Jabulani Jonny

Oh do the new Mac commercials make me giggle…and oh do they hit home.  Well I’ve pretty much been solely using my Mac for the last couple of weeks and I haven’t been on our Dell 9300 laptop at all, which has Vista Ultimate installed.  I’ve had several little nagging BSOD’s (blue screens of death for the non-tech) and just random little annoyances.  This morning the Dell was sitting in the kitchen so I figured what the heck.  Then I noticed that Vista isn’t detecting a battery.  Well, a battery is in there and if I unplug the AC the computer stays on, so ‘splain that one to me Bill.  You know what, I’ve been contemplating it for a while and this was the last little annoyance.  Hasta la Vista, I’m heading back to XP on our home computer.  Boy do I love my Mac.

Okay sometimes I’m late when it comes to stuff on Youtube. For some reason I just don’t surf there that much and the only time I find something good is when it’s linked by someone else. Case in point, thanks TerribleSpeller for leading me to the deliciousness of Chocolate Rain and consequently Cherry Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday.

When i compose a song I typically try to introduce a varied structure. Say something like:

Verse
Lift
Chorus
Verse
Bridge
Turn
Lift
Chorus
Outro
Something like that

As the video below shows…I don’t need to worry about that. Just a full five minutes of “Chocolate Rain” does the trick. As demonstrated by the follow up video promoting Dr. Pepper. Video embedded below for those on RSS

This guy shows that lip gloss and a catchy lyric can take you from nerd to nashty over night. I’m hooked to…. Cho-c’late Rain….. Cherry Choclate Rain….

Okay, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, which means, maybe 6 of you, you know that I’m a tech geek. You also probably know that I just moved from a Dell 9300, which I was constantly tweaking, to a Macbook Pro, which I’ve constantly been tweaking whilst being at the hospital here in Philadelphia. I’ve changed a number of things to personalize this Mac; falling in absolute love with Candybar 3; loading BootCamp and a Windows XP partition for gaming, etc. I must be able to play CounterStrike on the road.

One of the things that has continued to irk me is the startup sound. I don’t like startup sounds, not in XP not on a Mac. So after some searching I found a link to StartupSound.prefpane, a simple Preferences plug-in that lets you control your startup sound volume or mute it all together.

While doing this I was reminded of a YouTube clip I saw a while back which took my feelings about startup sounds and added a big exclamation point. This video cracks me up everytime.

Oh yeah, and thanks to Dave2 and Jason for their suggestion of MarsEdit in the previous post. I used it for this current post and it was stupid easy and intuitive. THANKS!!

I’m thinking about moving to a desktop blogging client to manage my blog posts, versus going to the Typepad website. What prompted this is that I can’t get to the Typepad website here in the hospital. I have to use the pretty cool services of WriteToMyBlog. Which is basically a web-based blogging client, but has a few issues sometimes…like not letting me put links in this post for some reason.

I was thinking about using Ecto, it seems to get good reviews. Anybody using a desktop blogging client? Are you scheduling your posts?

Sorry for the delay in posting. Again, my attention has been on Elliot’s carepage and my blog has taken the brunt of it. As you know we are in Philadelphia for Elliot’s second heart surgery, which he had on Friday. The surgery went very well and he is recovering nicely. In fact, we are already in the step down unit, two days after surgery. That bodes well for getting home quickly. However, our concerns are with his lungs and how they’re going to respond to the changes. It could take a while to see how they do.

We drove up on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, 2 days from Georgia. It took us about 18 hours of drive time, having to stop a few times for the T-Monster. There’s nothing like an 18 hour trip with a 4 month old to get you in the traveling spirit.

We are back in the Ronald McDonald House of Philly during our hospital stay. Actually Sunette is staying with Elliot in the room and I go back to the Ronnie late in the evening.

On a side note, I’m starting the boy off right. His dad’s a tech geek, which means I’ll be introducing him to the wonders of modern technology. He seems interested so far. Here you can see he’s paying real close attention to the wonders of the webernets.

It’s been a long time coming. I’ve spoken about it often. I’ve driven my wife crazy. And I’ve been saving my pennies.

On Wednesday I finally got my Macbook Pro. After a year of waiting, I made the jump from my PC laptop to the Mac platform and I am so stoked.

Now before somebody yells, no I didn’t spend Elliot’s college fund, or the money we’ve set aside for deductibles and medical bills. This was a blend of saving and me begging.

So for those in the Mac camp, it’s good to finally be here. For those in the Windows camp…see you soon.

Well the webernets are down at the house and I can’t get to Typepad from work, IT lock down. Some quick ponts:
1. My life has changed. Duh, you’d say, but I mean the change equates to noise in my house. My house is loud now when Iget home, and loud at 2:30am. Loud.
2. I gotta get back in shape. 3 months of Hospital & Fast food don’t sit well.
3. I ordered my Mac. Yep, all 15.4″, 2.4ghz, 200gb hd and 2gbs of Ram worth. Now I’m reduced to checking the order status page once an hour, and it’s not supposed to ship for 2 weeks. Sheesh.

“Ch-ch-ch-changes”

I find myself on this rapid decent into Apple Fanboi status and I don’t own my Mac yet.  Here’s just one more thing that made the slope that much mo’ slippey.  One of my side businesses is music production.  I have been using a PC for years in that line of work, using the recording software Cubase.  The new version of Cubase runs for $999.  Well I’m moving to a Macbook Pro, and figured while I was at it, might as well move from Cubase to Apple’s Logic software.  Logic is extremely powerful and full-featured.  Wouldn’t you know, right before I’m getting ready to get a Mac, Apple releases an update to their Logic line, Logic Studio 8.  It includes a host of new features, new instruments, new "bunch of stuff", and….wait for it…….they cut the price in half.  Yep.  It went f
rom $999 to $499.  I’m not sure what kind of business plan that is, but I like it.  No, I don’t just like it, I love it.  Here’s me slipping. 

Well I tried a post from my Blackberry yesterday, but since Typepad doesn't make a mobile client for Blackberry's, it's not the easiest process and usually the post ends up lost somewhere. Bleh.

Quick Elliot update: I'm back up at the hospital this weekend with E & S. He's been in now for over two weeks for this stay. I've been commuting back and forth every other day from Atlanta to Columbus for work. He's tolerating his feeds well, which is good. He seems pretty content. However, his O2 sats have dropped again as they've tried to wean him off of oxygen. So he's back on oxygen. sigh

On a completely different topic. I've been waiting a long time for a Mac. I mean, a really long time. I first started wanting to get a MacBook Pro last year. I decided I wouldn't do anything until Leopard came out since it was scheduled for the spring. Then the spring came and it got pushed to October, yesterday to be specific. So Leopard came out yesterday and now there is nothing really standing in my way, other than making sure it's in the budget. Hopefully I'll be ordering in the next couple of weeks. I'm giddy as a schoolgirl in springtime.

Oh and if you absolutely have no idea what I'm talking about, go to Apple's site and watch the guided tour of Leopard. Then watch the guided tour of their iLife '08 software which comes on all Macs. You will then see why you will own a Mac before Windows releases its next pOS in 2010.

So I know I should probably be driving around looking for houses this afternoon, since we signed a contract on ours last night and we have exactly a week and a half before we go to Philly. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut……

I'm 5th in line for the Apple iPhone at my local AT&T store. jEric's 4th so we're keeping each other company. Am I keeping the iPhone? Nope. Going on ebay within minutes of touching my hands. There are iPhones listed for $2500 on ebay right now. Come on big money, big money, no whammy's.

This has actually been very therapeutic for everything that's going on right now. You huntin' for an iPhone? $2500 Paypal and it's yours. A brand spankin' new, unregistered iPhone in your mitts. You know you're tempted.

UPDATE:  We sold the iPhone on Ebay for $750.  We made a whopping $100.  Oh well, atleast we tried.  Tough to let that thing go, super sweet.