The previous post talked about how I started using a Mac, so here is the next step.
While I was going to Boise State and had recently married I worked in the computer lab (I know that I mentioned that). The lab manager Stephen Henderson, was a Mac user. Not that he didn't use PCs he did and he was very knowledgeable about them, of course he was; he was the lab manager. While working there my wife and I decided that we would purchase a computer, our first. By this time I was using Macs all the time and knew that was the type of machine I wanted and my wife had grown up using Macs at home. So next was deciding which Mac to get. Stephen was a good resource as he had purchased Macs from catalogs and I had never bought a computer.
This was in January of 1999 and as luck would have it Apple had just released a great little home computer, the iMac. Now the original iMac was released August 15, 1998. We were looking at the 3rd revision, the "five flavors" iMacs. We decided on the Blueberry iMac. Once we ordered it then there was just the waiting. I have to admit I was pretty anxious, my wife might put it another way. On the day that I knew it was to be delivered I took the day off from work and when I realized the day before that it would not get there until the late afternoon I called the shipping company and arranged to pick it up at their office near the airport. Yes, I was pretty excited.
The price was $1299 and it came with a 266 mhz g3 processor (about 500 mhz Pentium) 32MB RAM and a 6 GB hard drive. It shipped with Mac OS 8.6, it has been updated to 10.3.9. I installed new RAM as well once to 96 MB then up to 320 MB. It is an awesome machine. We still have it, use it as a print server for our wireless network. You can still surf the internet and do some basic word processing. I would like to see how many people are still using the pcs they bought in 1999. More to come...
I am a Mac user. That's right. I prefer Apple Macintosh computers to Microsoft Windows PCs. I am not crazy, to the contrary I am very sane. I am a college graduate, I have spent considerable time in the professional world and I am now more than ever, a Mac user.
I have used Macs for over ten years. I started using them when I was going to college. I went to the computer lab and saw that there were these computers that were not used as often and I wouldn't have to wait for. So I jumped at the chance to use them. What started as a convenience turned into understanding and then admiration for the ease of use that the Macintosh computers provided. This was made more evident when I had the opportunity to work at one of the computer labs on campus. In the lab I worked in it was 2/3 Windows 98 machines and 1/3 Mac OS machines (this was before Mac OS X). When we would have a problem with one of the computers we had the ability to rebuild the machine from a server, both for the Macs and PCs. I did not ever, nor do I recall anyone ever rebuilding a Mac because of a technical problem. If anything a restart could resolve most issues. But with the Windows PCs it was easier to hang an "out of Order" sign on the PC than to troubleshoot it and just rebuild it from the server and hope that the student using it had saved on a disk, not the local hard drive.
I want to start writing about my experiences with my Macs and the reasons why someone with my intelligence would make such a choice. (Other than it is the Obvious choice)
I recently read an article that discussed the struggle that Microsoft endured in trying to "kill off" Apple's Quicktime. Here is a link to the document. It is an interesting read. Funny how the big kid still tries to beat up on the little ones.
Story original link
It's been a while, but there are reasons. For one, in the last two weeks I was in Twin Falls twice and Mountain Home. Also, at our office we upgraded to a new phone system and that took some effort. Finally I moved into my new office, along with some other people moving. I like the new office, it is taking some getting used to. It is pretty far from where I sat before and now I am "alone" where before I was around four, sometimes five other people. But there are some benefits to being alone I don't have to try and "talk over" people when I am on the phone and if I want to eat lunch at my desk I can and no one stares at me. Here are some pictures.
I was driving home the other night and a song came on my iPod, "Superman (It's not easy)" by Five for Fighting. It reminded me of an experience that I had. This song was popular about five years ago and that was when my mother passed away. About a month after she passed I was in our apartment my wife and son were not home at the time and I was vacuuming and this song came on and I choked up. This was a tough time for more than just the usual reasons. I had been made executor of my mothers estate and my brother and I had been responsible for organizing her funeral writing the obituary and other details. So I think that when that song came on all the emotion and pressure of what we had been going through came to a head. This was a hard situation with my parents divorced my dad really was not able to do much to help other than giving us advice (which he gave freely). With this situation it left a twenty-six year old son (and his twenty-three year old wife) and a twenty-four year old son doing something that not many people that age have done; bury their mother. With the help of family and friends we were able to get all the things done that we needed to and honor our mother.
