rolly polly.

Ryland is rolling like crazy now, back to front, front to back, over and over, all around the floor. He keeps getting stuck and then yells to be fixed. It is very cute and fun and such a big boy thing to do.

My friend Tiffany forwarded me an email from last year at this time, when I had sent her pictures of my first ultrasound. My little Ry guy, when he was just a teeny tiny little bud. It’s bringing up all sorts of things in me. And I realized something. I am happy. I don’t have a lot of money and my life is far from ideal and I’m cranky a lot because of sleep and stress. But I’m happy damn it and nothing can take that away.

I am just so in love with my baby. We have such a good time, every single day, and I am unbelievably lucky to be with him. I suppose I am sacrificing a lot to be at home with him right now, but it’s the best thing for both of us. I will have to be back at work eventually and I look at that time sadly, but right now we’re happy and loving each other. He won’t remember these early months, but I will. And maybe deep down, he will, too.

This morning before he woke up he was dreaming and he was laughing. He was laughing in his sleep and it just made me supremely happy. Boy did I finally do something right.

I did a quick redesign of loafe, based on a template I found somewhere. I just have to do some exporting of my movable type entries to this new wordpress format I am going to use and then I’ll be done. I’ll miss movable type though. Not that I really know how to use it. But MT has been good to me.

I am thinking of getting a new computer soon and I really want a Mac. Maybe one of those new Mac minis. Anyone have any opinions about Mac vs PC?

For what it's worth, I've been a PC user and Mac hater my entire life... I'm a computer programmer and I wanted a "real" computer, not a stupid Mac.

That said, almost exactly a year ago I bought my first Mac -- largely because of their new operating system. I now have 2 Macs, an iPod, and a large collection of Apple accessories, and I got rid of all my Windows machines.

So, my 2 cents? Something that I my entire life I never thought I'd say: GET THE MAC. :)

Oh, as a PS: I've been bouncing between blog engines trying to find one that works well. I can't get MT to work very well... I've been using WordPress on one of my other sites for a few weeks now and it's great! I'll probably move my primary site over to it here shortly as well.

In my endeavors I have discovered that PC users and mainframe users are many and Mac users are few. Most Mac users are into graphic design for science, architecture, SW development especially games, photo manipulation,artistic endeavors cad/cam, etc.
And that PC's have gotten so powerful and inexpensive that they can by virtue of crunch power emulate many Mac attributes.
What is so unique about Macs that a PC simply is inadequate for the task at hand?
I, for example, am not rich, like Brasten, so
I purchased an Ecommerce computer from Best Buy with the AMD 3200+ processor, 400 Mghz front bus, 512 Meg RAM and 160 Gigs of hard drive with Monitor ,keyboard ,mouse , printer, speakers and cabling for $519.00. For my needs its pretty powerful for now. Talk to me Brasten whats the
deal with Macs and explain!!!

Heck, unless you must have the latest features and technology to perform certain functions you can just drive around office parks and get free ones from near the garbage cans.
Our company gave away skids full of Pentium II's because you cant sell them and dumping them is illegal. On guy took a skid of 30 away. They all worked but they are only 400 meg machines with 20 gigs at best of hardrive, hell when I loaded the .net framework for design studio into my machine it took 6 gigabytes!!!!!!!!

You're right about most of that DG, PC's have a little better bang-to-buck ratio on the low-end, and if price is Christa's only or first criteria for a computer she's likely better off buying a PC.

I would debate the Mac demographic you spoke of. That used to be true, but ever since Mac OS X was released a few years ago, the Mac platform has been finding converts of all types.

In the software development field -- for which I can speak for -- the UNIX base of the new operating system is an awesome and powerful core OS to work with. All the UNIX tools I want are there, the thing is stable as a rock. I develop and build most of my software projects on my Mac for that reason. BUT, despite all that hardcore geeks-dream UNIXy goodness, if you never want to know you're running UNIX you don't have to. The graphical environment in Mac OS X is as easy to use as anything, and after even a few days of using it, it will become apparent that the Apple folks know their stuff. The software they ship with the Mac is top-notch. And the upgrade to the OS they'll be releasing later this year (Mac OS X Tiger) will be awesome!

You can check out some of the features for the upcoming OS at http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger

Sorry, DG... I realized I gave exactly ZERO concrete examples. I always hated Mac users for their ethereal intangible explanations... haha. Okay, one example:

Installing programs on a Windows machine puts files and DLLs all over and modifies registries and config files, blah blah blah... before long, you have crap all over your system gumming things up.

On Mac, your Application is the ICON. That Application goes wherever you put the icon. And i you ever want to uninstall the application, drag the icon to the trash. That easy.

Now, for a more technical explanation of how that works... the "Icon" or launcher or whatever you want to call it is actually under the covers a directory with a ".app" extension. And Apple's developed a standard for these "bundles" that allows all information and files relating to that application to remain in that directory. You can actually browse this directory in the Terminal window, but from the GUI, the whole thing looks like one simple icon. So when you install Microsot Office, for example, the whole thing is stored in /Applications/Microsoft Office.app, where all Office files are stored in the Microsoft Office.app directory, but to the user, Microsoft Office just looks like an icon to click, or drag anywhere they want.

Does that make sense??? That's just one example.

I see, less complexity and subcomponents that essentially do the same thing.
From the business angle most users wont ever realize the difference.
If you design custom enterprise SW it may be important.
I have talked to many users about the solidity of Unix, and god knows Ive personally experienced the endless hiccups in Windows "design by gigantic committee" and patches to fix the endless loose ends and the buried dead ends that are there "just because" But I degress ,it does work most of the time Impressively. And dont forget .net, thats pretty powerful.

By the way my computer plays DVD's and burns DVD and CD's!

chister- i enjoy the new format (minus the border, as cool and funky as it is, i think something different- solid? -might look better)

did you get the pics from the banshee?? thought you might enjoy them. you need to email me someday!

love ya!!!

Yeah, I think when you asked what the deal with Macs was, you were really asking if there's anything Macs can do that PCs can't. No. You can do anything on a PC that you can do on a Mac, and vise versa. There are some applications for Windows you can't run on a Mac, and there are some applications for Macs that you can't run on Windows, but they will all do what you want to get done, in the end. It's just a matter of how to do it.

You can get from point A to B in a Pinto or a BMW 323Ci. It's just a matter of the ride. I can't really explain to you why a BMW is nicer than a Pinto... they both have interiors, steering wheels (depending on the Pinto), tires... I could tell you about the leather seats, the responsive engine, the climate control... but none of those things are MUST HAVES...

Do I NEED Expose window finding? no. Do I need .App files that simplify application handling? no. Do I need seemlessly integrated iLife apps that work in perfect harmony to create DVDs, Movies, manage my photos, buy music online? No... Do I need a system that I never have to defrag, or virus scan, or reload? No. Do I need the hundreds of teeny-tiny features that I stumble across every day that impresses me? No, but...

...I can't imagine NOT having it.

You have planted the seeds of curiosity....intriguing!! A Pinto? is it really that awful? Ive been in a few Pintos..they where CRAP!!!!

I was exaggerating... Windows isn't a Pinto. it's like a Ford Escort. :)

The first car I have recollection of was a brown Pinto station wagon. It was the car my parents had when I was a kid. :)