azurite | Lady Ballz! (Reply)

From Aria's Ink Secret Stalker... I finally got the lady ballz to actually put it as my desktop. I must say, when I was fiddling around with Finder (sometimes upgrades are a bitch), it was fun grinning from ear to ear like that.

Man, I wish I were in S.F. right now. I read the Macworld Expo update, and... gawd, I am so stoked for 2008. Not like I'm going to dash out and buy an iPhone (not until it's no longer attached to AT&T without hacks involved) or a MacBook Air (...this laptop is new enough for me. Until it breaks, I'm using it. Plus, I happen to like having an optical drive and a huge hard drive...), but DAMN. Apple just... kicks ass. Have I mentioned lately? You really oughta switch.

I personally think if I could have gotten a single measly day there and been back here... it would have been worth it, just for Steve Jobs' keynote speech. Sure, he flubbed a few times, but it sounded SO fun. And a play-by-play just isn't quite the same as being there, in the flesh. (Yes, the play-by-play had to suffice; it made me jealous) So I have a goal for 2009 (besides graduating in the Spring, that is): Go to Macworld Expo 2009. Network, network! (Who knows, maybe I could impress someone important and get a job at Macworld? Tee-hee.)

What else I'm excited about: the Time Capsule, the companion hardware to Leopard's Time Machine. It basically acts as the AirPort Base Station I spent $179 on, but it comes with a hard drive, supports 802.11n Gigabit Ethernet. A 500 GB (the smallest version available) is $299. I think I paid $250 for my 120 GB MyBook Pro external hard drive, so in terms of pennies per GB, it's very much worth it, in my mind. For die-hard downloaders, there's a 1 TB (!!!!!) version for $200 more. It ships out in February... around the same time as the new student-licensed version of Office 2008:mac, which I've been wanting, because Office 2004 on the Mac is kind of a bitch. Plus, I want more templates than Pages can offer. I didn't realize until today, when I had to make a flyer, that Word is really better than Pages for that. I hate still being Microsoft's bitch in any respect... but with all the years gone by, they have made a powerhouse of a word processor.

What I'm dreaming of: it would kick ass if more companies (including the ones that make $9.99 cheap games for Best Buy, Target, and the like) got on board with Cider to make games Mac-compatible. With Cider, there's only one source tree to manage (from what I read), so it's not like there's a whole overhaul involved. Basically, you take your game and wrap it in something that's friendly to Macs. Nothing changes about the game, the interface, etc. Of course, Cider has its limitations, and since it's not for end-users, it's not like I can just download something and all of a sudden be playing Doom again (*sigh* I miss killing Imps! And NO, I don't want Doom 3! >_< I like my pixellated pigs, thank-you-very-much). But I'd love to be able to play Riddle of the Sphinx, Pharaoh/Cleopatra, and similar Egypt-puzzle games (my favorite) again without going into Parallels. In reality, Parallels has felt like a waste of money to me, because... well, what the hell was I using Windows for? I hardly ever go into it. Blah. I hope there's an update that gets my games working again (in the meantime).

What I should be doing: the

30kisses update. I've already got the T-Z stuff from

a_white_rain, though I have to sort through it all to put it in the right order-- by fandom. Today's the first day when my sleep schedule's semi-normal (and my computer hasn't been overheated), so I'm going to get it done-- especially since I said I would do it by yesterday. I'll also have to combine that with Phase Five of the Claims List Purge-- but as for the actual completion of the Tags Removal and putting the dead claims into the Memories, I'll need help. Mod Squad, you still around?

What I'm testing the waters with: Scrivener, a... humungo writing program JUST FOR MACS (eat that, Windows biznatches!).

dqbunny, you might like this one. If you try it too, we can compare notes. :D I'd also like to try MarsEdit2, a blog publisher. I use xJournal now, and have Phoenix as a backup, but frankly, one of them is always lacking SOMETHING. I wonder if MarsEdit would make a difference. I already know it's compatible with LJ; the question is if it supports all those tiny little features that aren't necessarily blog-platform-cross-compatible (e.g. stuff you'll only see on LJ and its off-shoots, not other blogging platforms like Blogger, etc.) For some reason, I'd get my panties in a wad if I couldn't change security settings or screen comments by default. I'm still kind of PO'd that xJournal doesn't support Location (okay, my location hasn't changed in the past two weeks, but still).

Anywho, to work, to work!