Learning curves

• Damn you, Apple, and your shiny, minimalist store and Helvetia copy and assertation that my new computer and I are about to embark on some lifelong journey together.
• Why is the command key so far away from my pinky? Why is it not where the control key is on PCs if it serves the same function? No, I am not calling it the Open Apple key, because I this is not 1995 and I am not a tool.
• There are two types of Apple people: those who swear up and down that they're not Apple People, and those who fully embrace it. I haven't decided which one I am yet but I've used the phrase "drink the Kool-aid" at least five times today so I'm guessing it'll be the former.
• Trackpad = AMAZING. The four-finger alt-tab thing is pure genius. There are a lot of cool little tricks that I'm noticing.
• This taskbar thing at the bottom of the screen needs to be gone. I hate icon clutter. GO AWAY.
• On Firefox, the tabs come down from the menu bar and not up from the pages themselves. I don't think I need to tell you how messed up that is. I can abide some suspension of disbelief (I know they're not real tabs, for example), but that is just ridiculous.
• Error sound = fart.
• The graphics seem really nice. I only wish my Sim were here to experience it.
• I bought the student edition of Adobe CS5, so I have to send in student verification stuff before I get my product code. But when I do, I am going to Photoshop and Illustrate and, uh, Dreamweave everything in sight.
• Oh, you can hide the bar at the bottom. That's good.
• I have to write a paper tomorrow before I go out of town, so I guess I'll find out then whether or not iWork was worth the relatively low price I paid.
• I also got a shiny purple iPod nano. Unfortunately, all of my music is still stuck on my old computer.
• I just spent $1800.00+ on a computer and software. For real. Damn.

I think that's it so far. Now I need to go to bed. I've got a lot of cognitive dissonance I need to sleep off.

Requiem for a shitty computer

My computer is dead. Clarification: my shitty HP laptop, which I've only had for a year and a half and have already spent $300.00+ on repairs for, is dead. Either the power cord, the battery, or whatever links the two has stopped working.

Pray for my Sim. She is trapped, and I can't bear to lose her. She's already risen to the top of two career paths, acquired a fountain of youth (it's in the living room), and whoo-hooed more people than I ever will, both male and female.

So after much research, thoughtful consideration, and peer pressure, I've decided it's time to drink the Kool-aid. They haven't promised me love and acceptance or an afterlife filled with all the whoo-hoo I can handle, but they will give me a free iPod Touch, which is a pretty sweet deal as far as cults go.

This is my last blog as a PC user*. It's been a nice run, but it's time to move on to bigger and more unnecessarily powerful things. When you hear from me again, I'll be one of "those" people.


*I'm using a computer at school, so presumably I will blog from a PC again. But for effect, this is my last PC blog.

Fireworks: a metaphor

It is a beautiful night, the first we've had in a while, and we have several boxes of legal fireworks, so Ryan and I go outside to sit on the front step. Ryan opens a box of snaps and throws a few at the ground. Snap! Snap! I watch for a while, mesmerized, then turn my attention to the colorful smoke bombs. I light a few, then go back to watching Ryan.

After a while, he hands me one. "Go on, throw it."

I take it, reluctantly. Having grown up in a state where fireworks were illegal, I've never played with snaps before. Plus, he's already thwarted my attempts to unwrap all of the snaps in the box and empty their contents into a coffee filter, creating a super snap. I look at the small, white packet in my hand, then toss it to the ground.

Nothing.

"It might be a dud," Ryan says, "but you're doing it wrong. You need to throw it with more force. There's more wrist action."

"Okay," I say, and turn to him with my hand out.

"No, get that one you threw off the ground. Don't waste them." He points to the un-exploded snap near my feet. I sigh, then bend over, facing away from him.

Snapsnapsnapsnapsnap! Suddenly, I am surrounded by explosions. I jump up and yell. Ryan laughs.

"Ryan! What the hell?" He laughs harder.

Later, I throw another snap that does not explode. I bend over to pick it up facing Ryan and do not break eye contact. He throws a snap at me anyway.


Moral: Some women date men that remind them of their fathers. I, however, am dating my baby brother.

(By the way, this is my response to this. Turnabout is fair play.)

Days 6-10

This is a lot  to remember at once. I should probably start updating more often. LIGHTNING ROUND!

30 Days of Creativity Update: Days 3/4/5

Have I been upstyling my titles? That's something I'm going to need to take a look into. I think I have enough content that it's time to put together a style sheet. Hear that, fellow bloggers? Style sheets. They are things that you need. You can make up your own rules, but rules you must have. A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds (Style sheet entry "Misquotes:" Okay if used to prove a point).

Onto the creating.

I should write for Glamour

About a year ago, I purchased a three-year subscription to Glamour magazine. About 11 months ago I realized this was a terrible idea.

Days 1 and 2

Yesterday I was sick, very sick. My sinuses ceased to exist as holes in my head and became throbbing canals of pain (and also mucus). And my internet was down. There are two things every girl needs to be creative: oxygen and internet access. Yesterday I had neither.

So here's what I've been doing for the last two days at work. It's been slow. America, get out there and write some checks! Incorrectly, if you can!

Paper flowers! I think technically this is kirigami, but to me it felt more like making paper snowflakes but folding the paper slightly differently. They are made from old calendar pages, as I mentioned before, and colored with my vast supply of highlighter pens. Total time: about 2.5 hours.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but for now I kind of like having them on my computer. Whenever I get bored I stop what I'm doing and rearrange them. It's soothing, like a brightly colored, ultra-girlie Zen garden.

Today's Craft: Bread, using this recipe.I'm going to let it rise overnight to give it more flavor. Haven't made bread in a long time, so I'm really looking forward to it!

30 Days of Creativity DAY ONE GO!

I signed up for this because Heather did first, and I tend to follow Heather and her crazy ideas (Let's get dressed up and go to things and hope that people will take our pictures! Let's go see Twilight even though we both hated the book! Wait, let's write a Fringe show instead!). But this is a good one, because I need motivation to do creative things that don't involve spite (see also: Fringe show).

I am a pro at linking to things. If I was telling this story out loud, that paragraph would have taken 10 minutes. HTML: Your window to a less long-winded tomorrow!

So, I made some kirigami flowers out of old desk calendar pages at work today, and now I have a bouquet of November 1-19, 2009 on my computer. I have 5 1/2 months left and not a ton of real work to do, so I'll probably keep working on that tomorrow. I'll take some pictures and post them somewhere within my vast social media network (which is to say, on Twitter). And I have a hymn for church tomorrow that's not in the hymnal, so I'll have to improvise a harmonization for that. Does that count? That had better friggin' count. I went to school for that shit. Maybe I'll figure out how to record and post that too.

I'm not normally good at this sort of thing, on account of I lack discipline and self-control, but I'm getting better. I've listened to the whole Bible on my iPod 1 1/2 times since the start of last year, I stopped biting my nails, and I even got myself photographed by a legitimate member of the press (Naomi Beck: hyperlinking machine. Also, pretty good at pulling off hot pink miniskirts). So I'm pretty confident about this.

(Disclaimer: Today is also the start of the Lazyman Triathalon at the YMCA, and you get a t-shirt for finishing that, so if it comes to the point where I have to choose which one to finish, I'm gonna go with that.)

So here goes...