The other day, I went to BevMo with James to help him pickup alcohol for a party.
At checkout, the nice lady at the register says, “Wow, it looks like you’re throwing a party.”
Is there any way to buy a large amount of alcohol without looking like a bunch of college guys with generic alcoholic tastes, or is it inevitable with a low budget?
James muses that the small selection of alcohol he bought makes that look obvious.
I don’t like hand writing as much as typing simply because I’m a slow writer. The faster I write, the less legible my words become.
It’s incredibly easy to get going with a MacBook Air (Oct 2010), especially since it wakes up from sleep so quickly.
You can type the program name after pressing the Windows key.
Once you’re done writing, Control + S to save your document, then Alt + F4 to close the program.
Which programs do I use to write? The following are essentially free simple text editing programs, designed with minimal features so you can focus on writing. If you like any of them, please donate to the developers.
I save these small text files to a dedicated folder within Dropbox[1. Affiliate link to Dropbox. "For every friend who joins and installs Dropbox, we'll give you 500 MB and your friend 250MB of bonus space (up to a limit of 16 GB)!"] only for text files, with a specific prefix to help me find it later. (e.g. BP means blog post in “BP – Pronto writing in six steps.txt”.)
Why not use Microsoft Word, Apple iWork Pages, or OpenOffice.org Writer? If you’re only working with plain text, you don’t need the extra features and bloat.
If you don’t know the HTML tags for post formatting, copy your text[2. Select All for: (Windows) Ctrl+A; (Mac OS X) Command+A], paste it[3. Paste for: (Windows) Ctrl+V; (Mac OS X) Command+V] into your blog post, then format and/or add links accordingly.
I can’t wait to finish the quarter with my last final exam (Microeconomics).
The one-week break before the next quarter, I’m really tempted to be like Peter from Office Space and do nothing. I have a backlog of TV episodes from the past several months which I’d love to watch. I’d also get plenty of sleep.
That would be too easy.
I’ve neglected the cleanliness of my desk, which has a physical inbox stuffed four inches high. (Funny enough, I keep my digital inbox processed to zero most of the time.)
I need to purge. I have so many unused things items.
I would love to learn HTML and CSS beyond simple tinkering, then use the Headway theme for WordPress[1. Thanks to Matt Mullenweg for generously buying it for me.] here at All Narfed Up.
My good friend, Javier, has dove into learning HTML and CSS this past week or so. Next, he wants to learn MySQL and Ruby on Rails. His excitement is inspiring, and another driving force for me desire to jump back in again.
How about my backlog of photos to process?
I’m also spending some time with my girlfriend since she’s on vacation for a few days. Fortunately, she planned some of her vacation days to coincide with my week break between quarters. 
It’s easy to write all of this. Unfortunately, I need to “ship” if I truly want a sense of accomplishment. I wrote several months ago that I wanted to get my desk cleaned up.
I’ll have time to process neglected photos.
I won’t have an excuse this time.
P.S. I realize it sounds weird that I’m looking forward to doing stuff during my break.
As soon as I ordered my MacBook Air, I quickly went to WaterField Designs. While I could’ve bought a case from Incase, Etsy, or Timbuk2, I chose a WaterField Designs SleeveCase[1. Horizontal, Lead Indium, add flap, no strap or Piggyback pouch.] for $52.
Several years ago, when I used a bulky Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, I also bought a SleeveCase from WaterField. I liked it’s durability, design, and simple elegance. I didn’t look anywhere else when I ordered my MacBook Air.
Even though it’s a bit more expensive, high quality means it’ll last for a long time.
Inside my WaterField SleeveCase and “Jack Pack” messenger bag, I feel confident my MacBook Air will be protected from bumps and scratches.
After much consideration, I finally bought a MacBook Air. It’s my first Mac.
I chose the 11-inch model with a 1.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of memory, and 64 GB of SSD flash storage.
I almost bought my Mac from MacMall. But, when I got to the payment step, the math wasn’t correct. The MacBook Air, USB ethernet adapter[1. I bought the USB ethernet adapter just in case.], shipping, and tax didn’t add up to the estimated subtotal (which was six dollars more).
Next, I stumbled onto Oregon-based PowerMax. Their site was visually much more pleasant. After over an hour of reading through their company information about pages, warranty information, and plenty of good feedback, I made my purchase.
Another bonus: I saved on sales tax and opted for free shipping.
After two days of processing and six days in transit, it finally arrived. Thanks PowerMax!
By the way, I finally heard back from MacMall. It took four business days (six days total). While I explicitly stated I did not want to order over the phone, the MacMall Account Executive replied:
If you call my extension I will be able to place the order for you with the correct price.
Wow. No explanation about the math error. That’s a shame.
Opening the box was an elegant experience. I wasn’t rushing. I couldn’t help but snap a few photos.
I’ve been following the directions and suggestions from “How to Switch to the Mac” by Tao of Mac. To minimize any botched accounts, creating a standard user after creating the first Administrator user was stated several times in the article. Once I got that out of the way, and skimmed through the booklet, I was ready to get going.
I updated from Mac OS X 10.6.5 to 10.6.6, plus a slew of other updates, totaling 529 MB. That took about 40 minutes. After rebooting my Mac, an iDVD 7.1.1 Update (36 MB) also needed to be installed.
Another security measure for working at public WiFi hotspots is to configure PPTP VPN to connect to my DD-WRT router at home. (See DD-WRT PPTP Server Configuration for Mac OS X. I needed to force encryption on my router. I should probably update my router firmware, then use OpenVPN.)
I’ve installed the following:
The boot and wake speeds are ridiculously fast:
With Google Chrome, OpenOffice.org, Bean, Stickies, iCal, and Activity Monitor open, my system is using 1.66 GB of memory, leaving 2.34 GB free. I would be usually running Thunderbird, too, and possibly iTunes. The best part: the system feels incredibly snappy. (I don’t think it’s just cool and new to me. Honest!)
Easter Egg: If you’re on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), try holding Shift while clicking a stack or folder in your Dock for some slow, smooth opening action.
I wanted a MacBook Air since it was first released January 29, 2008. With the switch to SSD, it was even more tempting. I don’t need a lot of storage space this laptop won’t be my primary computer.
With a few textbooks, my messenger bag was already heavy. I didn’t want to carry a separate bag for my laptop, nor did I want to lug around one huge bag.
Furthermore, I’m not necessarily biased toward PC or Mac. I see strengths in both. While you can get a PC for much less than a MacBook Air with similar or better specs, it’s not all about specs. It’s a beautiful feeling to put my laptop to sleep in a couple seconds or less, then to jump back into my work much later without missing a beat.
After reading Marco Arment’s thoughts on the 2010 MacBook Air, then trying the 11” MacBook Air at the Apple Store, I felt pretty confident that sacrificing screen size wouldn’t affect my usage. I love that it has a full-size keyboard.
So far, I’m extremely happy with it. I write, read (Google Reader or Instapaper), and check email. Speed isn’t a problem. Even right now, I’m typing this blog post from Bean while relaxing on my couch. The screen brightness is set at “4” and I can see everything on my screen pretty comfortably.
As I get accustomed to Mac OS X, you’ll probably start seeing related posts in the near future, so I’m stoked for another layer of diversity here.
If you have any articles for new Mac users, recommended software, or other usage tips, please leave them in the comments.
