holding steady.™

ok, so it may not actually be trademarked. but for many years now, my mother has been preaching the methods of the so-called yogurt principle.

perhaps i should explain.

but it should be noted that this all started because of my computer going on the skids a couple of days ago.

at two am on friday morning, the 12th of september, i came to the crashing realization that my computer wasn’t turning on. after trying in vain to get it to work by resetting the PRAM and resetting the power adapter and a whole host of inevitably worthless techniques suggested by apple.com/support, i decided to give up for the night, and went to bed. it should be noted that, as per my issues with getting enough sleep lately, i had taken something like half of a small bottle of children’s benadryl syrup. so when i went to sleep at two-thirty am, i didn’t really wake up until 3 pm. that is, 13 hours later.

i awoke periodically, usually to try to reset the computer again and then fall back asleep, hoping against hope that it would be alright when my eyes fluttered open again. needless to say, this was not the case. some hard realizations came my way. for one, God doesn’t take kindly to being pushed to a lower tier of priority. i’m a big believer in things working out the way He wants them to, so this was especially important for me to realize. after taking some time to get my priorities straight, i set up an appointment with the apple geniuses at the least crowded apple store in south florida (galleria mall). i went there earlier this afternoon, only to discover the truly ugly truth: my logic board has likely died. i’ll now need to ship it somewhere, and $600 later i should have a perfectly functioning macbook pro. the problem is, it will take about a month for me to get that much cash together. so i will be saving up like mad over the next couple of pay periods to try to get this all done and taken care of. in the meantime, i have housed my younger sister’s macbook. typing on such a small screen is really difficult for me to adjust to, but i suppose i’ll have to…thank goodness it was even available to me.

now, at some point, it might be nice if i explained what was meant by the yogurt principle. my mom uses this to refer to that phase when i was much younger than i am now, when i hated yogurt. i mean HATED. if she was foolish enough to leave it on my high chair, and turn her head for even a moment, that container of yogurt would end up all over the walls. but as time went on, she eventually wore down my considerable defenses and got me to enjoy yogurt, as i still do to this day. the application to my life at the moment is based on the idea that i need to continue to be dependent on that which is bigger than me, and i do that by continuing to seek the knowledge that only comes from a greater source than i.

counting it all joy, one day at a time…

so, i use a really handy freeware program called schoolhouse. it’s basically an assignment management software, and it’s one of those things that i’ve come to depend on. to the point where if one day it suddenly stopped working, my heart would probably stop. (note: this isn’t a review.) as it turn out, i’m gonna not be in school for a year, but when i get to grad school, you’d better believe i’ll still use it.

so, anyways, i just opened the program a few minutes ago (using a trigger via quicksilver). and nothing happened. i experienced an emotion i haven’t felt since i made the switch to mac. i tried it again. nothing happened. i figured quicksilver (being in beta) was just having a temporary bug. so i tried another trigger, this time to open up safari. workedlikeacharm.

clearly, i did something here. so i figured i’d navigate to the program in finder, and figure out my trigger problem later. only, once i navigated to the program…there was a big circle with a line through it watermarked over my custom icon (a swiss army knife, in case you were wondering). i double-clicked on the icon, with trepidation, as i’ve come to depend on this program immeasurably. all my grades and when my assignments are due are only in this program (or maybe also in ical, i’m spotty). the program apparently “is not supported by this computer’s architecture” (whatever the hell that means).

after a quick check to make sure no other program was having the same issue (since i just upgraded my hard drive and memory), i went to the website, and downloaded the software again. copied it into the app folder. hit my quicksilver trigger, and schoolhouse opened up, with all my old assignments and alerts just as i’d last seen them.

now, i understand. this is pretty minor. permission, plist files, etc. all stayed the same, though i technically “reinstalled” right on top of the old program. what i’m trying to get at is that as a longtime Windows user (and all-time Mac aficionado), there’s no way that a similar situation could arise without me tearing my hair out. my stuff would have been gone. this is not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last, that i’m just so incredibly glad that i made the switch.

for about the past month, my girlfriend and i have been fake fighting about when i will next come out to see her. i am happy to submit that the fight has concluded, and i am going out to california for the second time on may 22 (aka 55 days from now).

in other news, i have finally completed the upgrades i made to my computer (which included a 320gb hard drive, and a 4gb memory boost)/. the hd took a little bit of time, as i didn’t initially realize that i could simply use the “restore” function in disk utility to copy from the old disk and create a bootable disk out of the new one. i fiddled around with what felt like five superduper! backups, and yelled at my time machine-enabled time capsule for not just doing what the fuck i wanted. lots of yelling. but all is well.

i have plans to go to the gym in a few. i’m up early (even for me) because for some unfathomable reason, i went to sleep at 3pm and woke at 11. i’m feeling somewhat refreshed nevertheless.

also, a cute surprise: i’m putting the phone i bought for Girlfriend in the mail today. since she has verizon (god.) she’s getting the voyager, which i’m eager to fiddle with and understand. she’s a big fan of teasing me for liking technology, but she’ll appreciate it when i know how to use her phone before it ever gets to her.

the odd couple, the newest gnarls barkley album, has been sitting in my itunes library for a little over a month (piracy rules), but i’m just now giving it a good listen. i put it in a playlist with imani coppola (the black and white album), koop (koop island) and hot chip (made in the dark).

not too much cohesion to this post, there’s probably going to be another one later.

there’s nothing going on. nothing. at all.

it’s one of those situations where i could bother to take the time to feel sorry for myself. but i’m simply too lazy.

i have started to use earthdesk. i am kind of falling in love with it.

ok, i have been a hard-core aperture user for about six months. ever since i bought my camera, and really, even before then, i had every intention of using the program. the second i could get it into my grubby little hands, i did. i have been fairly content with it. until yesterday. i got ahold of adobe lightroom, mostly because i just wanted to play with it. i’m a pretty big fan of everything else they do (nothing in my life would be correct without dreamweaver and fireworks), so i figured i might as well give the damn thing a shot. i sorta now wish i hadn’t. i wish this program weren’t faster than aperture. i wish that it didn’t have the same nondestructive capability. i wish it weren’t sexier looking. i also with that it supported .pngs. eventually, i hope to write a review of some software. reading the work of shawn blanc has inspired me a tad bit. (it’s also making me want to do a little redesign…)

so. i typically take notes in microsoft word, using the notebook layout.

this WAS something that i looked forward to when i finally switched to the mac. i thought the idea of taking notes, with an option for voice recording seemed really intuitive. and i’d never had much complaint with microsoft word (although the new format is something that STILL baffles me).

so, at the beginning of the semester, i created six notebook documents for each of my six classes. the first test came on the first day, three classes in a row, back to back. no problems, all was well. i thought that i was in for a really productive method of note-taking. the following week, i decided that i would test out voice-recording in one of my monday class that runs an hour and fifteen minutes. i had previously used it when i was in student government at UM, for senate meetings that drug on for usually about an hour. the program got buggy withing thirty minutes of my recording, and there were dramatic slugs in my performace. and before we even get into that, my machine is in pretty good condition. when i tried to end the recording, before i lost all my notes, there was a three minute lag and then i had to restart the program so i could finish my note-taking. the part of the lecture that had recorded had summarily disappeared.

the next day, i had one of my two once-a-week three hour classes for the first time, history of photography. i typed up my notes as usual, very little out of the ordinary. the next time i opened up microsoft word, actually the next ten times, my notes from that class also opened up. apparently there was an error. i really don’t know.

and then yesterday happened. i was typing notes in my international terrorism class. and then i hit the enter key and the tab key. and nothing. fucking. happened. eventually, it got its act together. but later, in my congressional representation class last night, i looked up and noticed that tabs and indents and bullets that had been created with the tab and enter keys were suddenly invisible. oh, they were there when i clicked the cursor on the line. but as i began typing again further down the page, they disappeared again.

i’m done. i quit this shit. i’ve already moved most of my word processing needs to pages, and the few times i have opened powerpoint presentations, i’ve done so in keynote. numbers is a pretty slick replacement for excel (see my review). basically, the only reason im keeping this shit on my computer is because of that unsure factor, where you just never know if you’ll need a program. also known as why i have 97 programs on my computer. tonight, i plan to convert ALL my current notes to omnioutliner pro. i’ll let you know how that works out.

Oh Apple. You do so like to enthrall us.

So, whatever. I got ahold of iWork ‘08 last week, and last night had the first opportunity to use it for any length of time. The following are things that I observed:

-Pretty intuitive program design. Things are where they should be (for the most part) and it’s easy enough to find them.

-As a longtime user of MS Excel, it was pretty easy to get on the horse. There’s some nice continuity of flow between the two programs,.

-First big issue: couldn’t find cell formatting, and then I found it in the inspector. Took me a minute to figure it out, but once I did, I suppose it just makes sense for that to be there.

-Drag and drop of cells (I wonder if this feature can be turned off. Not that I don’t appreciate the ease, but I feel like that’s something I’ll do by accident a lot).

-I don’t know how fond I am of the chart section. This is my first time using a chart on the Mac at all, and I suppose I am just more used to the location of options in Excel (scale, etc.). Figuring it out is simple enough, but there is a limit on how many “steps” you can have on the scale.

-All things considered…the graphs are pretty.

-I like the little inset drawer on the left to keep track of various sheets in the given document.

-I can certainly appreciate the variety of styles and templates.

All in all, the program has the same adaptable ease-of-use that I have come to expect from Mac programs, although at times Numbers doesn’t have the same feel as other Apple programs, with my experience being mostly with Aperture, Keynote, and some iLife stuff. I like it, and I’ll probably stop using Excel altogether, just because this feels less stodgy than Excel.

This is a new adventure for me, the first and most complete version of a website that I have ever gotten around to attempting. The idea here is, well, less than fully fleshed out in my mind. But I am a hundred percent sure that it will take shape sooner or later. In the meantime, I’m working on getting my web gallery up. There’s a .Mac one to fool around with, but that will be something I fool around with.

A quick note on me is probably in order. I love Macs. Love them. Took me a while to switch to this platform, but that was mostly financial. Now that I’m here, it’s almost better than I could have imagined. I’m a big fan of learning new things, particularly technology related, particularly Web-related. So, that’s what I suppose this whole website thing is about. My continued adventures on the Interweb.