Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Playing catch up

There have been many things going on with me lately, and I haven't been discussing them much on the blog. Most of it has involved changes around the house and dealing with service technicians. We finally got the air conditioning resolved last Friday and the house has been a lot more bearable since.

Most of the other changes have been computer-related. I finally bought a laptop--an Apple iBook. I like it a lot and am enjoying the portability that it affords both me and Tegan. And I am excited with the idea of actually blogging on something in real time, a prospect that I have wanted to do but have never been able to do before. Of course, I can't take the computer with me to the movie theater unless it is a WiFi hotspot. But, I really don't plan to do that. I would like to do some things during the next big presidential election or during the Academy Awards. Anyway . . . some day.

Because the laptop is an Apple product I am having to relearn a lot of things that I forgot in the previous ten years that I have been using Microsoft--or what I now refer to as "The Lost Decade." For, you see, I grew up a Mac fan. I remember the iconic 1984 Macintosh commercial that started it all for the company and set the standard for all Super Bowl advertising for years afterwards. I always preferred Apple to IBM or other Microsoft machines. The first computer I ever bought in college was a Macintosh Color Classic. It had the original boxy design of the first Macintoshes, the small built in screen (but in color!), a whopping 8 MB (!!!) of memory on the hard drive. Suffice it to say that it was obsolete even before I left the store with it that day. But, it was mine and I wrote many school papers on it and valiantly tried to get it to run a Star Trek: The Next Generation screen saver.

So, I've been a Macolyte for a long time (and as anyone who knows me can attest, I LOVE style over substance). And, when I got the iBook, I also got that gadget of gadgets--the iPod! It is sooooo cool, you just don't understand. (Right now I am writing this post and storing all of my CDs into the laptop for eventual transfer to my iPod. That way I can carry ALL of my music with me. One strong reason for getting the iPod is that when we are driving in the car, I can select a custom-made playlist that alternates a Sesame Street song with something from the Shins, then Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and then Radiohead. Go ahead, call me shallow if you want, but I'll do just about anything to avoid the 856th repetition of "The Best of Elmo."

But, adding a Macintosh to my life does have its challenges. I am having to relearn the keyboard shortcuts and key combinations that are so critical to proper operation on a Mac--especially since the laptop doesn't have a mouse. I am so used to right clicking for this and that and this laptop doesn't have that capability. So, I have to remember which buttons to hold down to accomplish the same tasks.

And the steps that have become so second nature to creating a blog post or inserting a picture or other things are now done differently. Its all a little bit disorienting right now, but eventually I'll get used to it.

1 comment:

Spec said...

Welcome (back) to the Mac world, my friend. You will not regret the switch. There is certainly a learning curve with any new computer soft/hardware, but even moreso for Apple products. The good news is that the computer is very user friendly and encourages experimentation and exploration. At some point, Burb, we'll sit down and go over a few of the many cool things that your new toy can perform. It'd be my pleasure.
Spec