It's a Mac Mac Mac Mac World

An article I once read was written like a "he said/she said" argument about Macintosh vs. PC computers. Each writer had a say, with the other making a rebuttal and then an additional comment. The final PC comment was that there were far more PCs in the world than Macs. The Mac writer replied that there were more cockroaches in the world than people, but that that didn't make them better. I've laughed about that article for years, and this week really made me feel again the joy of having my Mac, and the truth of that article.

I finally took my six year old Mac in for a tune-up. I have never had that done, but there were a few small problems and I wanted to know for sure if it was a small problem or a large one, and whether or not I could get another year out of the machine before getting a new laptop. It only ended up costing me $90, but the repair was done in Boulder, and meant that I spent a week without my machine ensconced on the special computer table in front of my easy chair.

To make my life easier, so I could still check email and blogs, pay bills, update my iPod and whatever else I needed to do, John brought up his PC laptop and put on my little rolling desktop. I'm really grateful. Really I am. Actually, now that we got my Mac back today, I'm even more grateful.

PCs are so annoying. Why do you have to hit so many keys to make them do simple tasks? Why can't you put a degree mark in a recipe's oven temperature or put an accent mark over a letter in an author's name without looking up its ASCII code?

It seems that in the past ten years Microsoft has spent an incredible amount of effort trying to become as Mac-like as possible while still missing the point of the entire Mac experience. I remember the great decision at our corporation that perhaps the designers should switch to PCs. We did cost analysis studies, made projections, had meetings... Wouldn't it be better if we were all the same? Used the same stuff? After all, everyone else used PCs, so why support these other machines?

We went through everything, checking off the relative costs. At the very end of a three-month study, we contacted the three color houses we used to tell them of our pending decision. What did they all say? Sure, you can switch. We'll still accept your work. However, we will no longer guarantee that what you give us will match what you get back.

Say that again? Yes. When two people who don't speak the same language use an interpreter they never know if the nuances of their speech are quite accurate. So it is with 4-color processing on the PC platform. Windows is a shell that goes over the MS-DOS platform. Macintosh is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) form of Graphical User Interface, which doesn't use an interpreter at all.

So do I own a PC? You bet I do. I use it every year to do our taxes. And sometimes I play a game or three of solitaire if I'm down there waiting for something to print or come out of the dryer.

As I sit here typing this moderate rant, I notice that my nice little laptop realized, without any help from me, that it was time to back up my information. Without bothering me, interrupting me, or slowing me down, it's quietly sending changes made on my internal drive to a remote drive. Isn't life sweet in a Macintosh world?

The White Lie Cake

This morning my wonderful "old" friend, Pastor Stan, sent me a story that was too good not to share with everyone. It's the first time I've received a joke that I wanted to post on my blog. This one I just loved on so many levels. Enjoy...

The White Lie Cake

Alice was to bake a cake for the Church Ladies' Group in her new city, but forgot to do it until the last minute. She remembered the morning of the bake sale and, after rummaging through cabinets, found an angel food cake mix & quickly made it while drying her hair, dressing, and helping her son pack for Scout camp.

When Alice took the cake from the oven, the center had dropped flat and the cake was horribly disfigured. She thought, "Oh dear, there is not time to bake another cake."

This cake was important to Alice because she did so want to fit in at her new church and in her new community of friends. So, being inventive, she looked around the house for something to build up the center of the cake.

Alice found it in the bathroom - a roll of toilet paper. She plunked it in and covered it with icing. Not only did the finished product look beautiful; it looked perfect!

Before she left the house to drop the cake by the church and head for work, Alice woke her daughter Amanda and gave her some money and specific instructions to be at the bake sale the moment it opened at 9:30 and to buy the cake and bring it home.

When Amanda arrived at the sale only a couple of minutes late, she found the attractive, if imperfect, cake had already been sold. She grabbed her cell phone and called her mom.

Alice was horrified. She was beside herself. Everyone would know! What would they think? She would be ostracized, talked about, and ridiculed! All night, Alice lay awake in bed thinking about people pointing fingers at her and talking about her behind her back.

The next day, Alice promised herself she would try not to think about the cake and would attend the fancy luncheon/bridal shower at the home of a fellow church member and try to have a good time. Alice did not want to attend because the hostess was a snob who more than once had looked down her nose at Alice because she was a single parent and not from the founding families of her city but, having already RSVP'd, she couldn't think of a believable excuse to stay home.

The meal was elegant, the company was definitely upper crust and, to Alice's horror, the cake in question was presented for dessert! Alice felt the blood drain from her body when she saw the cake!

She started out of her chair to tell the hostess all about it, but before she could get to her feet, the Mayor's wife said, "What a beautiful cake!"

Alice, still stunned, sat back in her chair when she heard the hostess say, "Thank you. I baked it myself."

Alice smiled and reminded herself, "God is so good."

Good Friends, Good Food

A large group gathered at Matt & Heather's today - we were included. There were Matt & Heather with their 5 kids; Joe & Heather with their 5; Dave & Heather with their four; Marv & Sharon; Aunt Dale and Great Grandma M; John & me... I don't think I missed anyone, but if I did, they were probably named Heather... The new twins were dressed and blessed, and then the feast began.

Food. Everything was marvelous. It seems each of the ladies has a specialty, and there were plenty of requests for recipes going around. I hope the Heather who made that wonderful sweet potato casserole remembers to pass hers along. I have no idea what that crunchy topping was, but it was the best I've had. It was like eating a sweet potato pie. Which brings me to my contribution - I made pies.  

So to keep my promise, here's the recipe for my Lemon Chiffon Pie. It's easy.

LEMON CHIFFON PIE

Make a graham cracker crust. (Massacre 8 graham crackers in your food processor; with a fork, stir in a small bowl with 5 Tbsp. of melted butter and 2 Tbsp. of sugar until blended; press it into shape in a 9 inch pie pan with the bottom of a glass and bake at 350° for about 25 minutes.) Set the crust aside to cool.

1 14-oz can Sweetened Condensed milk (NOT Evaporated Milk)

1/2 Cup Lemon Juice (Tastes best if free lemons are used)

Optional - add a couple drops of yellow food coloring to make it more yellow

1 Cup (1/2 Pint) whipping cream, 

         whipped with 1 Tsp. vanilla & 2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1. In medium bowl, combine Sweetened Condensed Milk, & lemon juice (plus food coloring if you want to use any). Stir until well blended.

2. Whip cream into peaks. Gently fold into the Condensed Milk mixture.

3. Pour into the baked crust and chill at least three hours to set. You can serve it with more whipping cream if you want, but it's fine just as is. Best served with friends, of course.

Feeling Old

I never thought I'd be feeling old, since inside I still feel like a kid most of the time. In fact, some times just growing up is still a challenge to be faced daily. However... the difference between being fifty and being sixty really shows when you try to keep up with people.

We had the most wonderful visit here from our son Ben and his wife Ruth, bringing our wonderful granddaughter Ashley for her first visit to our home in the Rockies. I couldn't keep up. Worse yet, I got grumpy. I could visualize the clock ticking away on their short visit, while I was so exhausted I couldn't sleep at night. It was little consolation that Ashley seemed almost as weary as Grandma, but not much. 

I knew my condition was made worse by a decision to leave my smoking habit behind about three weeks ago, which pretty much destroys sleeping habits anyway, along with other minor considerations like attitude, patience, ability to breathe, think, reason — you get the picture. I don't know why someone didn't just hit me with a shovel. And I can still say it was a great visit. It needed to be longer and slower. It couldn't be.

They left on Friday, and then on Monday I called my doctor and said, "Hi. Remember how I wanted to quit smoking? Well, it's been 3 1/2 weeks now, and you can either give me something to help me sleep, or I'm done. It's not worth it." He saw me immediately. My blood pressure was way up. My pulse was racing. He said I looked exhausted. He gave me a prescription, a pep talk, and hearty congratulations. Then he said to call at any time, day or night, and to buy some lemon drops.

This morning we'll leave for California. I actually slept five uninterrupted hours last night, so I feel great. Normal for me is only about six anyway, and I've been averaging about two for three and a half weeks, so I'm happy this morning. So, Ben and Ruth, I sure wish I had thought to see my good doctor before you had come, but I just wasn't that smart. I guess I had to get really desperate first. Thanks for coming here. I know how little time you get for vacations, and we really loved having you here. Next time I should be more normal... but still old.

A Good Cry

Like most people, I experience a wide range of emotions, but for the past years, contentment has been the overwhelming standard. I live a great life, and I'm well aware of that. I keep busy, have many hobbies, enjoy my husband, my home and my view. Life in Colorado is wonderful. So why am I crying?

Trick question. I'm reading another Nicholas Sparks novel. (Okay, so I'm listening to it on audio book.) Many of his books get me to an emotional level where I spend some time crying. (I'll admit I can also cry at some Hallmark commercials.) Sparks' characters are real, and they go through real life problems, choices, decisions, traumas. The one I'm reading now deals with Alzheimer's (The Notebook). I recently read one of his that dealt with pulling the plug on a coma patient (The Choice). 

I once said that my opinion of a movie depends more on how I feel about myself after seeing the movie than on how great the filming was done, or how famous the actors were. Similarly, when I finish one of Nicholas Sparks' books, I feel like I've lived through a difficult decision with people I know and admire, who have made often seemingly impossible choices. With no Hollywood endings in sight, I feel their joys and terrors, and can struggle along with them. I often have a good cry, and when I'm done, I feel good about them, and about myself. 

And yes, John does look at me weird. Here's his wife, emptying the dishwasher or doing laundry, making the bed, or sitting in the recliner, ear phones snuggled tightly to her head and tears streaming down her face. He takes one look and heads in the other direction. Didn't Shakespeare write that old quote, "Discretion is the better part of valor?" Run, John!

Technology Withdrawal

I'll be suffering about five days of what I imagine will be severe technology deprivation, as I send away my laptop for a new hard drive. Whoever would have thought, back in in 1979, when we got our first home computer, that 80 gigs would not be space enough to contain my photos, recorded music and audiobooks, let alone any design work or music transposition I may happen to do? When we bought that first computer, at John's insistence, Tighe was seven years old. He was excited about getting an "electric game," although he thought Pong would be more exciting, since he'd heard of that one. 

John got the TI-994, a Texas Instruments machine that was way ahead of its time. It had a color monitor, and its graphics were unheard of at that time. You could use cartridges or program it yourself on cassette deck, later replaced by 7" floppy discs that stored a whopping 360k. Great care had to be used not to damage those floppy discs. The programming code was tedious to learn, and had to be double-checked line by line before a program would actually work properly. It was a challenge, but fun in a twisted sort of way. 

Within a year there were rumors of "Winchester Drives" that would store 10 megabytes. For those who had an extra $500-600, that was sure the way to go, but with the original system (without cartridges or floppy drive) costing nearly $1500, it was a pipe dream for us. We never did scrape up the money for one, but did eventually get a floppy drive.

I really tried to talk John out of buying that first computer. I said there were a lot of game systems out that didn't cost nearly as much, and he said this wasn't a game. I had no concept of what it really was, but the money was out of our league, and I told him so. It was one of those times when he had made up his mind. "I'm going to buy this, so you might just as well agree and get it over with." That was a long sentence for him back then.

 

He bought it on a Friday night:  just the basic unit and one educational game, the cassette recorder to store our programs, and a book on Basic Programming. We didn't see him, except from the back, for the rest of the weekend. We watched him set it up and start learning to program it. He put it right in the corner of my kitchen. Then Monday night he went back to work. Tighe went to school. Jeremy, at 3+, played and slept. I was expecting Benjamin. I wasn't going anywhere...

I read the programming book while sitting at the computer. I took out one of the blank cassettes and started to figure out what that little machine could do. I was always careful to cleare off my work before John got home from work. I also made sure that Tighe got time to play with his educational cartridge when he got home from school. But the daytime hours were mine! 

That Friday night John and I had a babysitter come over, and then he and I went to a square dance together. (Having met at a square dance, he and I danced up until two nights before Benjamin was born.) After one of the "tips" he left to get us some punch. The last time we had talked about the computer, he knew that I was really against its purchase. We hadn't discussed it again during the week. I used it during the day, but he didn't know that. He was shocked to walk up behind me with the punch to hear me telling our friends what I had learned to do with my computer that week. Oops. 

I've been in love with computers ever since.

In some ways it may seem a waste to get a larger drive, but I'm constantly trying to figure out what I can delete or move to a backup drive. I figure it will be a good investment in convenience alone for this year. My laptop will most likely be replaced next year after the Macintosh conference in January. At least that's the plan, God willing and the creek don't rise. I know; we don't have a creek. Anyway, we'll save up for it this year. And anticipation is such wonderful fun. 

But this week I'll definitely be in withdrawal.

Almost on the News

Do you ever read the crawlers on the bottom of the screen during the news? I find them very annoying, yet like watching a snake I sometimes find my eyes drawn to them against my will. This morning as I was watching a taped broadcast of last night's O'Reilly Factor, which I hadn't been able to see last night since we were out, I happened to see a really sobering message across the bottom. It's one of those things that make you want to laugh and cry at the same time.

Vladimir Putin [President of the Russian Federation since the end of 1999] has warned that "A new arms race is underway." He further stated, "It's not our fault because we didn't start it." 

That's like kindergarden children with nuclear weapons. I sure hope we're all praying about this kind of lunacy.