. Spinning .

I’ve taken the initiative of setting up a website, having purchased and registered a domain (no, not susangibb.com which I wanted; someone’s taken it and not set up a site.  I’ve a sneaky suspicion that someone is me in an attempt several years ago to do this but I can’t find out for sure.) and set up a site with a host server.  That’s as far as I’ve gotten, and I’ll be learning as I go as to whether I can grab WordPress to set up a viable site or whether I start with Lunarpages’ simple version of readymade.  It’s astounding how little I know about how this whole thing works.  Weblog services such as Typepad make it so easy to create neat sites with just about all the bells and whistles that one gets a bit lax about standing up and taking over complete control.  Feeling like an idiot about these things is another reason to procrastinate.

I’m not sure how it will all play out, since I have three weblogs active right now and there was a reason for the separation.  Spinnning has been going nearly five years and I hate to lose the name but it really doesn’t cover the hyptertext weblog or class blogs as far as product identification.

There’s time to work this all out–Typepad’s good through October or November I believe.  Everything may be transferred or it may just be archived on my hard drive as I start from scratch.  It’d be sort of neat to recreate my internet persona.  This time, I might come back as thirty-something, natural blonde, five foot five, with a Masters and built like a brick….

How things have changed in just the few short weeks since Mac–and yet a lot of these things may have been available in Windows and I just didn’t put the energy into finding them.

Aside from taking miserable pictures of me, my Mac takes pictures of itself. Which of course encourages me to get more creative and proficient with Photoshop and camera to come up with new and exciting desktop images. Here’s the latest until I get sick of it, an image of the so-called “Harvest” wine, fermenting peaches, pears, quince and crabapples for color.

Yes, I envy the MacPro user for more than the large screen and graphic card.  I knew enough after three years with my Latitude (which still looks great) that the white MacBook was ridiculous and the black was a better choice though showing dust and natural hand oils in shiny palm prints. 

But here’s a tip on cleaning your MacBook with toothpaste for the neater and cleaner amongst us.

(Note: I’m really getting sick and tired of Firefox’s refusal to always accept a paste into Typepad’s link box.  This is ridiculous.)

I don’t know if it’s Comcast, Firefox, the Mac, or the internet but connections are slower than molasses in January today, Even lost the network connection completely on the Mac earlier this morning. It acted like it had no idea what I was talking about and had never connected before since it’s lived here.

At least I’m able to investigate problems by connecting different pc’s and the mac, different browsers like IE, Safari and Firefox, and attempt to arrive at a solution that way. It’s just annoying as hell when everything’s moving so tortoiseal and I’m in hare-warp speed.

Really have to learn the Mac file system.  Photos, for example, are showing up in all different places when I really would like them in one convenient area.  Right now, I’m trying to find the images that I put into the Share folder on the Dell and maybe it’d be better to just email them to myself rather than hunt them down.

I am loving this MacBook, though I’ve got to say that I love the Dell Latitude as well.  It’s served me beautifully for three years and hopefully will keep going strong for a few more.  I’ve never had a problem with Win XP and it’s on two of the five computers here (the other two still have Win 98).  It looks like I’m gearing up towards network licenses here! I know I’m a bit overdone with the computers and books here now, but if I move in a microwave and fridge, I really don’t have to leave this room.

Learning to thumb-click instead of tapping on the scroll area of the touchpad.  When I watched my nephew’s frustration as he picked up and dropped icons, files, URLs, whatever because of the way I had it set up.  Realized that this was what I’d been doing until I started smoothing out my technique a bit.  The thumb-click seems a bit awkward right now, but I’m going to give it a try.

See now, if I could just learn to be more concise I could have twittered this dramatic life event instead of posting.

Playing with transferring files and screwing up photos and changing settings and desktops just for the fun of it.  Oh yeah, and to learn.

So I’ve visited a few Twitterings to see what’s up with that.  It appears to be a blow-by-blow of doings or feelings written in minimalist style.  Perhaps a bit of Faulkner lies in the psychological realism of the entries, or maybe they just remind me of Benjy.

It seems to me that it’s a condensed version of what I do here:  write when the mood strikes, as if turning to the guy next to me to mention something only he’s not here, he’s at work.  So either it goes unsaid, or it’s Twittered.

Can anyone ‘splain it to me better than that?

The Mac Dashboard is terrific.  The widgets are becoming a large part of my life with Mac.  From MacUpdate.com, downloaded this Delivery Notice widget that keeps track of your incoming from quite a number of sources such as Amazon, Apple (of course), UPS, DHL, FedEx, the USPS and more.  Haven’t tried it yet but I’ve downloaded it and am ready to set it up on the Dash.

Then I’ll naturally have to test it out by ordering something from somewhere.

NOTE:  Bad technology–Typepad doesn’t seen to allow me to readily copy and paste links as in the above.  Whether it’s a Typepad thing or a problem with Firefox, I’m not sure but it certainly is annoying so far.

Clinking as I’m typing, worrying that I may be marring up the Mac by sterling bracelets loosely circling the wrist of my right hand.  The Latitude allowed some latitude on that I suppose; I’d never noticed.

Yet maybe it’s the day as in the shop there lies an array of images smiling up at me, a family, all friends, and scattered.

The farthest one and yet the most insistent:  Chris tugs at me and rattles her bracelet against mine. 

One of the ways I’m learning to get faster and smoother with the touchpad on this Mac is in playing a game of Mah-Jong I downloaded.  While it doesn’t use, so then perfect, the drag or highlight features, it does manage a lot of moving around and clicking and I think it’s getting me up to speed through repetition.

But I had to laugh; with all these fancy features when I went to take a screenshot of the game the symbols on the tiles disappeared, just like a group shot with their eyes shut!  Tried several different ways but couldn’t take a proper shot of it.  Wonder why?

Actually it was very easy to rip and burn on the Mac, though I used iTunes to rip (Apple folk don’t like the word rip I guess; it’s not even in the index) and Burn Folder to burn.  And Screenshots to show Carolyn what I did (and the second time around I got a much better selection).  Great collection (or so I think) from Seeger, Guthrie, Baez, Dylan, Collins, Donovan, and more plus I found Long Black Veil ( Download 102_long_black_veil.m4a ) on one of the CDs.  Then on to Emmylou!

Yeah like, I wasn’t going to get the white Mac cause it’d get too dirty.  Well the BlackMac is cool ‘cept it has a dust problem.  Just like why you don’t buy a black car or end up taking it to the carwash every Friday after work.

Learning lotsa new things on the Mac, but right now have to either redo a music CD (means picking tracks from seven to ten CD’s to personalize the selection) or figure out how to turn .wma files (done because it was easier and faster with a known program) into something digestible to Mac, like mp3. 

Just taking a few steps at a time in different directions and learning, learning, learning.  Funny though, the more you’ve learned the more confusing it sometimes gets because you’ve been there, should know how to do it, but with so much more information taken in over a short period of time nothing stands out anymore. 

Now I’ve got to go back to blowing dust off the keyboard.

No, I’m not switching; I’m adding to my repetoire.  My living room, set up with two couches facing each other across the room, looks like a Mac vs. PC commercial.  Each couch has a pillow, laprobe, laptop and wire running over the edge and plugged into a wall.  I hop from one to the other (see, you can get exercise while using a laptop) and sometimes the transition is funny.

Like using the mouse on one and touchpad on the other (sorry Dell, but the large Mac touchpad area has finally been doable for me) so I’ve found myself tapping the mousepad and wondering why nothing is happening onscreen.  Or the wireless mouse of the Mac that somehow got wired backwards until I realized I was holding it assbackwards.

So now I’m a 5-computer household.  It’d be nice if they all learn to get along.

Well, it looks like somebody got the Mac for the New Year.