Fragments From Floyd

◊ Country Living: It has its downside. After a young possum failed to move all day in spite of occasional benign torment from the dog, we decided it was ill, possibly infectious and apparently determined to die in place over days. We shortened that period. And of course this has nothing at all to do with PC vs Mac but I thought I’d throw it in.

◊ iPhoto: Should I remove it? It seems to have reproduced ALL of my images (vs making aliases of them) and then won’t let me get directly to them through iPhoto. And yet Spotlight finds those images but the ones in dated folders (the way I’ve been organizing for years) are invisible. This is a real disappointment.

◊ Word Processor: For the first time, I’ve needed to send formatted text to someone and resorted instead to cutting and pasting into an email since I don’t as yet have a designated word processor other the trial of Scrivener I’m using.  (And I wasn’t able to save as pdf which, having the full version of Acrobat 8, is another problem to deal with.) Today I’ll be at Best Buy to get a USB cable for the “free” Epson printer. Should I get iWorks?

◊ Victory: Find out just now how to set default for visible columns in folder windows AND how to make the folder click open a NEW window so I can have two side by side for files transfer. What a small thing, but how very limiting when you don’t know how to make it happen! I’m frankly disappointed with Mac’s file structure navigation. I’m wondering if there are not add-ons that will let a person set up Explorer-like double panes. Sheesh.

◊ Grayscale: I can’t find a way to control my Canon Pixma 5000 printer to make it print grayscale. Should I load the CD that came with the printer even though Leopard seems to be able to control it at least mostly? But I’m sure the CD is for PC. Hmmm.

◊ PhotoShop: When I open PS or InDesign, I see the controls around a “workspace” that is my background desktop image or whatever programs were open in it–versus the clean white empty space I’m used to. How to I change that? It’s gotta be DopeSlap simple. So go ahead. Give me a slap.

So. I may be coming out of the thicket of early confusion in this mega-move to Mac. I managed to actually get some work off this morning–a 500 word piece for Evince, the arts and entertainment  flyer down in the Danville area. I already had a piece on the “nature gap” from the purported future book and an accompanying image (that I converted to BW). Wish I could have dressed it up a bit. Got to get that word processor decision worked out.

I am generally a mild-mannered sort of guy and tolerant of a high level of ignorance, indifference and incompetence. I expect it, in fact.

Cost cutting by quality compromise, planned obsolescence and crappy workmanship, too, I find not surprising.

So why did I go ballistic? Because second only to shipping a printer-fax-copier without a power cord, sending one without a USB cable–there is no excuse, though to the shareholders of Epson, there are reasons.

Free! The printer was FREE with my MacPro. AFTER filling out a maddeningly obfuscating rebate form and NOW to have to drive more than 30 miles to get a fricking cable so I can scan the Adobe agreement…I’m sorry, I am not a happy consumer.

The model is the CFX 7400. No USB cable. Just so you’ll know. And several levels of Epson customer so-called support knows I am not one bit happy with their CHEAPNESS.

Now the whole world knows. And I feel better.

Sigh. Shutting things down as normal last night, and the machine hung. The little disk spun and spun on the screen and nothing happened. Kill it at the switch.

This morning, the system seems to operate normally except that the desktop image only appears behind the menu bar at the top of the screen (and also just before shutdown) while the entire real estate of the desktop otherwise is a glaring unpleasing white.

I haven’t a clue how to go about problem solving on this machine and OS yet. And worse, because the Western Digital My Book Studio 750GB hard drive is not playing nice (hear that, potential buyers?) I have no Time Machine backup of what was once a pristine system.

Meanwhile, my productivity chart for the past week looks like the Dow Jones. I had intended this morning to begin the search in the image archives for a possible book cover (no, there isn’t actually a book yet, only drafty parts). I’ll let you know if I come up with something and probably as always ask for your votes.

Sorry to be a whiner, and thanks so much to the Mac crowd that has been kind to offer encouragement, links, and ideas. Keep’em coming!

Yesterday I discovered the beauty of Spaces and that has helped my productivity considerably. I think back of how many blind alleys and stumbles it took me to become proficient with the PC, and by comparison, I’ve raced through years of learning on the Mac in the less than one week I’ve had it.

Doesn’t mean I can’t still crash from time to time. Gonna see if my buddy Doug can make this HD work on his machine (and if not, send it back under warranty) and get my machine Time Machined ASAP and that will soothe a lot of worries.

If there are any regular readers (are any among them truly regular?) you might remember that on more than one occasion, our arboreally-named yellow lab Tsuga, has exhibited the most neurotic behavior on hearing computer tones.

He especially dislikes the DINK of instant messages. And now with the new Mac, there are odd noises coming both from the speakers (which I cannot for the life of me remember to turn off each time after listening to YouTube or such) as well as from the sound card in the CPU.

His paranoia has reached new levels with this to the point that for the first time in his 4.5 years here, he has run frantically up the forbidden stairs in an attempt to escape the dreaded tiny sound. And this is not okay. We need to maintain our relatively dog-hair-free zone on the second floor, and besides, he goes UP with much more grace than he comes DOWN the steps, and lord please, no hip dysplasia.

So here’s the plan: I have a yogurt cup full of dog biscuit pieces on my desk. And every time I fail to prevent the dreaded noise and he begins his agitated panting dance around the room, he gets a treat.

With a great amount of luck and dogged (ha ha) persistence, can I condition my subject to approach rather than to avoid?

Or will he eventually train me to shut off all “sounds” in program preferences; keep the speakers off; and never let the yogurt cup run dry?

Don powdered wig. Motion to chamber musicians to begin. Take one stop forward, one step back, bow and flourish. Cuss and spit.

So the disk drive tray opens. Finally. Adobe Creative Suite 3 is loaded. Finally. The moment of truth: download and install the Mac version of Nikon Raw plugin and prepare to achieve warp speed. Tilt.

It asks me to verify my qualified upgrade path. Fine. I got all that in place with a call directly to Adobe before I made my decision to order two weeks ago. They found my registration numbers and it was all cool, requiring only that I pony up the $400 for the upgrade.

But today online, my CS2 reg numbers are not recognized. Okay. I have a month to make it right. Way things are going, I hope that’s going to be long enough.

But I did manage to get a raw image downsampled to save-for-web routine blog size, though getting to the blogimage folder will take some streamlining. Baby steps.

Now at this point, on my PC any day last week, I’d simply have clicked on the upload to Flickr widget and have you a clickable larger image. But not today. Soon. Maybe.

There’s this accidental damage to the international internet nervous system which was bad enough.

But THREE cables severed in a few days?

(CNN) — An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, the third loss of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days.

Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.

Ships have been dispatched to repair two undersea cables damaged on Wednesday off Egypt.

Okay. This post also is my first with an image since getting the Mac on Tuesday. I miss SnagIt. Is there an app to resize, apply borders, drop shadow etc without opening up PhotoShop?

Oh did I mention: without using the Mac keyboard, I can’t open my Superdrive bay to insert the Photoshop installation disks–the cost of my non-Mac ergonomic keyboard? Surely there’s a solution. Tra-la.

Addendum 11 a.m: Just in case some other poor NOOB soul has a similar exasperation for a superdrive that won’t open on a Mac Pro, I finally found this tip: hold down the mouse key during a APPLE/RESTART. That seems to have put the “smart” drive back on the map. Macs are intuitive, are they? Well, not entirely.

Yeah, I know. But I did. I fixed it. By breaking it.

Work Flow, a process, when it happens, to covet and protect. And when it’s gone, you’re an object at rest, a deer in the headlights, an inert and ineffectual lump.

I know it will come again, but after years at the PC of doing the same thing the same way, my fingers long for the familiar trails, overlooks, shortcuts and the exhilaration of moving quickly towards a destination. Ecco Pro; Notetab Pro; One Note; Active Words; Note_Zilla; Firefox.

I’m running a couple of the PC programs on the Mac in a virtual machine under Parallels, but it is sorta like going around the house every time you want to scratch your nose. You can get there, but…

It will just take sorting out. And more RAM. And lots of patience, being tolerant of mistakes, taking rabbit trails that lead no where, coming upon a sudden precipice, realizing I’m lost and taking three times longer to get from A to B than I used to.

It will mean taking the time to follow all those great links to what seemed like pertinent how-to’s before I had the machine sitting here. Now, I need to do my homework. I have only started opening all the doors into the Mac OS. Most of what I’m seeing is really impressive. Some is disappointing so far–Mac Mail, iCal, iPhoto–seem yawners so far. I’d be willing to be convinced otherwise.

Force Quit and hit and hold the button on the CPU–I’ve had to resort to both. Memory problem, I’m thinking.

The Western Digital MyBook Studio 750GB hard drive, I find out now, has been causing problems with Time Machine. (Fortunately it has a 5 yr warranty so if it’s fubar-ed, it can be replaced. If it’s just unfortunately incompatible with the OS, well that is just tough and there went $250. And my CD drive isn’t doing exactly right. Oy.

Today, install Creative Suite 3. And get back to work! And who knows–with the ice storm we had overnight, there might be some interesting pix, and I’ll get to upload and work directly with images on the Mac for the first time. Lost of “first times” ahead. Mostly, I’m enjoying the journey. I knew I’d lose it for a while, but the flow will return.

I’m cooking in someone else’s kitchen this morning. Where are those darned hot pad holders anyway? I am so disoriented.

Fred and his old PC: a stuntman like a bat out of hell standing on top of a speeding Corvette, steering deftly through traffic, maneuvering the wheel through the sun roof with his feet, cap on backwards, a wireless mouse in one hand and a beer in the other. YeeHaa!

Fred and his Mac on Day One: A cowered little man clutching the wheel with both white-knuckled fists, barely able to see over the dashboard (or is it the dock?) and unable to see out the Windows anymore. He can’t change gears and is lost on the back roads in an unfamiliar neighborhood of a foreign country moving at 3 mph and without a clue where he is headed or how to get back where he started.

I’ve installed Firefox and Google Earth, letting the machine stick stuff where it will. Both programs ended up in “Devices” apparently, and show up as such on the desktop. Where do they go and can I just drag them where they belong. (And does this account for why I had such a hard time finding FFox when I booted up this morning?)

I’m writing this post in Google Docs since NoteTabPro is PC and I’m not messing with Parallels and XP just yet.

Set up was painless and it was sheer joy to see the monitor boot up for the first time about 2 pm yesterday. It is very, very fast (including the internet DSL for which the slower PC was a bottleneck apparently.) I was disappointed to find firefox for mac lacks some of my favorite extensions and that the bookmarks toolbar shows text only.

I opened up Mail and gave it my gmail account. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but it seems if I can use Mail as a front end for gmail, it will let me search and find and add notes and such through SPotlight. Another thing to explore.

Today I have to try to get docs and music and such off the external hard drive and drag them to the right places in my Home directory.

I’ve bored you long enough. I’m about to see if I can get this thing up to 5 mph. I’m not exactly burning rubber in all four gears yet. But time’ll come.

I’m really very sorry that accounting for my daily computer hygiene is about as interesting as describing trimming the toenails. But the PC to Mac transition is what consumes me in the recent past and especially in the near future, and this daily slice of life is what has filled these pages in Spring 2002, so why quit now?

UPS shows the Mac (tower, monitor, and InDesign upgrade software) in Knoxville since Saturday morning. Just sitting there. Still scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Drumming fingers….

Just to prove I’m not totally geekly, I did attend the Roanoke Writers Conference on Saturday and found it worth giving up a day of my so-called life. I met Cara Modisett for the first time (after numerous emails)–editor of Blue Ridge Country Magazine, and we tentatively arranged for lunch and the grand tour of Floyd’s recent changes.

Also I met fellow radio-essayist Janice Jacquith who lead a session on–guess what?–doing radio essays. She inspired me (once I get used to the mac-ish way of doing things) to put more of my stuff online in audio format AND to get some stuff back to WVTF who stopped their regular Friday essays some months back but do them now on an irregular and unpredictable schedule.

I spent some time chatting with Gene Marrano, who among many other freelance involvements hosts “Studio Virginia” on the ROA NPR station and also writes for the Star-Sentinel.

I met Darrell Laurent, owner of the Writers Bridge who told me I looked just like he thought I would (is that a good thing?).

First and last sessions of the day were on blogging and on internet research, conducted by Keith Ferrell, former editor of Omni Magazine; we’d met a couple of times at coffeehouse readings in Rocky Mount. He still makes his living from writing, and has been significantly impacted by the shift away from printed books (like Britannica for which he once wrote a lot.) So there. I do get out some.

Oh, and I traded chain saws last week, so after more than 25 years of owning Stihl, I now will be hefting a somewhat smaller and easier-to-start Echo 400. I haven’t had much chance to use it, what with the ice and snow. And given my recent woodlot mishap, I’m not as carefree traipsing off into the woods alone. But next year’s woodpile isn’t where it needs to be, so I’ll have to pull myself away from the Mac long enough to tend to creature comforts and necessities. Hey, this new hardware and OS is a necessity too!

I have three writing deadlines for the end of this week and they are all done, just have to send them in. I anticipated the crunch and finished one on “the story of stuff” for the FLoyd Press, one on Geothermal Energy and another on the PC-Mac Conversion Experience for the Star-Sentinel. That gets me through til the middle of February when I’ll have to come up with other topics–these, perhaps the first assignments done on the Mac.

Speaking of which, I’m wondering what to do about “office” programs. I didn’t get iWork from MacMall with the hardware purchase. I’m thinking I don’t need much in the way of spreadsheet and there are online and open source versions I could use. I don’t need Powerpoint so much either. But I DO and WILL need a word processor capable of saving in *.doc format. I’m looking seriously at SCRIVENER  with an eye toward doing longer pieces in the future. I like the outline function too since that is the way my brain works.

So I’m clucking around here getting the nursery ready for the new baby, alien life form that it will be. I’m so obsessive I even vacuumed and dusted off my desk! Dear me, fatherhood will make a fella just a little wacky.

Generally, I’m a cautious person, especially when it comes to doing something where the stakes are high, my base of knowledge is low AND most particularly when there’s a good bit of expense involved. All three conditions exist with my current critical point, and yet I’ve decided (with some waffling still) to make the transition to MAC sooner rather than later–in weeks rather than months.

I’ll still have short term and long term projects underway that are computer critical, but the current PC desktop will be upstairs in Ann’s room if I have to revert to my old ways of doing things.

If I think about this excessively, I’ll wait too long and fret too much and this thing that should make me technologically satisfied will end up making me miserable. So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and make quick work of it, and start the process towards purchase this week. But I wish I had more answers. Pardon me while I ruminate…(and please feel free to offer rants, opinions and donations!)

Current PC programs I’d like to not have to replace:

• Academic version of Adobe Creative Suite (esp Photoshop CS2 and InDesign CS2)…I’m wondering if I will be able to load them on the MAC, since this seems to be a one-machine license. And is there an upgrade path or will I need to make a new purchase (>$1500) of this software for the Mac? Yikes!
• MS OneNote 2007 purchased a year ago. I’m using it to create a rough draft of the next book. I don’t find any Mac equivalents and would probably want to run it on the Intel Mac Processor.

Additional PC Software I’d like to run on Mac until or unless I find Mac replacements (and I’m open to suggestions if you know any!)

• Ecco Pro 4
• NoteTab Pro
• Notezilla
• Dragon Naturally Speaking 9

Which Virtual machine software: Parallels or VM Fusion?

I’ll need to buy a fresh copy of XP. Which version?

I assume the current Comtrend ADSL2 modem and D-link DI-624 router on my desk will be plug and play wit the Mac. Right or wrong? And I purchased Network Magic a couple of years ago; it really has worked well with the home network. Should I inactivate it and let the Mac do its work finding other computers (PC desktop and IBM laptop) on the home wireless ystem?

MacPro comes with 2Gb RAM. Buy 4 Gb more from 3rd party (cheaper)?

I won’t spring for MS Office replacement. Will I be happy with OpenOffice? And should I get a .mac account the first year?

What downloads will I want the first week? Top of the list is Quicksilver–sounds like it is a good match for my style of navigation.

Do I get a second internal 750Gb hard drive ($$$) or use the WD750 external for backup, even though so far it has not done well connected to the PC for the two weeks I’ve had it?

What kinds of problems will I have the first day/week that I haven’t even anticipated yet and might avoid?

And I assume I’ll be wise to get the 3 year extended warranty. Yet more $$$. Just do it.

Computer Pros in Roanoke: here I come.