Adios Powermac; bonjour iMac…

I can’t believe it. I finally turned loose of my trusty Powermac G5 that I bought in September 2003. It seems like only yesterday that I was videoing the FedEx gal bringing it up my front walk. I was pretty excited, as the prior link shows. Anyway, it was my first major purchase as I started Noble Design, and it was hot off the new G5 assembly line at Apple. I sold it on Ebay this week, choosing to replace it with an iMac G5 with a 20″ screen. The Powermac is incredible, and you can do almost unlimited upgrades with it, which I never do. So I opted for an iMac. The new iMacs are simply amazing! If you’re in the market for a new computer and want a bargain, look no further!

BusinessWeek calls the iMac “the best consumer desktop around.” Get one for yourself. If you want to save several hundred dollars, let me help you find a great one on Ebay. I buy and sell used Macs. I know what to look for and give you great tech support and Mac tutoring.

And as the title to this entry shows, using a Mac will make your fluent in at least two other languages….

Kudos to Word…

Lindy Word has become a blogger, and I take full credit for it. (Even though I had nothing to do with it… But still she knows me, and I’m a blogger, and so… I get credit since no one else has yet claimed it..) You’ve GOT to read her initial post and then this post about taking Christ out of Christmas. I tend to agree with her. I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

Shameless blog promotion…

If you’re here today because of my shamless blog promotion emails I send out, please make sure you fill in the poll. And if you got one, I’d appreciate you driving some traffic this way by forwarding the blog to all the suckers, I mean, friends in your address books.

Don’t forget the “Tip Trough” on the right hand column. You can drop your change in there via Paypal and encourage this humble author to keep blogging. Who knows, maybe some bored trillionaire will drop by the blog and drop a wad of bills into the trough!? Or not.

Another blog to check out…
Also, I really encourage you, as you’re adding blogs to your daily/weekly read list, to check out RJ Martino’s blog. He’s a friend in Little Rock that is amazingly talented with web design and has his hands into a dozen other things that are tech-related and extremely intriguing. I know you’ll enjoy reading around his blog.

Just “cuzz” I can…

I wanted to give my 2 faithful readers a heads up! Ben Coulter’s new CD comes out on December 18. It’s called “Cuzz, Vol. 1″ which, if I know Ben means that there will be at least 5 called “Cuzz.” I think he wants to make as many of these by this title as there are Rocky sequels… ;)

But check out his website, and order a CD. He is an extremely talented up-and-coming country talent. It’s not that he’s incredibly talented (he is), but it’s that he’s real. The $10 is worth it. Buy it, enjoy it, and support Ben.

Just cuzz you can.

Featured on the Washington Post site…

Yep. That’s my little blog on the Washington Post site!!! At least it was there at this very moment!

Seems like the Post’s site uses Technorati, and since I linked to an article there, my blog is now featured.

If you’re a beginning blogger, a good way to drive more traffic to your site is to actively post comments on other blogs, link to good articles you find, and give as much credit to others as you possibly can. They’ll be grateful, and generally will visit your site. Every now and then you might even get a significant recommendation as Todd Dailey did on his blog. He posted a brief article about how you could clean your iPod with ordinary “Brasso” (only $3.85 at Wal-Mart) rather than spending a bunch on branded iPod cremes. (I’ve tried it, and it works!)

Anyway, after such a post, he had more than 800,000 hits from about 40,000 unique IP addresses!!!! Wow!

So link, post, comment, and blog away. Anything consumer-minded you think of that might help others or save them money, go for it! You’ll be surprised how far your words and influence might go!

New phone number…

OK, I’ve changed my cell phone number and my ways. If you need to call me, please do so. I guarantee an answer! 501-340-3896.

Please leave a message…

It culminated the other day when my wife told me I had a bad reputation.

My mom had said something rather accusatorially the other day as well.

It goes something like this… I don’t answer my cell phone very often. People call me… a lot. They know I have it with me. But I don’t answer it. So, my lack of picking up the phone apparently gives me a bad reputation.

Let me respond.

These people who are calling me AREN’T paying my cell phone bill. I’ve yet to receive a supplement cell check from any of them.

Another thing: I’m scatter-brained. Very. It’s a curse. If I am focused on something and get sidetracked, it’s very possible that I will forget what I was originally doing and not get back to it till later. Many times, when my cell rings, I’m in the middle of something, even if it’s thinking about something important. This same curse causes me to often wander around the church or my home looking for a coffee cup, pen, wallet, you name it. Anything I’ve had with me, set down for a moment, and then been interrupted.

So anyway… what was I talking about?

Oh yeah. Anyway, my cell phone is mine. I pay the bill. It’s for my convenience, not anyone else’s. Since I have this nifty blog, how about all of you just leave me messages here via the comment form? Wouldn’t THAT be great?

With the advent of cell phones, everybody wants you available to them on their timetable, at that moment, for their convenience. I’m sorry, but I don’t even like talking on the phone anyway, much less to be “on call” all the time.

So here’s an idea… leave a comment on my blog if you want me to contact you in some way.

Or you can try to call my cell phone…

Lot and his tents…

OK, this may be the funniest church blooper ever….
Download sermon.wmv

1000 Hits! Ooooo… Aaaahhh…

OK, so. Today, my little blog has had 1000 hits! (Of course, 500 of those are probably me editing and checking things, but hey, I think that’s kind of cool.

Thanks friends, and folks, for stopping by to check things out.

You also need to check out this pic. It’s hysterical!! Long live Detention Fighters! Thanks to Justin for calling my attention to it!

? And last but not least…
Is Your Printer Spying on You?
Uh, if this isn’t kinda cool/weird/scary… I don’t know what is.

Zathura vs. Walk the Line: A Guide for Big Screen Choices

Carolyn and I went to see Zathura tonight at the Rave theater in Little Rock, We’ve been up here the last few days for Thanksgiving. What a great holiday! I wanted to comment on Zathura, since the way it’s being marketed will cause many to decide NOT to see it. The trailers are relatively tame, and the hype around it is almost non-existent.

However, Zathura is GREAT. Thoroughly entertaining, fun, and an all-around great movie. Even Caro liked it! (and that’s saying a bunch!) I would encourage you to make it one of your holiday movies.

Big Screen Ticket vs. Home Screen Rental
While Walk the Line and others are getting attention and hype, I have a different perspective as to what kind of movie warrants my $7.50. If a movie is a great movie (like Walk the Line) but does not require the big screen to enjoy it, I will normally wait for it to come out on DVD. We don’t have an endless supply of $7.50 bankrolls lying around, so decisions must be made around the Noble house about which movies we attend and which we purposefully rent.

Therefore, Walk the Line is a renter for us. The compelling story will not be in any way diminished by watching it on my 27″ Sanyo with surround sound. However, Zathura, Harry Potter, Narnia, and others of grand scale beg to be seen and experienced on the big screen.

That’s my “screening process” for deciding which movies deserve a big screen ticket.

Agree/disagree?

iGot an iPod!

Holy cow… I had ordered an iPod for our church, cause I saw that with the addition of a Griffin iTalk, you could record stuff. We’ve been recording our services via minidisc, but it’s a pain to import that real time into my Mac G5, and then convert it to mp3, edit and burn to CD. I figured I could simply drag the mp3 file from the iPod to my Mac and then burn away…

So I got the iPod in today (got it off Ebay…I’m an addict, I confess), and plugged it up to my Powerbook. Wow. And wow. Immediately, I see in iTunes the iPod and so I begin to drag music over to it. Seamless. Delightful. NO problems. Aaaaaaaah. I remember all over again why I’m a Mac user… No driver installation or issues.

Anyway, excuse me while I go wipe the drool of computing delight from the corners of my mouth. I then see an option (still in iTunes) to use the iPod to sync my contacts and calendar? No way. I check it… and voila… the iPod says it’s updating contacts and calendar. 45 seconds later! Bodda-bing-bodda-booom. My little iPod has my tunes, my contacts, and my calendar!

Then it came with this thing called “iTrip” which you plug into the top and supposedly you can broadcast it to your FM radio. I go test it out on the radio in the kitchen, tuning it to 88.5. Suddenly, crystal clear Christ Tomlin bursts out. I scream for Carolyn, the kids, the neighbors, and our hamster to “C’MERE!”

I believe this will suddenly be MINE… ALL MINE… (Wicked laugh). Yup. Got to buy it for myself now… Can I afford it? Nope. Dangit. But can I live without it now? Nope. Do I absolutely need it? Nope. But it’s just too cool, and I’m such a tech geek. Wow.

(Note to other impulse buyers and those struggling to get out of debt…. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!)

Gotta go and do the iTunes/iPod dance in my living room.

11:54 PM