Tag: General

a whale of a good time

Instead of more unpacking, Kayla suggested we go boating on Saturday. Grandpa Ricardo obliged and all of the Ruby children, Lucas and I tagged along. As we puttered out into the Sound, the topic of whales came up. Minutes later, I saw what could only be the exhaling of a whale. Nearby was a boat which had just motored nearby.

We continued watching for the whales next exhale. After spotting a second exhale, I calculated the trajectory of the whale, turned the boat into his path, and shut down the engines. A little while later, one, and then another whale surfaced 20 yards off the bow of our boat. The second was extremely cooperative and surfaced high and submerged showing us the classic whale tail view, much to everyone’s delight.

Taming my savage Savage

I grew up surrounded by a million acres of the Huron-Manistee National Forest. Every fall, thousands of hunters would come “up North” to hunt deer in the outdoor paradise that was my back yard. Hunting was a way of life in the world I knew. If opening day of rifle deer season fell on a weekday, schools cancelled classes and businesses closed their doors. At 12, us lads were eligible for Hunters Safety and were out hunting. Continue reading “Taming my savage Savage”

iPhone Wish #3

Dear Steve Jobs,

I am certain you have seen the YouTube videos and countless photos of children and toddlers demonstrating the ingenious simplicity of your iPhone. My two year old daughter loves getting a hold of my iPhone. She unlocks it, launches the Photo app, clicks and few times, and proudly shows us her favorite picture, “Big Daddy!”

My 1 year old isn’t quite so proficient, but also enjoys the iPhone in his own way. It turns out the iPhone is a fantastic toy for entertaining young children. I’m not normally interested in paying hundreds of dollars for a child toy but I have an idea that would certainly increase the sale of iPhones and the iPod Touch: toy mode.

Yes, that’s right. I’m asking for a way to turn my $400 phone into a child toy. The gist of ‘toy mode’ is to allow either of my babies to push buttons, navigate around, see my photos, read my email, and otherwise play. The catch is that in toy mode, they can’t change anything. No deleting Daddy’s email. No changing the minimum font size. No placing phone calls to my colleagues.

Imagine of how many iPhones you will sell when babies are teething on them and toddlers are dropping ’em in toilets because parents feel ‘safe’ letting them play with it unsupervised. The prospects of, or horror, actually having to use our old Palm or Windows Mobile phones will spur us back to the Apple Store.

Running Windows on a Mac

You have two good options for running Windows on your Intel iMac: Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. I use and recommend Parallels although lots of people prefer VMware. If you aren’t the adventurous type, just get Parallels. If you are using the same thing I am, there’s a much better chance that I’ll be able to help you.

If you plan to run Windows XP or Vista, make sure you have at least 3 and preferably 4GB of RAM. Any less and you’ll have severe performance problems when your system runs out of memory and starts paging. It won’t be an enjoyable experience.

If you have an older Intel iMac that only supports 2GB of RAM, then forget about either and use Boot Camp which comes with Mac OS X 10.5. Then you can partition your drive and use part of your disk for Windows. The disadvantage is that you’ll have to reboot to use any Windows apps. But that is far better than trying to run Windows without enough RAM.

MacBook for sale sold

This MacBook is the one I reviewed here. The MacBook was an interim laptop, to bridge the gap between my PowerBook and my new MacBook Pro, due to arrive later in the year. I skipped the first edition MacBook Pro, substantially because the MBP wasn’t substantially better than the MB. So I waited.

With the July 2007 MacBook Pro, Apple finally made the upgrade compelling. Continue reading “MacBook for sale sold”

435

The letters were great, my brain was firing on all cylinders, and the scoreboard has a nosebleed. With two sevens, both 10s, and a handful of accessories I did quite well. I think 435 might be an all time personal best score.