iPhone

I’m writing this on my iPhone, sitting out in the van with the kids while Kile is in the DMV here in Elko trying to take care of a situation that has been brewing for the better part of a year. I’m also hoping that there’s enough of an Edge network signal to post this once I finish.

Cell phone service is criminal out here. Edge is as best you can hope for and I don’t think I’ve had more than three bars worth of signal since we got here. I tried to talk to my parents this morning and the call was dropped no less than 10 times. Whatup, AT&T?? To be fair, the Internet is little better. Though my in laws have wireless DSL, the signal and performance are… spotty. Very frustrating. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m rather glad to gave any signal at all. Having Edge is even better than I expected. But this would definitely be a deal-breaker should we ever consider moving here.

It’s Harry’s birthday today. Nine years old. I don’t think I feel nearly old enough to have a nine year old. We did up a family party last night and he is beyond thrilled with his new iPod Shuffle (which he is now listening to in the “way back” seat). He got some other great gifts too. Only I didn’t take any pictures because I totally forgot and I fail as a mother. Sounds about right.

I saw the big BlogHer announcement this morning. I’m a little sad that the conference is going to be in Chicago this year. Since it is, I don’t think I’ll be able to go. The combined costs of traveling and hotel and conference itself are just too much. We’re going on a big cruise in August and though my parents are pretty much paying for it all, we’ll still need spending money. That doesn’t leave much room for BlogHer. I’m sad because it’ll be the first conference I’ll miss since 2006. And I’ll miss seeing friends and all sorts of other awesome people. So… boo.

Anyhow, we’ll be cooling our heels here for another day and are heading back to Reno tomorrow. And then I’ll have my decrepit laptop back. Yay.

Nope, you’re not seeing things.  My YNTR list is back this week!  And, bonus for you, it includes two weeks of linky goodness. I still maintain that I may not be doing this list every week.  But I will when I can and when it’s not going to cause me an undue amount of grief to put it together.   And, as it would happen, this week the grief has not been caused.  It’s a mellow Saturday morning around these parts, Liam is watching “Ratatouille” on cable and Kile is snoring in his recliner.  All is right with the world.

This first post is something I could relate to.  Should I go Mac and never come back? from Mandajuice is much like a similar post I wrote not that long ago.  And, just like myself, she finds herself wooed by the seductive iPhone and repelled by a crappy PC.  I’ll be interested to see what she picks, especially since I’m 99.9% sure I’m going to get a MacBook when the time comes.

And in the “Long-Awaited” category, we have Ezra from amalah . com.   I literally felt my heart swell when I saw this sweet picture and the details on the birth.  She is officially the mom of two boys!  I can’t wait to see how the weeks and months ahead are for her and her family.  Congratulations, Storchs!

I can DEFINITELY relate to The Hot Fuss™* and Me from temporarily me.  In fact, I may have thought these very words myself on more than one occasion in the last week or so.  Or the last month or so.  Or the last six months or so.  Sometimes, a bad mood just gets ahold of you and you can’t shake it.  And sometimes, your kid wants to be superglued to your side.  And when the two meet?  Well… that’s when you get a post like this.

And I know you’re probably sick of me talking about it already, but Her New Hobby from Confessions of a Pioneer Woman made me cackle a little bit because The Power of the iPhone can grip ANYBODY, even housewives who live out in the country. And the text messages from her daughter were just too darned funny. I think someone likes “Napoleon Dynamite”!

On the flip side, we have My Grandpa: October 5, 1921- October 14, 2008 from Joy Unexpected. This was a touching and sad post about her grandfather who passed away this last week. It’s been a long time since all of my grandparents passed, but I could keenly feel her loss through her words. I hope she finds peace, now that her grandfather has found his. My sympathies to her and her family.

Being a Reno citizen as well, I can appreciate Fall Where? from EmilyPie. I love her summation of the season here in our town, and how schizophrenic they often tend to be. However, I do disagree with her assessment of summer and the need for air conditioning (I am sure I would perish without it). I love winter, always have, always will. But yes. Fall is like a week long around here. I could do with some more fall, to be honest.

This post gets filed under the “ZOMG” category. ZOMG! Twilight Soundtrack Playlist Just Released! from MamaPop shares with us the fantabulous news of the new “Twilight” movie soundtrack. Can you believe I already have some of these songs on my iTunes? BEFORE this list was released? Oh, I’m a hardcore fan, ya’ll. And you can bet I’ll have the rest of these songs when the soundtrack is released. I cannot WAIT to hear the one recorded by Robert Pattinson.

Enough is Enough from Queen of Spain Blog is a post about the turn in tone the political race has taken lately. And I wish I could say in the intervening days since she first posted this that the voices of hate have toned down but I really don’t think they have. I think they may have gotten worse. But I definitely share her feelings and hope that people settle the heck down. And lets find some decency in all of this, please? Aren’t we better than this? Please tell me that we are.

Lastly, we have My Husband is Not My Keeper, also from temporarily me. This spoke to me because I have often had these very same feelings. Being a stay at home mom, and not having any of my own income, I often feel like my voice is dimmed somewhat. I think that’s pretty common. And it’s as much my fault as any one else’s. But all the time, this is an impassioned, important post. You should all read it.

So there we go.  Another week’s list in the hopper.  This should be enough to keep you out of trouble this weekend.  As for me, we have a baby costume to find and a pumpkin to pick out (nope, we don’t have that yet either).  Should be fun!  Happy Weekend, ya’ll.

Yep, I’m doing the list this week.  But I do want to put out the warning that there might be weeks here and there where I don’t do the list.  The last couple of days, for instance, it’s been difficult keeping up with my reader.  It’s always like that when we have company or anything remotely interesting going on.  (Which isn’t that often because we redefine what it means to be hermits.)  Anyhow, without further ado… I present to you this week’s fabulous list…

First, you’ve gotta check out Advice from Mom, Part I from Mighty Girl.  The advice in this list was SPOT ON.  I may print it out, laminate it, and give it to Evie when she turns 18.  Hey.  That’s not a half bad idea.

After last week’s sob-fest, it’s nice to see something GOOD from Loralee.  “And now for something COMPLETELY different…” from loraleeslooneytunes.com was a breath of fresh air and I found myself pumping my fist for her.  I will be cheering her on through this, you can count on that.  She is very deserving of a happy ending (or beginning?), don’t you think?

I Am Perfect, You Are Not - A Failure Of The Green… from The Good Human is a perfect example of how environmentalists can turn regular people off of going green.  And I’d say it goes for other facets of our lives as well.  I’m thinking, in particular, of politics.  I think a lot of Democrats turn off people who feel that they’re being talked down to, made fun of, whatever.  And when it comes to saving the planet, it doesn’t matter if you don’t do EVERYTHING, just as long as you do SOMETHING.  Wouldn’t you agree?

I think the “Best Post of the Week” award (shut up, it just made it up) should go to Maybe This Isn’t My Place to Say… from karensugarpants.com.  This post had me from start to finish, brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat.  I’m a gulible sort, and I didn’t see where she was going with this until the end of the post, which I felt made it that much more powerful.  This post was nothing short of amazing.  READ IT.

Oh Molly, I know (sorta) how you feel.  In How to fall apart with all (some) of the world watching from LOST A SOCK,  she talks about the quagmire she’s sunk into since her baby daughter was born several weeks ago.  It’s not easy.  And I want to club anyone who would dare even make it look like it is.  It’s a day to day struggle.  I want to send her supportive thoughts.  You’re not alone.

Also, if you’re in the mood for some giggles and blogging introspection, read Stats and Man Ponytails from The Bean.  I know what she means when she agonizes over strange and unexplainable differences in stats.  In feeling sometimes tied to the blog because of those stats.  Stats will ruin blogging, I’m positively sure of it.  I hate trying to decifer those maddening dips!

Maybe I’m obsessed with my iPhone, but My Top Ten iPhone Apps from Greeblemonkey is the sort of post I just GOBBLE up these days.  I feel so new to the technology and there are so many “apps” to choose from that I never know which one is going to be the BEST one.  So having a “cheat sheet” to refer to helps like you wouldn’t believe.  And if you don’t have an iPhone, reading this list will make you want to cut off your arm to get one! (Okay, maybe not.  But it sure sounded good, didn’t it?)

And that’s it for this week’s installment.  I hope everyone has fine and productive weekends.  I will be back at some point with pictures and stories from yesterday’s day trip.  Despite appearances, it did NOT involve alcohol (too bad!).  Has anyone guessed where we went?  (I didn’t really make it a secret, for the record.)

I’ve known for years that if you were a “cool kid”, you had a Mac.  Most specificially (and most recently), this is a MacBook.  Nay, a MacBook PRO.  Shoot, I remember going to BlogHer and seeing entire tables of laptops with the little glowing apple blazing on the back.  EVERYONE had that damned laptop, it seemed.  Except me and my deficient Dell.  But, you know, whatever.  I’ve always BEEN a PC girl, I’ll always BE a PC girl.  You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, after all, and I am rather attatched to my right-click mouse button.

But, well, I’m starting to wonder if Apple doesn’t maybe have something going for them.  After all, it’s not like PC’s have been overly-kind to me in recent times.  And the Mac’s promise to not let me down is mighty tempting.  I suppose the number one event that caused me to even CONSIDER getting a Mac was getting my iPhone last month.

humina, humina…

I love my iPhone.  My iPhone has changed my life.  And I’m not trying to make any of you out there who want an iPhone and can’t or don’t have one for one reason or another feel bad, but I can’t lie.  When I first found out I won one, I was excited, but I really had no idea what an iPhone was all about.  All I knew is what I’d heard from others.  I figured I would use it as much as I used my current phone (a Motorola Razr), perhaps a little more.  But really, what could the difference be?  OH THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. The iPhone is far more like a mini-computer than a PHONE (I often forget that it can make and receive calls, to be honest) and I use it ALL THE TIME.  I love it passionately.

But I have to admit that it has been sort of a gateway drug.  We’ve been back to the Apple Store a couple times since then.  To deal with iPod related issues for Kile, to browse accessories, etc and so on.  And… I like the Apple Store.  It’s a fabulous place to be.  It’s almost always full of people.  There are plenty of computers, phones, iPods and whatnot to play on, books to flip through…  It’s intoxicating.

If I’m going to get a Mac, it’s got to be a laptop.  And if I’m going to get a Mac laptop, it’s got to be a MacBook Pro.  Now, I have to admit, if I thought I knew very little about the iPhone, I know absolutely nothing about Mac computers.  I’ve worked on them, briefly, a few times here and there over the years.  Enough to know that I was annoyed by some of their features.  I can recall being perturbed by the lack of a right-click mouse button.  I also remember being a little more than annoyed at how you had to ask the computer to spit out your disk instead of pressing a button on the exterior, like you could on a PC.  Plus, for a very long time, there were programs that I considered essential that would not run on a Mac.  And then there was the whole Windows issue.  I knew how Windows worked.  Comparatively, the Mac OS was a foreign language.

I was old and stuck in my ways.

But I’m trying to get away from that philosophy.  I’ve been trying to learn more about how Macs work, how to do basic funtions on them (I know how to “right-click” now!) and have learned that you can even operate Windows on a Mac.  So what’s stopping me?

Well… for one thing, they’re kinda pricey.  But I’m in the market for a new laptop in the next several months anyhow.  We may be able to get a deal on a MacBook Pro.  It’s a little more than I was hoping to spend and, sadly, MacBook’s don’t come in PINK.  But… I think I might have to go for it.  Because I feel like it’s now or never.  (That’s probably a little dramatic but I don’t care.)

So what do you all think?  How many of you have Macs?  Have you always been a Mac person?  Or, if you are a former PC person, how was the transition?  Your feedback is much appreciated!