Sam Carr’s Dog Speaks

Everyone that knows me also knows that I love my Macintosh computers. Recently, I’ve been in the process of buying my parents a computer system in order to pull them out of their Windoze rut. I know they will be totally blown away by the new found freedom and happiness that this will bring them.

It all started with my old beige 266MHz G3 desktop unit. I haven’t even touched this computer for years and so began fixing it up with extra RAM, a bigger hard drive, and all the other components necessary for contemporary usage. While browsing around ebaY for peripherals and enhancements to make my parents’ conversion an even more pleasurable one, I just happened to accidentally purchase a 266MHz Macintosh G3 All-In-One. I just threw down the starting bid (which the installed hard drive was well worth) and ended up getting my parents a serious upgrade. This is an inconceivably good computer for the price at which they are going these days. It is basically a beige iMac with 3 PCI slots. It will run up to OS X.2.8 natively and OS X.3.7 (the newest version to date) with XPostFacto, which is a small boot program to run OS X on ‘Old World’ (ie. ‘beige’) Macs.

I then stumbled upon a ridiculously low price for a 333MHz Beige G3 MidTower. The fever was setting in. I couldn’t help it, and my parents already own a bigger monitor than the AIO’s, anyhow. In most respects, it is the same as the AIO, but has no monitor built in, is a bit faster, will accept more RAM and has room for more internal drives.

While setting this up, it dawned on me that this was the last of the ‘Old World’ Macs ever made. If I could just… yep, there it was. In all it’s shining glory (and for a price I just could NOT pass up), there was a ‘Blue and White’ 350MHz G3 on ebaY that would run OS X.3.7 natively and had firewire, USB and all the goodies that I would like my parents to have in their first Macintosh computer built right in. I just received this today and will be setting it up as soon as I finish this post and log off of here.

So, less than $200 later (for all 3!!!), I find myself with a wonderful machine for my parents, an All-In-One computer for the kitchen (an extremely glorified recipe book/ egg timer/ pantry inventory and grocery list/ DVD player), and a home network router/ web server which will allow my Dual 533MHz G4 to be devoted to making music and my 500MHz G3 Pizmo laptop to be devoted to web development and browsing. Of course, I will still browse the web and make music on every one of them… hehe. I believe it is in my best interest to sign off of here now and get this thing packaged up and out the door BEFORE signing on to ebaY again. I feel the need for a nice cold drink to bring this fever down. Salut!

As a side note, but in no way insignificant, I just found a small freeware/donationware app for OS X (which also works in *nix) yesterday that has totally changed my workflow for the better! It is called Desktop Manager and allows multiple desktops without multiple monitors. It has a very small footprint and is absolutely the best productivity enhancing application I have found for the Macintosh to date. To find out more and try it out for yourself, get over to VersionTracker and search for ‘Desktop Manager’ in the OSX section. There are a lot of good reviews and ratings that will convince you to try it out if MHO hasn’t.

A lot has transpired since I last wrote here. I am still not back to work (for pay, anyways), but I’ve been getting a tonne of stuff done here at home. I’ve lined two future wildflower beds with mums, boulders and red cedar mulch in the back yard. This will give an awesome effect once the bluegrass sod goes down. I’m hoping to get to that in the next week. The raised flower beds along the back fence are done (built, planted and mulched), as well as the flower beds in the main body of the front yard. I will post pix when I’m done. This yard will be great for my honey and I to relax in when the plants grow up.

I’ve also built a small web site for a couple of friends. They are starting a lawn service called Lawn Ninjas. I registered and built www.lawnninjas.com for them and hosted it on my computer at home. It’s actually just a web page (singular), but may grow as they do. I will probably use it to test new web design ideas in a simple environment. Maybe I’ll surprise them with an admin section where they can store all of their customer info into a database and keep track of their finances. Any comments on things I can add to this site would be appreciated. They just wanted a single ‘business card’ page, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a full fledged site (whether necessary or not).

I will try to keep this blog going, but sleep calls now. Maybe I should try to write earlier in the day when my mind is fresher.

Central Illinois Artists Project is a site I am currently working on for Central Illinois artists. I do so because I am one… hehe. I suppose it will mainly be for original musical artists at first, as that is my primary interest and it seems a lot more feasible in the short term of things to keep it simple. Anyhoot, I just wanted to share that. There’s still a tonne of work to be done on it, but at least it’s coming together now. I’ve been working on this for over a year (in my ’spare’ time… heh), and I’ve owned the domain for about two. I hope to have at least the artists able to build their own band page within a week. After that, I will let a few of the locals know it’s usable. They should be able to share their concert schedules, pictures, music clips and whatnot.

If my writing seems a bit erratic, I believe it’s because I only got an hour of sleep last night. I’ve been off work for a couple of weeks with a bad back, and the sleep schedule has gone pitooueyyy.