I think this pretty much sums up my feelings about every major trend since…well…since I can remember. Classic.
Monthly Archive for February, 2005
We were up quite late with the baby last night. She woke up at 2:00 am coughing very hard. When we went into her room to check on her, we saw that she had thrown up. I felt horrible. Puking is just…one of the worst things ever and I couldn’t stand the idea that my daughter was throwing up. I held her for about 45 minutes and I could tell that she was feeling so horrible. After I went back to bed, Corinne hollered at me and upon entering the bathroom, I saw the baby over the toilet. She would point feebly to her mouth and then throw up into the toilet. It was just painful to watch.
Today, she seems to be feeling ten times better. We all went to lunch at Super Salad and had a great time. She’s just now waking up from her nap and I can’t wait to spend time with her.
Did my first presentation with iWork’s Keynote program. Let me say this, Keynote rawks! Great price, simple interface, excellent effects, easy to use, and..oh..did I mention excellent effects? Much better than PowerPoint IMO.
Apple has taken, once again, a very unique approach to their software design. Keynote’s interface is simple and easy to manage. My *only* complaint about Keynote is that on a 1024×768 screen resolution, I cannot fit the slide and the program’s “inspector” function onto the screen. I realize that is a limitation of my laptop, not the sofware, but still…
Once again, I think that the marriage of these Pages and Keynote are a great start for, what I hope is, Apple’s update to AppleWorks; a program that needed a LOT of attention IMO. Mac users, go out and get a copy of it today and replace your old horrible M$ Word and PowerPoint applications with something simple, yet robust.
I received Apple’s iWork 05 package today and I have to say, I’m impressed. I’ve been longing for a while get Micro$oft Office off of my machine, and while iWork isn’t quite there yet, I know it will soon be. I must preface this by saying that I have been so impressed, that M$ Word has finally been removed from my Dock since for the first time since I RELUCTANTLY installed Office.x on my iBook.
iWork is an application that I know for sure is “still under construction.” I believe that Apple is getting ready for a long-due update to AppleWorks and I believe that iWork is the beginning of this. Being that most users never experience any functionality from M$ Word other than opening up a document and typing (most never even change the default font), I believe that iWork is the perfect alternative for Mac users to get rid of the bloated and overpriced M$ Office. As of now, it is comprised of just two programs: Pages (word processing) and Keynote (presentations). The interface of both programs, like all Apple products, is simple and the product is ridiculously easy to use. There are many features for including multimedia into your documents and it imports and exports M$’s .doc file format. PDF exporting is a staple in most Apple products and that makes for nearly universal distributability.
My first project in Pages was to format an APA-formatted template for all of my school-related papers. After some tinkering, I got it down and I must say that the styles feature of Pages is intuitive and easy to use. There are several different viewing options and my favorite feature so far is the styles drawer that keeps your styles “docked” on the side of your document. For heavy style users like myself, this is a bonus! While the program lacks some of the bells and whistles that M$’s product is known for, Pages is an excellent - and LOW COST (just $79 and $49 for students) - replacement for the M$ suite. I’m looking forward to seeing what else Apple has in store for their new office software. Next project: format an outline template for my notes.
While I have yet to delve into Keynote yet, I anticipate just as good an experience. I will soon be using it for a presentation that I have planned for one of my classes at school. I’ll report more as I get more into the program. I do know that Keynote exports to PowerPoint, Flash and Quicktime (way cool!) and I’m sure there are other neat features that are awaiting my discovery.
I’ll be honest and say that I could never justify paying what M$ charges for their software. As an Apple user, I can certainly say that I’m happy to pay for software that I know will suit me well. Additionally, I just think of all the people out there (Mom) that should be running a Mac with great software like this. I guess it’s time to make my soapbox a little bit higher.
I went to Salt Lake tonight. I went to my Grandfather’s birthday and then to my mother’s house to help my brothers with their taxes. I had a great time. Robert and I went to Walmart to pick up tax software and while we were there, we had a little fun. We took some walkie-talkies with us and we would both stand at the end of the aisle where some customer was just standing there, looking at an item. We would stand there, peeking around the displays, until we caught the person’s attention. After they would look at us, we pretended as if we were talking into the the walkie-talkie and then we would casually walk away. We did this to several people and managed to freak each one of them out. It was hilarious! At one point, we walked behind some kids and kinda followed the while saying “we have the suspects in sight.” It was great. I used to do funny stuff like that all the time. It was good to just goof off a little.
My brothers are doing well and they both seem happy. I miss seeing them. I have an opportunity coming up that I need to call someone about this week. Seems that an old coworker of mine is interested in having me start the Salt Lake branch of his business. His company “refers” troubled kids to any one of the main disciplinary homes in the state. Apparently they make good money. This might be an interesting step for me. We’ll have to see though.
I redid my fish tank this weekend and put some argonite down as a replacement for the old gravel that I had. Apparently, the fine sand helps to decrease the amount of bacterial growth in the tank, which is something that I’ve been struggling with. It also helps to keep a more natural pH and nutrient balance in the tank. The stuff has taken a full 24 hours to settle so I’ll get the fish back into the tank tomorrow. Speaking of which, I have the day off from school and work. I’m fully excited.
