Its been awhile, but I finally spent some time with edit pad and css files this weekend. After my crazy misadventures with my computer on Saturday (yes, I was able to repair my drive, w00t!), I spent a good chunk of Sunday working on a new website for the Southeast Chapter, MMBA. We decided that blog format might be a good way to get information out easily and WordPress does such a good job of also integrating static pages so we wanted to give it a shot.
I’d gotten Movable Type down, I’d learned which files to edit for what, and what all the different tags meant. I even was able to edit the look in feel in dreamweaver/HTML using a nice little utility that I’d found someplace. But alas, MovableType is a resource hog and a comment spam attractor, so we needed something better. WordPress is pretty slick, seems to be more configurable than MT was too. It just took me a good chunk of time yesterday to try and figure it all out. I’m getting there tho – did some work on the logo and picked a good color scheme. Hopefully I’ll have it ready to publish by the end of the week (crosses fingers!)
It felt good to get the fingers back on the keyboard. I still need to work on the ergonomics of my desktop situation (HUGE crt monitor that’s just sitting too high on my desk, causing me to ‘look up’ and strain my neck) .. but its much better than it has been.
Before my HD took a crap on Saturday, I’d been thinking about upgrading my PC, its been so long. I figured I could spend a few hundred clams and upgrade the motherboard, cpu and memory. But, if I’m going through all of that trouble, I really want a new video card and a DVD burner too. Also on the radar is replacing the giant monitor with a couple of sleek LCD monitors. I started to wonder if I really wanted to put that much effort into another windows box.
I’ve been contimplating the switch for some time (well over a year now). Windows feels like a dungeon sometimes. Every time I move my mouse there’s more gloom. Its time for a change. There have been great improvements in Linux these days, but not enough for me to want to use it as a daily driver. And really, macs are pretty.
So, now the plan is to replace my bad hard drive before it implodes. After that, I save my pennies. Nick has to finish his new bike project and I have to pay for my new toy , so its going to be some time before I get enough pennies. But that’s ok. I can manage. I know that a new Apple Mac-Mini is in my future, hopefully sometime before labor day. I might splurge for the ~800 dollar model, but I’d settle for the low end version too. I figure, if I LOVE it (and I think I will), I’ll eventually want to upgrade to a ‘real’ mac. When I do that, the mini would make a really nice addition to our entertainment/media center. If I HATE it (which I hope I don’t), then it still makes a nice addtion to the entertainment/media center, and I’ll then just upgrade my windows box. Its kind of a win-win situation, really.
I never thought I’d really be writing a post like this. I really never saw myself as a Mac person. But then I realized, there’s only one mouse button because there only NEEDS to be one mouse button. Its clean, its simple, and its highly configurable now that its built on unix. The good toys I want are available for the Mac, and most aren’t even available for Windows. I love iTunes, I love my iPod, and Mac’s are pretty.
