in Disk Utility. You should be familiar with drag-and-drop if you are, and are going to remain, a Mac user. Ta-da! Now it will be listed like your thumbdrive and all. Now, double-click on the .iso. It will mount and look like another little drive under it.

Click on that little “Restore” tab at the top that I’ve highlighted in blue. Then go over and drag your mounted iso (the one also highlighed in blue) over to the “Source” part on the right. Drag the formatted thumb drive over to the “Destination” part. Make sure that “Erase destination” is still checked. Click “Restore” at the bottom right. Go make dinner, or start a TV show on Hulu.com. This is going to take a while.

When completed, leave the drive in, but open up the Chameleon .dmg file. Open the “Chameleon_V_1.0.11″ file and it will run you through an installer. IMPORTANT: When it gets to the part where it asks you to select the disk you want to install it on, select your flash drive. Also, you will hear a strange music that you can’t figure out where it’s coming from. It’s on the mounted drive, and will stop when you eject it. Turn off your volume, and relax.

When that part is ready, NOW you’re ready to install OS X. Unplug the thumbdrive, and stick it into your Wind. Boot your Wind up, and hold down/press the F11 key which will bring you into a boot menu. Select your thumbdrive, and proceed.

The install process will go smoothly from here. You won’t have internet yet, so you can’t enter your MobileMe or any registration information. Your webcam also probably won’t work, so when it asks you to select an icon to use with your profile, just pick an icon.

Once everything is started up, try installing those Realtek drivers from earlier. If they don’t work, there is one other driver you can try. You might have a RALink card instead, in which case, you need the RALink driver here. Obviously that didn’t work for me, but if that’s what you have, then yay.

If you have the card I have, which again is the AzureWave AW-GE780 card, then as of now, there are no Mac drivers for it. So you’ll have to order another card, such as the one suggested earlier.

I will update when I get it to let you know exactly how it works out.

The other thing, is that the audio jacks on the side don’t work. The SD card reader WILL work. The camera works, but not with Photo Booth. Open iChat and try it out, and you’ll see. It may work with other programs as well.

I haven’t checked anything else, honestly, but as I do, I will be sure to update this.

The following links helped me accomplish this:

http://lifezero.squarespace.com/journal/2009/5/10/guide-to-os-x-on-msi-wind.html
http://www.ericsantiago.com/eric_santiago/2009/06/netbook-undergoes-a-osx-change.html
http://www.geardiary.com/2008/12/17/the-creation-of-a-hackintosh/
http://www37.atwiki.jp/msi_wind/?cmd=word&word=IntelGMA950GME-10.5.5.tar.bz2%20download&type=normal&page=%E3%82%AB%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%9E%E3%82%A4%E3%82%BA%2FMac%20OS%20X
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16806369/Msi-Wind-u100-Dual-Boot-Osx-1

I’m so freaking excited.  This website inspires me.

Also this, for my XTi:

Love love love!

Oh and I went up to New York with Brady to see Tara for her birthday.  I got to meet her beautiful and lovely friends and her man again.  Everyone is so nice.  I wish I had more friends in Delaware.  Also Tara inspires me to be awesome.

Lastly, but not least ~ HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALSO TO HOLLY my best friend, all the way in Texas.  I wish she was just a drive away as well, because I’d love to come see her more often.

I’m thinking about saving up to fly to Texas.

Let me explain.  I was getting a weird error message every time I tried to add Japanese 105.  It said something like “GRP should be equal to PL2.”  I have NO idea what this means, so I tried asking around, Googling, etc.  I tried adding OTHER elementary language courses, same error.  I tried calling the Registrar, and they didn’t know either.  They passed me onto the Foreign Languages and Literatures department, who told me to email someone named Crista.  Well, I contacted Crista, and she said it’s because I had 4 years of German in highschool.  So basically I’m too awesome to take any languages.  I’ve taken almost all of the courses UD had to offer in the German department, but I want to learn Japanese!  She went ahead and added me and now I’m ready to go!

I decided to take the Sexualities & Gender course because I’ll be in the company of good people, and it will be awesome to study.  Then, I took History of Delaware, because my mom is a Delaware history genius, and pretty much raised me by teaching me a lot of interesting facts about Delaware.  I called my mom to let her know and she’s already familiar with the professor since he taught my little brother as well.

So that’s it!  I’m so excited because it’s easier now to use your financial aid to pay for things, like BOOKS!  I have $262 worth of books that I’m having delivered to my house.  I chose overnight shipping even.  And they’ll automatically update my book list if anything changes.  I don’t have to run around half.com like a maniac because they’ll handle everything.

Classes start September 1st.  I’m hoping to get all As this semester!

I can’t tell you how much I need this.

Tomorrow morning, I’m going to try and drag Brady out of bed before noon, get his haircut, then fill my cooler with vegan yummies and head off to the beach.

I will be utilizing my iPhone’s tethering skills the whole week, so I will not be losing touch.

Let’s get back to the topic of this post. It’s growing up. It’s something I need to fucking do. You see, I’ve always just been a step behind everyone else. I’m afraid to move forward, become an adult, and leave what’s familiar. So I took 3 years of college, found myself in a full-time salaried job, and then never looked back. It proved to me you could get a good job without graduating college. That people don’t look at a degree as often as you might think. They look at experience. While I don’t think I have that much experience, it’s enough for me to get hired and not be asked any other questions.

However, I’m tired of feeling like an idiot. I’m tired of feeling uneducated even though I have finished my degree. Yes, finished my degree. In 3 years. Unfortunately the University of Delaware requires more credits than my degree provides me, so I’m left with having to take 18 credits worth of electives in order to officially obtain my degree. I’m an English major, but this year, I’m going back to school. I’m going to finish those credits, and I’ll be able to call myself a college graduate by this time next year.

I applied for FAFSA a few months ago, to see what kind of money I’d be awarded. I’ll be paying these damn loans off until I’m 40 years old, but for right now, I don’t want to have to worry about that. I got enough money to be full time this year, but I’m going to only do 9 credits a semester. It’s easier now because I work 3pm to 12am at my job, so all the daytime classes are out of session by then.

So far, I’ve accepted my awards, applied them to fall semester AND I have enough money to purchase books now. I’m even adding $150 of that to go to on-campus food, so I can eat between classes. What’s next? I’m actually getting a permit so I can park my car. Sure I’ll get crappy parking but it’s close to campus, and I don’t have to pay daily, and I won’t be in danger of being towed or fined.

Finally, the big question is what will I take? I can’t take that many more English classes. I have a limit of 54 credits that are allowed to be English, and I think I’m hovering somewhere around that. I’ve taken pretty much every German class there is to offer, except for a conversation class. The requirement for that, however, is that you haven’t taken any German 300 or 400 levels, which I have. So that’s ruled out.

I do love language classes, though, and I’ve always wanted to learn another language. I was interested in Portuguese, but the only option there is “Portuguese for Spanish speakers” which I am not. Not even close. Dutch isn’t offered, or I’d jump on that. So I was between Hebrew, Japanese, and Russian. I think I’m going to choose Japanese. It think it’s a good business language to know, and I would be able to watch anime now without having to focus my attention on the subtitles. I’m probably going to take Japanese I in this coming semester, Japanese II in summer, and then Japanese III in the spring. I won’t be fluent but I’ll be able to understand the language.

I should also probably take Technical Writing, even though it’s an English class. I work with Technology nowadays, and I don’t see myself leaving that career path anytime soon. I’m sure it will be helpful when writing tutorials and conversing with customers.

Lastly, ballet is offered as a class. It’s specifically catered to people who have no experience with ballet. I do, technically, but I was 6. I don’t remember very much from it. I think it would be fun and a good opportunity to work on my flexibility and lean muscles. Right now I’m so out of shape it would at least be something. I would also get an opportunity to purchase those vegan ballet flats that PETA is always advertising, haha.

To say the least, I’m very optimistic about going forward. I think if I finish this I can be ready to go on with the rest of my life. I feel like I’ve been wandering around wondering what would happen in my future, or not really caring. Now I can at least know, and maybe proceed with that.