Relationships

I found this in an email newsletter....

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Linda Wolfe holds the record as the most married woman in the world. The Guinness Book of World Records has verified it. Linda, 68, has been married 23 times. Her longest marriage was for seven years. She reports that her marriages have failed for a variety of reasons--some trivial, some significant. The most astonishing thing is that she wants to get married again, but it is not to keep the record. The reason is, by her own admission, that she is lonely.

We could look at that story and analyze and criticize. No doubt there is much to think about in this situation. We might think further and ponder how desperate loneliness makes us and how much human relationships mean to the average person. Whether she should marry again or not is a matter of debate, but we would agree that she needs companionship and fellowship. Loneliness is devastating.

Color Picker [Mac OS X Feature]

Hey another small perk to the Apple world. I've made it my mission to make a log of the legit awesomeness of Macs. All you haters, flame away.

This one, as you no doubt have guessed, is about this little color picker seen commonly throughout the Mac experience.


This guy has a similar and equally exciting small surprise for us. See the little dot at the bottom. I never noticed it until now. Click and drag that dot and voila!


Uber amounts of saved colors! Glory!

Text Formatting Preview [OS X Feature]

For those with a Mac, I have a little something for you. It's a feature that I just discovered and it excites me. On the text dialog that you use to format the font of what ever you're typing, there's a pull-down that allows you to see what the font looks like the way you've formatted it -- before you use it! This will change my document creating life forever! haha! :D

Check out the video demonstration...

5 Minute Poem

Why, my soul, are you burdened so?
Why, each morning, do you great me with despair?

For don't you know I've all I need on earth,
and all a soul should want is satisfied?

For the Lord has blessed thee,
though my sins are a treacherous thing.
So please do not distress me.
Since Joy is what the Savior's mercy brings.

Loose Ends

Just to clarify, the vacation turned out excellent. The boat itself was nothing like I expected. I had no internet or phone service like the cruise line promised, and there was little to do if you were too old for the youth clubs yet too young to drink. And everything was expensive. Once we got to the Cayman Islands, though, it was a blast! We went swimming in the coral and I took pictures on the first day. On the second, we went swimming with dolphins!!! On the way back, I was more than happy to just sun bathe; I was wore out. :D

Mixed Feelings

So we're all on vacation, as commanded by my Mother. But like I say to everyone that's semi-jealous, nobody can complain about a week's vacation to the Grand Cayman Islands that they don't have to [directly] pay for. So, I'll save the ranting for a more appropriate occasion, like valuing an iPod over your own life.

But I will be journaling everything that I remember and posting pictures. With the anti-luck of the Irish that seems to run in this family, there's guaranteed to be some laughs and some tears. For instance, Florida has been experiencing a drought, but now that we're here (on Memorial weekend by accident) the weather channel is predicting 60% chance of rain all week. Ha

Oh well. It's a great start to a vacation that I'm excited and unexcited about. I'll be back with more details tomorrow.

Mid-Night Thoughts

These are always the worst and best ideas I ever have. My friend, has a freakin awesome blog where he pours his thoughts into beautiful writing. Me? I'm not an excellent writer. I'm good when I try, but not excellent. I nearly cried reading this guys latest posts. There was so much humanity in it. I guess I want this to be a popular blog, so I try to think of what my readers might enjoy. I'd kinda like my blog to have some kind to usefulness to it. But thelovecat, as his screenname calls him, uses his gift of graceful language to really express his inner self. It sort of reminds me of that book whose name I can't remember. It was a published version of another cyber-phenomenon that I was utterly unaware of where anonymous people mailed in their secrets for everyone to read. His somewhat earlier posts remind me of an old me. I used to be very similar to Adam. My mind, now scattered and incomprehensible I fear, used to be constantly thinking up interesting, new ideas. New ways to look at something, anything, everything, and even nothing. It was a seemingly never-ending torrent of revelation. Now I rely on all I've already known. I feel as though I've reached a resolution with all my most threatening internal conflicts, and all my daily insight is minor as are the issues to which they relate. My forgotten discomfort drives me no more. Today, I look at him as one who is like a freshwater stream. As generic as a stream metaphor might be, his constant flow of new ideas and creativity is refreshing --much like a stream. Even if we don't agree on everything (sometimes I wonder if we agree on anything haha), I really enjoy hearing how he looks at any given issue.

This kind of writing is tiring for me. Like a volcano --what the heck happened to my metaphors?! Man these suck. My speech instructor told me at the end of the semester that I was very good at illustrations and metaphors, but this is not the best display of my colors. By the way, if you didn't notice, the mood just instantly changed. Go figure...

Anyway, like a --we'll use another cliché-- floodgate, my effort and good writing all come out with good momentum. Then, I get tired and I want to quit and not ever write again. This is why my blog is not like good ol' thelovecat's. Well, let's just see what happens then. Since there's no more school until August, I'm likely to actually use this blog. Alright readers, I will bring you more bloggy blessings later! ;)

Random readings...

Since nobody responded, I decided to change the direction of this blog to the precise topic of everything. So the first post in the everything category is...

http://www.maclife.com/article/news/mythbusters_adam_savage_mac_geek

It proves that mythbusters and macs are equally awesome. You have no choice but to scream and dance in festive celebration.

I Need Topics

Hey everyone! So right now this blog is in a sad state. I have all kinds of neat stuff to share with the inter-webs, but the problem I'm facing is time. ...and consistency. So I thought I'd steer this blog away from being solely about my little gadgets and move more into general tech stuff. It seams no matter how much I desire otherwise, everyone sees me as the go to guy for tech problems/questions. It's not too bad. At least I'm useful for something! :D

So what do you want to read about? It can be anything at all, really. If you want it, I got it ...or I can at least get it. I'll give you some sparks to get you're thinking going:

Mac Hacks. Current computer trouble. I wish I could... . How do I... . Need a website/webpage? I wanna learn to... . My Windows machine won't... . My Mac machine won't... . Any convenience dreams. Nick, you should make... .

Hope those help you come up with something. I've got all kinds of ideas, but I don't want to waste my time blogging to myself. If just one of you wants to see something it'll be worth it. Leave your comments here.

Holidays in iCal via Subscription is a MUST

I've been finding lately that the key to a perfect life is a dream. And what's my dream? Well, right now it's having iCal show me when certain holidays are ... without me putting all of them in. So I set out on my quest to find the coveted plug-in/add-on/hack, and after a much rewarding and faithful google search I found it:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/usholidaycalendar.html

Subscriptions in iCal are amazing things. You might consider them one of those "hidden" or "little known" things on a Mac. This one puts all the standard U.S. holidays in a separate calendar. Apparently, it gets this info from mac.com

But what if you don't live in the U.S.? We Americans are so preoccupied with ourselves we don't realize there are civilized, happy people outside of the "protected" borders of America ... right? Well, not this time at least:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/holidays.html

This is to iCal files as our budget is to deficit. Now these are not subscriptions, but rather actual calendar files. This means they're static. That means they're saved into a calendar (on your harddrive) and never change unless you change them yourself. Besides the several countries supported (U.S. included), some other advantages to this are:

• You can edit the events
• You don't need an internet connection (of course the other option can be set to never refresh, thus not ever needing internet)
• And it's a little less cluttered if you combine it with an already-existing calendar

So, you should definitely check out these. Personally, I prefer the subscription because I don't ever have to mess with it again. But both options "complete" iCal a little bit and make it more like the lo-tech paper calendars we used to use.