What has happened to my regular blogging??????

The past month has kept me running and running and running.

It all started with an unexpected trip to the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Las Vegas NV in mid-April. It was quickly followed by the MacMania 10 cruise to Bermuda and then family events began. In the past week we have celebrated the college graduation of our daughter Nicole, the 16th birthday of our granddaughter Kati, and had a visit from Bob and Lisa LeVitus. Add to that a week of caring for three of our grandsons and our daughter, Monique and you can bet that I have been busy. Oh, on top of it all, I have been graced with my almost annual May sinus infection.

I have also been doing a lot of working on and learning about Apple’s new iPad. Look for coming posts on a variety of topics.

--Pat

2010

Is that two thousand ten or twenty-ten? Whatever, it doesn’t really matter, but as we start a new decade, its always fun to reflect on the past ten years.

For me, the past decade has brought many changes. I went from living in a small house filled with two teenagers (and my husband) to living in a big house (with my husband) and a daughter who is back home for a year as she recuperates from her fall from a horse and prepares for her wedding in the summer.

I went from doing Macintosh consulting and teaching while driving miles and miles on the Washington DC beltway to working from home, doing much of the same work.

In 2000 I was carrying a 12” iBook G3 500 MHz PPC and working on a Performa 6500 at home.

Today I (sometimes) carry a 17” MacBook Pro 2.93 Intel Core 2 Duo and I have an iMac 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo sitting on my desk, mainly to act as link for my networked hard drives.



I went from a wireless newtork that ran on Graphite AirPort running 802.11b to a Time Capsule running 802.11n.



I went from a Handspring Visor Prism and a nameless Verizon cell phone while I awaited the release of the Springboard cell phone module to an iPhone 3GS.

I am sure you can tell similar stories. Times and our personal technology devices have certainly changed! The days ahead will bring even more changes and Steve Jobs and his crew at Apple, Inc. prepare to rock our world with new product announcements on January 27.

Welcome to the new year and come back often to learn more about your Mac, iPhone and other devices from Apple and the companies that support them.

--Pat

MacMousecalls is my place to write about Apple and Macintosh related issues. Because it is also associated with my work with Bob LeVitus, I determined that it is not a place where I would post a lot of personal items.

However, the past six weeks have caused me to reconsider!

Just as the school year was beginning, my oldest daughter and son-in-law made a trip to California to settle his mother's affairs. She had homes in California and Hawaii and had been diagnosed with pacreatic cancer. Our three older grandchildren moved in for a three-week visit which included home-schooling them, driving them to piano, technical music, choir, ballet, soccer, art lessons and Nutcracker practice. Keeping up with the Dr. Mac consulting business, cooking, laundry, housework and all of their activities kept me very busy.

Upon my daughter's return I began to unwind and get things back in order when I got a call from the hospital. My youngest daughter (who and moved home at the end of summer to prepare for her wedding) had been thrown from a horse. She had broken her pelvis in three places and she broke three ribs.

After a long weekend in the hospital, she came home and has slowly been recovering. Because we have a basement level that was outfitted for my husband's deceased parents who were handicapped, we had all the things she would be needing--an elevator, roll-in shower, wheelchair ramps and even an electric scooter, our daughter came home instead of going to a rehab hospital. After still more equipment, including a wheelchair, walker and electric bed were delivered, I began my duties helping our daughter complete the necessary daily tasks.

It has been three weeks. She can now go about 50 feet in the walker, but still uses the wheelchair or scooter for most movement. She can take care of her personal needs, and can fix a quick snack, but I still need to do many things for her. She will be on crutches for 3-4 months, but can't start using them until her ribs heal, so it has been a slow process.

So now, you know why there have been almost no blog posts. There just hasn't been time! Things are improving and I have many topics to cover, so hopefully I will do a lot more writing in the coming days.

-- Pat

At about this time yesterday morning I was delighted when I heard a knock on my door and saw the FedEx truck in front of my home.



My new 17” MacBook Pro had arrived! It was time to begin my new adventure. Click here to read more...

Wow! it has ben a long time since I posted anything on MacMousecalls. Let’s see if I can come up with a few excuses.

• My dog died -- nope, that won’t work -- I don’t have a dog.
• The cat ate my homework -- no cat and no homework, but lots of home work!
• I went on a great cruise -- that’s not till the end of October!

Actually, I went out to California to spend a week with my husband who was on a long assignment for work. We had a great time, visited family and old friends and did a little sight-seeing…
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It's always fun to be a part of a new project!

Chuck Joiner ( MacNotables, MacVoices, The MUG Center, etc.) has just started a new podcast, MacJury, and I was honored to be a guest on the first show. Along with several of the other members of MacLevelTen, we discussed lots of topics. Most notable were BlueRay, Apple TV and Twitter.
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I have been blogging here at MacMousecalls for several months now. The process has been far from smooth.

I began the blog using WordPress with encouragement from several of my fellow members of the MacLevelTen media group. I also secured an account at DreamHost to have a home for it. DreamHost is one of the best web hosts out there for WordPress bloggers, but I am not using WordPress right now.

This is far from my first web page. In fact, I helped set up a web site for my children's elementary school back in 1992, and ours was one of the first school web sites out there. In those days I used a text editor and wrote all my own tags. Since the purpose of the web site was to enable the students and teachers to make their own web pages, I used the Mac OS Notepad to hold the common tags used in writing HTML. The kids and teachers would copy and paste the tags into SimpleText and then fill in the content in the middle.
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