Archive for May, 2008

Perfect Day- Sunday May 25th 2008

May 28, 2008

Sunday was a perfect day for me. The weather in NW New Jersey was beautiful, low 70s, fairly clear sky. I took my morning walk with my Nikon D50 in hand & shot a few photos around my neighborhood. I was reminiscing about the good ole days in the seventies when I used to hang out at Flanders Valley Airport. I would sit in the grass and watch cows & the local Cessnas, Pipers, and other small aircraft takeoff/land. I would also on occasion sit in the pilot’s lounge to hear the tall stories and general aviation banter of the locals. This experience later led to me work in aviation electronics for 13 years.

So I decided to head out to Sky Manor Airport near Pittstown to spend a similar day to watch airplanes fly & taxi. My husband managed to find a good bench to sit on-they have picnic tables and a nice little restaurant at the field. Sunday brunch is good at the airport but we had already eaten. So I grabbed my Nikon & went out talk to the pilots on the tarmac. I met a lot of nice folks, one with a nice Cessna 150, another with a Navy T-28, and a gentleman who used to fly a Mooney but retired after his partners bowed out. The T-28 made quite a show with its loud radial engine and made a nice takeoff. I even saw a Piper Cub liftoff and land from the grass near a barn at the other end of the field. Now that’s the way it should be!

Erika

Day 8 since my husband left the hospital

May 24, 2008

It’s been eight days now since my husband left the hospital after having bypass surgery. He’s doing quite well, though he’s still weak from the whole ordeal.

On the day of discharge the surgeon & duty nurse unloaded a boatload of prescriptions for me to track & administer. Plus a daily insulin shot as well as a few glucose tests with the requisite needle pokes.

He has a nice scar down his chest, little scars around his belly, two scars on his donor leg, and his old gallbladder scar from its removal many years ago.

Medicine today seems so old fashioned to me- whatever happened to all that cool doctor stuff in Star Trek? No dermal regenerators, bio-beds, handheld medical scanners, cures for age-old maladies. I loved Dr. McCoy’s comment in the fourth movie while in a hospital elevator in San Franscisco- “what is this? the Dark-Ages? Drilling holes in his head…”

Erika

Old Mac Upgrades Too Pricey

May 22, 2008

I was just looking at upgrades for my old G4 tower. It’s still too pricey! I saw an AGP ATI 9800 new for $200, that’s crazy, especially on such an old card a few generations back in technology. On my PC it wouldn’t make any sense to buy- my AGP GeForce 7600 is light years past a 9800 in capabilities and only cost me about 100 USD. I’ll stick to my GeForce 2mx for now. It cost me $30 new and replaced the pokey ATI Rage128 that came with my Mac.

I saw a few used Macs like Quicksilver & Mirror Drive Door models. They’re not that much of a jump over my G4 except in CPU speed. And going for 400-600 USD. Jeez! What are the sellers smokin’? I wouldn’t spend that much for a used 500Mhz-1Ghz Pentium 3 or 4. I paid around $450 for G4 4 years ago!

I thought about the new Intel based models. Problem is my software is for PowerPC, including Adobe CS1 & Final Cut (AGP Mac only), and all my other little apps. I know what emulation is like from the move to PPC after 68xxx processors. Not so hot! So the newer Intel macs really aren’t for me. After all- on our retirement budget a large computer purchase is out, so I keep using my old Mac.

My dad picked up a new AMD dual processor cheapo PC for me for around $500 US last year- it works great, even with Vista Home Premium. I did some tweaking, added a little more memory and got it working the way I like it. It has PCIe slots for video & expansion, something the much pricier iMac doesn’t even have. Nearest Mac wise would be a lower tier MacPro tower at prices I don’t even want know about.

That said, my G4 does OK with Tiger, and for a bit of writing, emailing, & surfing I do on it all is well here :-)

Erika

Another excitin’ day

May 22, 2008

Hi all!

I’m just a housewife, no rugrats-no pain. My hubby just had a bypass operation last week & is finally home again. I needed something to keep me busy, so I figured why not do some blogging.

I love macs, and have an oldy G4 tower(Gigbit enet circa 2000) with a GeForce 2MX that still runs my olde copy of Adobe Creative Suite 1, Studio MX 1_1, and my new Mariner apps. I also use PCs for flightsim & dabblin in 3d stuff. I started using macs at a job with a publishing company around 1990. Things have certainly changed in MacLand since that time! Of course my G4 is barely up to the iMac models of today, but it’s paid for and still works fine, even with OSX Tiger.

I just bought Mariner Write and boxed versions of StoryMill & MacJournal. I really don’t use Word enough on my PC to justify buying a new copy for my Mac, it’s overkill. So Mariner Write seems to fit my needs. AppleWorks is sort of dead now, and Pages is little too like InDesign which I already have and probably runs best on newer Macs.

-Erika

 

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May 21, 2008

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