The Little Things

I made "the switch" and purchased my first Apple computer last October. To this day I am discovering things about the os that makes me one of those fanatical "mac people." Which is hilarious when you consider how much I ragged on my friend Lucas for being one... although he can be credited (along with the god-awful Windows XP Tablet PC edition I was using) for inspiring me to take the plunge.

The other day I wanted to zip up a folder of music to send to Will's sister via Bluetooth (which is awesome in itself). So I'm googling to figure out what program I need when I stumble across the answer: just hit right click (yes, it exists!) and select archive. I was overjoyed. Nothing extra needed? Just like the fact that macs have the ability to convert to PDF embedded... simple, easy to use.

When Google Calendar came out I switched from iCal since I could share my calendar with Will, so that he could attempt to keep up with my usually-running-around-like-a-chicken-with-its-head-cut-off schedule. This past weekend I switched back to iCal after learning that there are ways to publish my calendars via WebDav without having a .mac account. Google Calendar is great, but really it's almost exactly like iCal with the exception that I can't change the window sizes/view options as easily, which is why I switched. Well, that, and you need an internet connection.

Even though I share my calendars with him, Will likes to get my agenda via email at the beginning of the week. I was doing this by hand with Google Calendar open. Switching back to iCal gave me the opportunity to use my mac in ta manner for which it was intended. I started by setting up my gmail account for pop access in Apple's Mail (I don't use Mail, I use Thunderbird and like to use GMail in the browser, but that's another story). Then I opened up Automator and created a workflow to grab my next week's calendar events, compose an email to Will, and mail them off. Now this will automatically occur at the beginning of every week. Show me a PC that can do that...

Lastly, I have a bunch of videos of Alden and Kaya that Kaya loves to watch. Instead of searching through and clicking on them, I decided to stich them all together in iMovie. Great! Now Will used his Macbook (he converted after playing with mine and listening to me gush about how much I loved it) to burn a DVD (my ibook doesn't have the combo drive), including gorgeous looking title menu feature scrolling pictures of the kids. Sure you can do that on a windows machine... but how much does that software cost?

Now I will stop blabbing about my nerdiness. I just was so delighted I couldn't help it!

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