Thursday, February 12, 2009

Apples, not Oranges...


This blog post is a tribute the Apple, or Macintosh and how they are the superior computer. First some history describing Apple's rise to personal computer greatness.

Macintosh was the first company to produce a personal computer for home use that was easy to use and affordable.
Macintosh was the first to produce an operating system that was not code based, but used a visual interface that was used friendly.
Macintosh developed the use of the modern computer mouse.
Macintosh made considerable increases in the way that laptops were developed.
Macintosh revolutionized the music industry.
Macintosh continues to innovate and personalize technology.

So those are some good things that are noteable. Now it is fair to say that Macintosh is also expenive, cliquey, and sometimes inaccessable. But now the real reason that I love Apple.

This weekend, my girlfriend's iMac computer, fell on the floor. It wasn't working right after that fall. It would take forever to boot up and you wouldn't be able to pull up any of the windows or anything. It seemed that it was doomed. Knowing full well Apple's commitment to high quality, yet expensive repairs, we were both pretty scared. We ended up taking it up to SLC on Monday to take it to the Mac Store and see what it would cost. We waited in line for about an hour and got our appointment with the arranged Mac specialist. They took the computer and ran some diagnostics on it and tried to get it to work. This was semi-effective but didn't solve any problems. The specialist told us that they would have to keep it and run some more tests to try to recover the memory before they replaced the harddrive. I was running up a total in my head. 30$ for an hour or "specialist help". 20$ for a diognostic. 150$ for a new harddrive. And probably at least 50$ for work. She gave us the paper tallying up all of the different things that they were going to do and thier cost and the total, beyond what I believed to be possible was 0$. 0$! There was no total. Now understand that her computer was old. It wasn't under warranty. It was not Apple's fault that it was broken. But yet they still charge her nothing to not only try to fix it, but give her a new harddrive, recover her memory from the old harddrive, and then fix other things that we hadn't even mentioned. I asked if I could bring in my computer, which is 3 1/2 years old, to have a similar thing go on (minus the new harddrive) and they said sure.

Apple is great. If they continue to help their customers in this great way it is no wonder they are one of the most succussful companies out there.

Everybody should buy a Mac. That is all there is to it. But if not, that is cool too. You will just have to pay to have people help you.

Friday, February 6, 2009

New Poll... The Beatles!

So, one of the greatest bands ever will help with this next poll (I love the polls! They are so much fun!)

You will see that I have chosen a few of my favorite Beatles songs. Vote on which one is your favorite. You can vote multiple times on multiple songs. I am embedding YouTube clips that will show the song, but remember, it is the SONG not the VIDEO that is important. Don't let the video sway your vote. Or do, I don't care.

The Beatles rule.








You asked for it...

So, awhile back I posted a new poll about which one was more important; sleep, food, love or pickles. Just so you know, pickles didn't win, though they did beat out food by one vote.

While pickles are fine, especially dill, we know that those other tree are really what is important.

Love.

I constantly find myself in a sort of debate. Love is a huge motivating factor in my life right now. It seems that most of my decisions are based on the promise of love or motivated out of love. I don't have a career yet, but I am trudging through school trying to do my best with the promise that I will be able to do something I love. I am not married, but dedicate most of my time to developing meaningful relationships. I can't save the world and I don't particularly enjoy my development classes (they are really hard) but I feel the need to try and learn humanitarian skills to help people that I feel I love, but don't even know.

What ends up happening is that I put those things that I love before anything else. Food is not prepared, it is scrounged up and eaten quickly. Sleep is postponed and cut early to make more time to spend with things I love. Other responsibilities and opportunities are put on hold just to develop one of these aspects of love.

I am not complaining.

I am just stating that love takes conscious effort.

Barbara De Angelis, who apparently is a P.H.d. in stuff like this, stated, "Love is a choice you make from moment to moment."

Simple, right? Yes and no. It is simple to want to make that choice and to initially but it becomes harder to stand by that choice because of the hard work that is associated with that choice. But I feel that it is always, ALWAYS worth it. Sacrifice food. Sacrifice sleep. Sacrifice time. Sacrifice fear. Sarcrifice youself. It is always worth it. And to tell you the truth, some things are very easy to follow through with. You might also find that instead of taking away some things, it gives you SO much more.

So thanks to all of those people who encourage me to develop more love. You all mean the world to me.

I love you.

(Break into chorus of this great song.)


Monday, February 2, 2009