It Truly Is Time to Flush!

After interminable tirades about Macs, and how much I detest them, I'm finally making the switch. It dawned on me as I was helping work on my parents' slide show, using my brother's computer the other day, that the same frustrations that exist on my Mac exist on others as well. I came home after working on that and the simple act of sending pictures via email seemed to be a task that was Herculean for my PowerBook, and I was ready to throw it through the nearest window.

I'm not sure if I will sell it or not. I think I'd rather use my nephew's shotgun and take pleasure in destroying it.

The final straw is that my iPhone refuses to sync with my APPLE computer. When I've gone to the forums, I've seen this solution: "I went ahead and synced it to my PC with no problems and activated it there." It seems that my PowerBook G4 doesn't have USB 2.2 and rather 1.1. One would think that the tech savvy "geniuses" at Apple would have anticipated that many of their customers would still be using the older version and would have built in the logic for their "brilliant" and "plug and play" computers to figure it out.

Today, I'm fantasizing about the thought of this computer facing a very enjoyable demise at my hands, with a shotgun at my shoulder.

I'll be buying a PC within the next month. And oh, how I would love to take a sledgehammer to this thing!!!! Any frustrations I've ever had with PC's are minuscule in comparison to those with my Mac. Mac irritations are LEGION!

Ebay time?

I really have reached the final straw with this computer, and I'm almost ready to pull the trigger and sell this computer. I've grown to have absolute and utter disgust with my Mac. I think it's time for it to leave my house. It has been years since I've been as angry as I have been this morning at this computer. I'm not kidding. I really had to restrain myself from destroying the thing. I know that's not something you should confess, but I also realize that when we have something that causes us to become so angry, and there's a way to remedy the situation, we should do it.

I've got one more recourse. I'm going to make a list of all of the annoying elements of my Mac, and go to the Apple store and waltz up to the "genius" bar. (I'll be the judge if they're geniuses, thank you very much!) We'll see if they can make this damn computer run common sensically (read: like a PC!).

I find Mac ads laughable. (Get ready for my final Apple diatribe). Despite how they purport to be "plug and play," and the best hardware for artistic endeavors, I have never found this to be true. Plug and play? Hardly!

Here's a perfect example: my HP printer has an interface for photo memory cards. Here's where plug and play comes into play. As soon as the computer senses the memory card, iPhoto loads it's massive elephantine fat-ass of a program, whether you want to or not. I'm part of the 1% that doesn't want iPhoto to load, and Mac, in its hubris doesn't even make it an option for iPhoto NOT to load when you put a photo memory card in. They just think everyone loves iPhoto because the smarmy waifish hipster on the Mac ads says they undoubtedly will. So plug and play? It's only good if you're a smart-ass punk on a TV ad.

Now let's talk about my printer, the very one that can automatically be detected when a photo memory card is installed. Let's say you want to scan a document--what does my computer tell me? "USB is not connected." Hmm...but just a moment ago it transferred my photos. The drivers have all been installed, and what happens with my remarkable Mac is that I end up doing an incantation and series of blind ritual, hoping that with each restart of my Mac, by trying different combinations (e.g., as soon as the computer is on, open the program on my Mac, then turn on the printer, or try again with the printer on, restart the computer, then try to initialize the program from the printer, by pushing the scan button, hoping that by so doing, the computer will be smart enough to determine that the USB is indeed connected to the printer. A little rain dance, hopping on one foot, with the computer cradled in my left arm while I swig a shot of whiskey with my right sometimes seems to help too). You think I'm joking, right? I have found that in order to get my scanner to scan, I usually need to restart my computer several times. Today, I just decided to reinstall the damn drivers and still held my breath...and it took forever for my computer to respond. (But aren't Macs really plug and play?) Bah, Humbug.

And my BIGGEST pet peeve of all, that no Mac person has ever been able to tell me how to change on my computer concerns photos, supposedly Mac's strong point. HAH! I deal with photos, A LOT! Let's say you've taken about ten pictures of the same thing, and as you are in the menu to upload a picture, say to Blogger, when the menu dialog opens up, have you ever noticed that Mac's do not allow you to preview your photo? All you see are names and the jpeg icon! I think iPhoto is designed for touchy-feely people who label every picture, and give each one a little cutesy star rating, or label it with a "theme" so they can make a beautiful, touching boring-as-mud slide show of their latest trip to Disneyland. If you take the time to label every photo you add to your computer, then uploading photos is a simple task. But when you take thousands of photos, no one does that, and since a picture is a VISUAL thing, (and since Macs are such VISUALLY geared computers) one would think that every time you desire to upload a photo to a web page, or attach to an email or (imagine it!), open a photo into PHOTOSHOP!, you'd actually be able to see a preview of the very image you want to open!

Macs don't allow you to do that. Of if they do, not one of the many Mac devotees I know has been able to direct me how to do it. PCs, on the other hand, do it AUTOMATICALLY!

ARGH!

Can you sense the anger and frustration spilling forth from my fingers?

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid Macs.

OK, I feel better.

PS You know what, I'm going to go and try to delete iPhoto, but I bet I can't, since it's bundled into iLife.

Trouble in River City

I was having some computer issues last night, and wasn't sure what was going on, so I decided to restart. That will usually remedy the problem, but it when I rebooted, it never got past the startup page. I figured I'd try it a few more times, but to no avail. I then decided to call Calcutta, aka my brother Steve, who's a big Mac guy.

We used my startup disk, tried several options but no luck. At the end of the call, my brother said that it sounds like the bad news is that I have a hard drive problem. He then asked the obvious question: have I backed things up?

Well, I did about six months ago, but since then, I've done nothing.

There's still a chance that I can get the information that I need off of the computer, and really there are just a few things I'm concerned about. My pictures can't be recaptured, though fortunately anything from before six months ago is on my portable hard drive, but Puerto Rico and anything else since then is kaput. Beyond that, the things that I really want to get back are all the recipes I created for those competitions and the writing I've been doing the past month. I've written well over 30 pages of single spaced stuff, and it would be a real drag to lose that. It was all very much a rough first draft, but I had done a lot of musing and formulating of ideas, so I hope I can retrieve those documents. The pictures, the recipes, and the Book--that's what I really want to get back.

But this is a reminder to everyone: you never know when you'll lose your data, so backup it up today! I think I want to get in the habit of backing up my hard drive at the first of every month. And I think it would be wise to always have a flash drive handy where you can save important documents that are in process and do it everytime you finish working.

I'll keep you posted.

Back in the saddle

I'm in action once again, seeing further evidence of my pit bullish tendencies. Though I have the flavor I want for my cake, and the proportions of ingredients, there are still a few tweaks that I know I can bring to the recipe, and a few more ideas to try to minimize the cracking that's going on, though I am becoming more and more convinced that cracking isn't really a problem after all.

Incidentally, my Mac is doing weird things. It's slower than snot. I've been typing this paragraph now, and the word that just showed up on the screen is "ingredients" from the first sentence. What gives? If this was a PC, I'd be blaming a shareware program or something like that--possibly a virs BwiAa-ove t patg. Yet anothersowhI indtoct aP. nwc wntPCava algeahrks ti edypb. ac-Ius'vwe,o wtrrinyome,'onad.
ehk sstp.Its e huntiaei, tee ere kebree tsostiaat.

yssrhapoutthe Bopher
I o tstodnntptsfsd catcg w beIetb. hIh oo Pizz.

So it took three minutes for the paragraph that begins with "incidentally" to show up on my screen. And as you can see, the computer just couldn't keep up with too much typing. It reached a critical limit beyond which it couldn't continue to comprehend what I had typed, and so what resulted was gibberish comprised of portions of what I wrote.

The "Pizz" in the last line? I said that I probably could go out for pizza and be back before the computer finished processing my typing.

Anyone looking for a good paper weight?

Frustrations that are legion...

iPhoto is the most imbecilic program I've ever encountered in all of my years using computers, and I say that with no hyperbole.

iPhoto is going to be deleted, never to appear on this computer again.