Just Sayin'...

June 17th, 2011: Mishap of Epic Proportions. For those of you not interested in linking to that post so you understand what I'm talking about, here's the synopsis, along with a photo for evidence purposes:

I went to Trader Joe's. I dropped my iPhone. The screen cracked. Slightly. :o|

Earlier this week, just barely over one year later. June 27th, 2012:

I went to Trader Joe's. I dropped my iPhone. The screen cracked. Slightlyish. :o/

Obviously I cannot be trusted with the combination of Trader Joe's, an iPhone and a parking lot.

Grrrrrrrr!!!!!

That is all.

How's This for a Post?

So here's my post for today:

Chase bumped my laptop onto the garage floor this morning, thus rendering my hard drive a worthless chunk of metal and what-not. My new hard drive is being overnighted and shall be installed moments after its arrival by yours truly (hard drive replacement #2 for my beloved 4 year old MacBook).

Dumb, idiotic shoulda-known-better lessons for the day: Don't wait a month in between Time Machine backups, and don't leave your MacBook on a kid's chair that sits less than a foot from the ground with a 20-month-old within its reach and not think that (A) he'll knock it over because he's a boy and that's what he does or (B) it won't destroy the hard drive falling such a short distance onto a concrete floor.

That is all.


Posted from my iPhone (obviously)

Finally!

I purchased my first Apple computer, a MacBook, in May 2007 and have loved every single day with it. I was a bit apprehensive at first to make the big switch from a PC to Mac, but it truly was the easiest adjustment and by far the best decision I've made technology-wise in my life! I'm not a crazed Apple lunatic, though... just want to make that clear. However, I have been pining for an iPhone pretty much since day 1 when they first appeared on the market. Unfortunately, we've been unhappily-loyal Verizon customers for years although I have hopelessly tried to convince hubs to ditch Verizon for our friends at AT&T so I can enjoy the pleasure of owning an iPhone. Up until yesterday, it was a tough battle with a very bleak outcome.

Recently I discovered that we are eligible for a butt-kickin' discount on AT&T service through hubs' employer. Whaa? Seriously?! The ironic part is that we also have a discount on our Verizon service through his employer, which we've been taking advantage of for years! So I was quite excited and pleased to find out that this same discount is available to us at AT&T. So I did a comparison -- apples to apples (no pun intended) and get this! It turns out a new contract with AT&T (including an iPhone for yours truly) will actually cost LESS than our current contract with Verizon. Where has this information been all my life?!?!

SO... I am now more than overjoyed to say that I am now the proud owner of my very own iPhone 3GS! Yep! We finally did it! I shall forever remember Friday, September 4th as the day I finally purchased an iPhone. The past few days have been ahhhmazing, to say the least! It's ridiculous how EASY everything is with this thing! Texting, pictures, web browsing, emailing, you name it, it's easier with an iPhone. My poor darling hubs has to suffer with a Sony Ericsson slider phone, and you should see how long texting takes on that bad boy. I hope for his sake that practice makes perfect!

But in the meantime, I'm enjoying every second of my new iPhone ownership! Woot!!!

The Good & The Bad

It was Tuesday evening. Approximately 7:28 PM. I had just finished a lovely dinner with hubs, LO and Mona (LO's grandma/my mom). I sat down at the desk to look something up online, but my precious MacBook wasn't responding.

Slight panic.

I couldn't force quit any of the programs that weren't responding. I listened closely and heard a not-ever-good sound of the hard drive clicking.

Serious panic.

That's disastrous. Coming from the PC world, I immediately recognized that sound as it seemed to happen to PCs quite often. I had never experienced such a sound on my nearly 21-month-old MacBook.

I had to do the ol' hold-down-the-power-button-til-it-gives-up-and-turns-off approach.

I gave it a second to chill out.

I pressed the power button again to turn it on.

It seemed lost. It wasn't sure what to do. The hard drive kept clicking and all I got was a gray screen.

Then a little file folder appeared in the center of the screen with a question mark in it.

This can't be good.

I call dear ol' AppleCare support, am quickly transferred to a Apple technician, who, after walking me through a few different steps, was able to confirm my worst fear: the hard drive was in fact DEAD.

I could have panicked like a crazy fool at this point, but I smiled at my lovely 1 Terabyte external hard drive, running Time Machine (Apple's wondrous back-up software), and knew full well that none of my precious data would be lost.

But of course, before I could restore my data, I needed to have my hard drive replaced. Luckily, there is an Apple-certified repair place located a short 20-minute drive away. It also just so happens that the assistant manager there is a very good friend of mine. We'll leave it at that.

SO... I call the store, which we'll refer to as the Apple Store, even though this store is--from my understanding (only because I've never been to a genuine Apple Store)--not even close to being an official, genuine, state-of-the-art Apple Store. I happened to speak with my good friend, shared my bad news, and decided I would bring my MacBook in the very next morning.

So the next morning arrives. LO and I find a wonderful parking spot just outside the Apple Store. I get her loaded up in her stroller and head inside.

I can't find the store.

Seriously.

I look around, check the posted directory thingy, but no Apple Store.

I see a big poster with a Mac on it, so I know I'm in the right place. Just gotta find it.

I managed to recall my friend telling me the store was located on the 2nd floor, so we hopped in the elevator and managed to stumble upon said Apple Store.

I drop off my lifeline to the outside world (you know, my MacBook) and am shocked to hear it might be Monday before it's ready. Keep in mind it's currently Wednesday morning. Apparently Monday was a "worst case scenario." Alrighty then.

Wednesday afternoon, around 5:30 PM, I get a call from the Apple Store. They confirmed the hard drive failed, said they would order a new one, which will be sent priority overnight (arriving Thursday morning), and my MacBook should be ready for pick-up late Thursday afternoon.

Whew!!!

By this time, I've gone almost a full 24 hours with no Internet access. Seriously people. I started twitching by about hour 6. It sucked. But the end was in sight!

So I called the Apple Store on Thursday to verify the hard drive came in and we were still on schedule. They couldn't tell me. Apparently the sales folks didn't have any updates from the repair folks. Lovely.

I called back several hours later. Still no update. They give me the number to the repair folks.

Nope. No hard drive. Guess it'll come in tomorrow (Friday) morning they tell me.

Fabulous.

I wait until around 10AM Friday morning--after priority overnight shipments should have been delivered--and call the store. There's still no update in their system.

Seriously??

The manager gave me the number to the repair folks. I call.

Nope. The hard drive did NOT arrive as expected. So where was it? The repair guy couldn't tell me. Said he didn't have access to the tracking information for the package.

Ummmm, okay...? Is there any way you can get the tracking information?

He says he guesses he can call Apple.

Super.

Great idea.

He calls me back 20 minutes later and says it's supposedly out on the truck for delivery. Argh. Apparently once it's delivered to the store, a courier person takes the packages over to the repair site, which is about a 10 minute drive from the store.

I'm getting fed up.

Friday afternoon I have hubs call the store. I can't deal with it much more before I'll go crazy. He calls the store and they tell him the hard drive was delivered around 2:30 PM on Friday afternoon. The kicker was that the courier guy left around 4:00 PM to run packages over the repair guys, and left my hard drive at the store.

Are you kidding me?!

Does it really have to be this hard?!

The store didn't make any effort or attempt to rectify the issues. Granted, it may have been the delivery company's fault for taking 2-1/2 days to deliver a priority overnight package. I dunno. But the Apple Store made no effort to follow up on the delivery or do anything to accept fault for not sending the hard drive to the repair folks when it arrived. I'm telling you, hubs was telling them HE would go to the store, pick up my hard drive, and TAKE IT over to the repair guys.

He ended up talking with a repair guy who said he'd stop by the store Saturday morning to pick up the hard drive on his way to the repair place so the laptop could be ready to be picked up Saturday afternoon.

Day 4.

Four days without my MacBook.

Four days to replace a single hard drive.

This is NOT rocket science, people.

Apparently someone was supposed to pick up the repaired equipment from the repair guys Saturday afternoon, take them to the Apple Store, and then I would receive a phone call informing me my laptop was ready to be picked up.

Hubs wasn't going to wait for a call.

On Saturday, he got in the car at 2:30 PM and headed downtown. He was ready and willing to pace impatiently at the Apple Store until my laptop arrived.

After he left, I decided to call the store just to get an update and to see exactly how long my patient husband would be patiently waiting.

Surprise!!!

Ya, my laptop was already at the store and ready to be picked up.

I'm sorry, where was my phone call informing me of this?!!?

OMG.

I was at my wits' end with these folks. This entire process was an absolute NIGHTMARE. I mean, I could have expected better from PC repair folks. THAT'S how bad this experience was.

Painful.

The icing on the cake was that when I opened up my MacBook, it was Absolutely. Filthy.

We're talking dust everywhere, smears on the screen, and a little dab of what (I hope) was chocolate smooshed outside the keyboard and onto the border surrounding the screen.

Gag.

(Side note: Before I took it in for repair, I cleaned the crap (not literally) out of my machine, as I would've been SO embarrassed to submit a filthy machine for repair. I'm of the old-school mindset that says "return it in better condition than you found it.")

Now, you're wondering where the "Good" is in all of this, right?

Well, after hubs brought my beloved MacBook home, I hooked it up to my lovely 1TB external hard drive, selected my Time Machine backup, and in less than 45 minutes, my MacBook was restored to its previous glory. As in, exactly where I left off on Tuesday evening when it crashed. And all it took was 2 or 3 clicks of the mouse.

Apple MacBook? LOVE IT!

My experience with the Apple Store? Wouldn't recommend them to my worst enemy.

My apologies to my dear friend who works as an assistant manager at said store. Luckily, he wasn't one of the people I had to deal with in the aforementioned ordeal.

Gawsh!

I'm totally disappointed to announce that my Macbook hard drive called it quits Tuesday evening. I'm writing this post on my husband's Lonovo ThinkPad laptop. I hate it. But that's not the point of this post. I just wanted to share my sadness with my one reader out there. Yes, you. My one reader.

Anywho, it'll be late Friday evening at the very earliest that I'll be able to pick up my laptop. The whole "dropping it off at the repair place" story is going to be quite a post. I'll write that one when I have a few minutes of time to really give it the attention it deserves! I'm hopeful the pick-up process will be much less painful.

I'll keep ya posted.

((sigh))

I Could Live Without It, But Wouldn't Want To!

A trash can? Really?

I know what you're thinking... There's no way this blogger is in her right mind to be posting about a stinkin' (pun intended) TRASH CAN?!

But alas, it's true.

Goodness! This is one of those things that you don't know you really need until after you use it the first time. We've suffered for years with an old white plastic trash can in our kitchen, complete with the little white lid that you had to lift up each time you needed to throw something away. Since I love to cook, I'd been getting so tired of having to touch the trash can and re-wash my hands each time I had to throw something away.

I searched online and read reviews all over the place on a variety of different trash cans. Until I finally found this baby! This new trash can was my Christmas present to myself! Seriously!!

I anxiously awaited it's scheduled arrival at my home. I busted this baby out of the packaging, barely glanced at the instructions, and had it "up and running" in minutes. Let me tell you--It. Is. A-Mazing.

The size is perfect. The finish is perfect (even though we don't have any stainless appliances--it still matches our neutral white kitchen just fine). The operation is FLAWLESS. It sits in a high-traffic entrance area in our kitchen and does NOT automatically open erroneously. Without a doubt, this is the PERFECT trash can for just about anybody. If you love techie gadgets, this is it! If you're a germaphobe, this is it! Even if you're wanting the perfect gift for your 80-year-old Grandma, this is it!

You won't be disappointed!

Disclaimer: I've owned this trash can for 9 days. I guess it's quite possible it will self-destruct in a month or so, or I'll have to call for a replacement part and get the run-around from customer service (that's the trend these days, anyway), or who knows what else. But the past 9 days have been sheer bliss in our household!!!

Data-Minded

This is a totally random post, but recently I've been trying to motivate myself to back up the data on my MacBook. It's really a quite simple process, but it requires me getting off my lazy butt to take my laptop 15 feet away from the couch and set it on the desk, connect it to the external hard drive, and run the Backup program (or TimeMachine, depending on my mood). Anywho, I went ahead and backed up my precious pictures, videos, iTunes library, etc. and got to thinking: What would happen if our house (heaven forbid) were to be destroyed by a fire or hurricane? What would happen to the treasured memories we've accumulated over the past 16 months of our beautiful little one? I immediately decided I needed a back-up back-up plan.

I thought burning my data to a DVD and placing it in our fireproof safe would be the best option... until I realized it would take a good 5 or 6 DVDs just to store my 23 GB iPhoto library (pics of LO). Wow! That didn't even include all the other data I wanted to back up. I quickly realized I needed another option. I called my friendly Mac genius/guru and he suggested I purchase another external hard drive, which I could then store in my safe. Fabulous!

I shopped around and found 250 GB external hard drives for about $80 bucks. Not bad, but I wasn't willing to jump on it. Boy am I glad I didn't! My Mac friend/guru emailed me this link, which is a lovely little article announcing that newegg.com is selling 1 TERABYTE (i.e. 1,000 GB!) external hard drives for $99.99! Absolutely unbelievable! The regular price is $150! Check it out for yourself!
Needless to say, I purchased one for myself, and convinced my mom to buy one, too! It's too good a deal to pass up. So, if you've been data-minded lately and are in need of a solution for backing up your precious memories, photos, video, music, etc., consider this offer. I'm not sure how long it will be on sale (i.e. $25 instant savings plus $20 mail-in rebate to equal $99.99), so snatch it up soon if you need to!

USA! USA! USA!

How fun is it to watch the Olympics? Hubs and I had the realization during the opening ceremony Friday night that this was "our first Olympics!" We started dating and were married in 2005, so this is the first Olympics we've experienced together. What a fun thing!

We both enjoy watching the swimming, diving and gymnastics stuff. Not so much the track n' field or outdoors-ie stuff. Watching that men's relay 4x100m swimming last night was amazing! I thought there was NO WAY team USA would pull off a win for the gold. It was SO amazing to watch it happen!


On a completely unrelated note... How many of you are active FaceBook users? I signed up last week and have found about 30 friends I know. I'm just not sure I see what the big deal is. I guess part of it is that hubs is a bit overprotective when it comes to the information we (in other words, "I") share about us on the Internet (afraid of freaky stalker-type people), so I don't plan to share photos or any other kind of personal information. But the little applications and walls and things just don't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe it's also because I'm already plugged in to Twitter? Maybe because I share photos with friends and family via email and .Me web galleries? I dunno. Just can't tell what the big fuss is. Oh, well.

Staying Connected

Okay, I just have to vent for a minute. I do NOT like my ISP. You know, Internet Service Provider. Unfortunately where we live, we have only ONE option for high-speed Internet service: Charter Communications.

Seriously people. I've looked into it. AT&T DSL? Not available in my area. Verizon DSL? Not available in my area. Satellite Internet service? Ya, it's available, but it's butt-expensive and not reliable and quite slow. So we're stuck with Charter.

I've had SEVERAL poor experiences with said ISP. Phone calls, emails, live chats, visits to the local office. If I had ANY choice whatsoever, I would ditch them in a heartbeat.

So why am I complaining about this now? Because. Not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES my connection "mysteriously" disappeared yesterday afternoon alone! We're talking over the course of, say, 3 or 4 hours. Each time, I had to get my lazy self off the couch, walk over to the modem and unplug it, then unplug my AirPort Express wireless router, too.

Wait 10 seconds...

Plug the modem back in. Wait for the lights to show it's working again.

Plug back in the AirPort Express. Wait for the wireless connection to come back up.

Try displaying whatever site it was I was trying to access in Firefox before the connection was lost.

This happened THREE TIMES! I'm telling you, I cannot stand this company. Can you say, "Monopoly!?" How is it they can get away with offering such POOR service to their customers? And are we really considered "customers" if we would drop them the very second another comparable option cane along?

Ugh.

Customer service has gone down the toilet these days, and it's only gonna get worse--resulting in more and more companies going "overseas" for support personnel, which ultimately involves more "huhs?" when trying to get troubleshooting support for that HP printer.

What a wonderful way to start out a Monday. Complaining.

You're welcome.

LO's 1st Birthday Party

Okay, folks! Here it is! The long-awaited, much-anticipated post all about LO's first birthday party! :) Sorry it took so long to put this together! I just wanted to be sure to capture all of the highlights of the planning, party, etc.

So let's start with the invitation. I chose the "Hugs & Stitches" theme, but didn't want to send a generic invite where I fill out all of the lines inside for Who/What/Date/Time, etc. I wanted something a bit more personal. So here's the standard invite that can be purchased in the theme:

I enlisted the fabulous design services of my incredible sister-in-law (she's getting married in September--check out her blog!), and this is what she came up with. It was absolutely fantastic and perfect! This is the outside of the invite...

Sooooo cute, right? Well, check out the inside (some info has been removed for obvious reasons):

The invitation couldn't have been more perfect for this party! Now let's move on to the BIG DAY! LO was absolutely hilarious when I came home with a bunch of balloons--I think 13 in all! She was in heaven! We could've just called it a day after letting her play with those balloons (and tangle them up like crazy--thanks to Gramma and Grandpa for untangling them!).

It wouldn't be a party if we didn't grab a pic of the food. Yes, the food.

Here's a pic of the cake. A good friend of mine manages the bakery at our local Bi-Lo and she let me get all crazy about how I wanted the cake. As with all things, everything wasn't perfect with this party. The cake was one of those things. I had an image in mind of what I wanted, and I described it (and even drew it out) quite well! Unfortunately, they decided to make the cake look exactly like the napkin... who wants a gigantic napkin-cake!? Whatever. It wasn't as pretty as I was expecting, but it sure was delicious. It was a white cake with raspberry filling and yummy buttercream frosting. YUM-LISH!

Here's a picture of LO's smash cake. Isn't it cute? This one was a yellow cake with buttercream frosting.

Here's LO and me (yes, that's my hand!) as everyone is singing "Happy Birthday!" to her. I was worried she'd get embarrassed or super-shy with everyone staring at her and singing. But, no! This little girl is quite the entertainer! She was just eating it up!

Hmmm... Her first thoughts of cake were a bit perplexing. She wasn't quite sure about it at first, but definitely got the hang of eating such yummy cake!

Here she is enjoying the cake. Notice that adorable pic on the TV in the background? Oh, yes. That was the dreaded video presentation that was the thorn in my side the day before (and day of!) her birthday!

When LO was done with her cake, she made sure to let everyone know it! She has this adorable(?) way of clinching her jaw, making fists and squealing when she's frustrated or angry or upset or doesn't get her way. Am pretty sure it's adorable right now, but it will probably get old at some point. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure she gets this trait from her mommy's side...

LO really wasn't that interested in the opening of presents. I was surprised!

Of course, I made a novice mommy error in opening the biggest (and what ended up the most engaging) toy FIRST. It was electronic, had lights and sounds and everything. She was engulfed in this toy the entire time so mommy ended up opening all of her gifts. Fun.

Here she is playing with a stuffed piggy she got from a dear friend of mine. She loves her piggy!

Later after all the gifts were opened, she got to play on the ride-on toy we had opened first. Here's hubs pushing her around the living room (isn't he handsome?!).

Big surprise... LO loved her new bean bag! And one of those durn popcorn popper things? Ya, she would literally pick it up and carry it everywhere instead of roll it on the ground so it makes noise. Not sure I mind this technique...

Here she is chillin' with her popcorn popper on her new bean bag.

At the end of the day, it was time to put in one of her new "Elmo's World" DVDs and break in the new bean bag. Can you tell she had a long day?

Now, for those of you who may have children, this part may be hard to believe. See, LO had a short morning nap before the party (like 9:00 AM), and had a short afternoon nap after the party (around 5:00 PM). She hung out and played with us all afternoon. Keep in mind she typically goes to bed around 8:00 PM. Well, my dear friends from Atlanta drove up for the party, but were leaving that evening. We got to talking and decided to go out for dinner with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew. It was 8:30 PM, people, when this decision was made. So we were heading out to dinner a good 45 minutes past her bedtime. We had no idea how she'd behave.

Oh. My. Goodness. I don't know if she was on a cake high or what, but this child was a pleasure the entire time we were at dinner! I couldn't believe it! I brought all kinds of entertainment, snacks, drinks, a paci, her teddy that she sleeps with--even had a back-up plan for hubs or I to take her out to the Jeep to watch a DVD if she got super restless. We didn't need any of that stuff! Okay, maybe some snacks, but that was it. She was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!! We didn't put her to bed until almost 11:00 PM and--as you can imagine--she slept like a baby, even though she's officially a toddler now!

Anyway, that's the rundown of LO's first birthday party! It was amazing, fun, exciting and all-around wonderful! Hubs and I celebrated the fact that we made it through our first year of parenthood, and LO celebrated the greatness of her one year of life! We are looking forward to all of the milestones and accomplishments that await our LO during year #2!

We are SO blessed!!!

Par-Tay!

Well I am ever so happy to report that LO's first birthday party was, in my opinion, a HUGE success! We had lots of food (too much, as usual!), lots of family and friends, some really yummy cake and an all around good time! Not to mention that I have several pictures commemorating the momentous occasion. Hurray!

Now, on to the not-so-great stuff. I guess there's really only ONE THING that turned out to be a huge headache. Silly me decided, oh, I don't know, like 3 or 4 weeks ago that it would be fun to have a sort of photo slideshow playing on the TV during the party. No music per se, just lots and lots of pics of LO from birth (pre-birth, actually, since I included some ultrasound pics) to birth (no, we didn't end up with any ill-timed photos showing off a bit more of myself than I'd like--thank goodness!) and throughout her first year--including the birthday pictures and family photo we had taken a week before the party. Sounds like a good idea, huh? A nice conversation starter, if you will? Ya, well, lemme tell ya... IT WAS A HUGE PAIN!!!

Really, creating the slideshow was cake. I used my ever-so-wonderful MacBook (it's so pretty!) and a little program called FotoMagico. Luckily, I had lots of experience working with this software as I had just created slideshows for both Mother's Day and Father's Day to be presented at my church. They came out GREAT! I guess I do need to admit here that there was one teeny, tiny little difference between those presos and this one... While they were around 60-70 photos each, LO's birthday video was, oh, I dunno, like 800 photos. ((shameful look)) Tell me, serously, how is a mommy supposed to weed through pictures of her only child and choose the ones NOT to be included in a slideshow dedicated to her? So hard.

Anyway, I'm thinking it'll be easier to share the steps of horror that ultimately led to a successful (thank the Lord!) presentation by listing them below rather than writing an unbelievably long paragraph or two. So here goes:

1. I did good. I started working on the presentation about 2 weeks before the party. How smart am I? The week before the party I was putting the finishing touches on the video. We're talking 800 photos that I had to manually adjust start/finish, zoom and rotation settings on each one. I'd estimate in all I probably spent at least 3 to 4 hours on this masterpiece.
2. Now the fun begins. The presentation was too large to compose on my MacBook (down to less than 5GB of free space!), so I had to save it to my external HD, which is formatted like 60-40 Mac-PC (some of you may get that, others may not... just keep reading). So I saved the file and was ready to export it to a DVD that I could sling in my DVD player and call it a day. Keep in mind, this is happening the day before the party, because, really, how hard could it possibly be to export a video onto a DVD? I'm using a Mac after all, so it should happen with my eyes closed!
3. Not so much. Houston, we have a problem! It seems as though my formerly-faithful FotoMagico has let me down--BIG TIME. See, it runs the export for about 30-40 minutes, then suddenly, on Step 3 of 4, decides to have a FATAL ERROR. In other words, no export for me!
4. I try it again. And again. And one more time. Fatal error. Fatal error. Fatal error. I send the error log to the folks at Boinx (the people that made FotoMagico--such fun names, right?). Unfortunately our Boinx friends are located in Germany and at the time, it was like 11PM out there. No such hope of technical support for me! I had a secret hope they'd get my email while I was sleeping that night and send me a quick and easy fix the next day. I bet you already know whether or not that happened! Oh, I also tried deleting half the files (for testing purposes) to see if it'd export a smaller (i.e. 400-ish photos) file. No such luck.
5. So insert Plan B here. We decide to buy a little cable that can connect my MacBook to the TV and just run it from there. We stop at Best Buy after dinner and pick up a Dynex Mini DVI-to-Video Adapter (NOTE: I didn't say "APPLE" Mini DVI-to-Video Adapter). We get it home. I hook it up with an S-video cable directly from my TV to my MacBook. The result? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Are you kidding me? It's supposed to "just work." Why is it not working. I'll fast-forward a bit on this one, but let's just say hubs and I tested and tried 2 different S-video cables, 1 set of composite cables, 2 different TVs, and basically had the same result. The amount of time this fast-forward eliminates from my post? Quite literally about 4 hours. That's how long hubs and I spent trying to get that durn adapter to work. Oh, and the best party? After about 2 hours of struggling, I looked up the reviews for the item on Best Buy's website. Out of 4 reviews, only 1 person said they were able to get the adapter to work. Everyone else said theirs didn't work, they tried a different one from the store, and it didn't work, either. Great, so my daughter's first birthday comes down to the fact that these "Dynex" people make stuff but don't bother to make sure it actually works before manufacturing 80 billion of them. Geniuses. (Side Note: I called Dynex since they had 24 hour support. Miss I-Barely-Speak-English-And-Can't-Pronounce-My-Own-Name's response to my issue? "Oh, it sound like you do all de troubleshooting I can have available to me to tell to you. I give you case number for if you need to call back with problem again later?" Riiiiiiight. Gee, thanks.
6. Around this time I speak with my bestest Mac guru/guide/genius who also happens to be one of my best friends and mentors on the planet. He is such a dear and makes some phone calls for me to his other Mac friends to see if one of them happens to have an APPLE Mini-DVI to Video Adapter. I find out the next morning that he does have a friend with one and is able to get it to me as a back-up. Thank you @tgodby and @NewMacUser!!!!!
   
7. Okay, so back to the story, it's 11:30 PM, and hubs has this brilliant idea (hey, it happens every now and then!). Why not split my ginormous slideshow into smaller, individual ones? Maybe then FotoMagico would be able to export them to the DVD? Hmmm... I would THINK that would work. Okay. So I create a new test file using 100 images. IT WORKS! And it only took about 25-30 minutes! Yippee! Only 7 more files to go! I stayed up 'til almost 1:00 AM exporting these smaller individual files. I then finished the rest of them the next morning.
   
8. Okay, so let's just say I finally have all 7 or 8 individual files I was able to export. Now to burn my DVD. But can iDVD do what I'm wanting it to do? I must check with my bestest Mac guru/guide/genius who also happens to be one of my best friends and mentors on the planet yet again. (Note: He's been on vacation for the week or two prior to this and happened to only be in town ONE DAY -- the day I needed him the most! And he SO came through for me!). So I ask my question. His response is as I expected. "Well, no, iDVD won't be able to do that, but what will work is pulling the files into iMovie and exporting them as a single file to iDVD." (He ALWAYS has a solution for everything!). Okay. So now I've just got to pull the files into iMovie.
9. PROBLEM #12,647: I ran out of space on my external HD! The partition formatted for Mac was full! D'oh! Could anything else possibly go wrong?! I called my buddy again and he's offered to lend me a 1 Terabyte (yes, a Terabyte) external HD. We're golden!
10. While I wait patiently for hubs to return the original crappy cable to Best Buy, stop by my mom's to pick up a table we needed for the party, then stop by the church to get the external HD and APPLE adapter from Tim, I decided to keep looking for solutions. I decided maybe I could move some of my external HD files to my useless PC that is basically empty since I don't use it for anything anymore. If I could move those files over, I could free up the space I needed on my external HD! I powered up my ol' faithful Windows PC for the first time in about 2 months or so. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? An error message stating, "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." Seriously!? Oh, ya. I couldn't make this stuff up.
11. I then got the bright idea to move some of the files from my Mac partition to the PC partition on my external HD, freeing up enough space to accomplish what I needed to. This worked, although I'm still not sure if I somehow corrupted my lovely Mac files by putting them in a PC environment ((fingers crossed)). It only took about an hour to move the files (lots of videos of LO--they were HUGE).
12. Whew! I've gone ahead and moved the files and can now try to export that durn slideshow file to iDVD. I call my Mac buddy for the trillionth time in 12 minutes to verify the export file settings so I wouldn't end up doing this more than once. Long story short, it would literally be about 2 hours to complete this process. Yes. And how much time before the party starts, you're wondering? Oh, about an hour and a half. Suddenly exporting to a DVD looks less and less feasible. That APPLE mini-DVI adapter was becoming less of a back-up plan and more of THE plan.
13. Hubs finally arrives. I tell him exporting to a DVD is not gonna happen, and that all of our ducks are in a basket (??) with the hope that the APPLE adapter works. I plug in the S-video cable to the TV. I plug in the other end to the APPLE adapter. I plug in the APPLE adapter to my MacBook. I look at my TV. WHAT A GLORIOUS SIGHT!!! It's my MacBook desktop, broadcasting on my lovely TV! I cried tears of joy (literally) and launched my FotoMagico presentation. It. Looked. Beautiful. In addition, it worked like a charm! Literally plugged in the APPLE adapter and was DONE! That was it!!!!
14. Insert HUGE sigh of relief here. I launched iTunes and selected a lovely playlist that was broadcast to my surround sound stereo via my APPLE AirPort Express, and was FINALLY able to get back to all of the little details of getting ready for my baby's first birthday party. Hallelujah!

Okay, so I guess this post doesn't actually include photos of the party or really, any details pertaining specifically to the party. But this story had to be told. And to satisfy those of you who were expecting to see some pics, here's one that's very near and dear to my heart:
Yes, friends, this is the Apple Mini-DVI to Video Adapter that saved my baby's 1st birthday party. Moral of the story? ALWAYS buy certified genuine APPLE accessories for your Mac. Just think of the trouble and time this would've saved us had we owned this little gem before LO's party.

Oh, and I've got another post in the works about the actual party, including actual party pictures!! So stay tuned! :)

You Gotta Keep it Regulated!

Hey-ya!

So back in May (on my birthday, actually), just 3 days before we were to leave for a wedding in Ohio, I was shopping at Old Navy with LO. When I walked out to our Jeep Grand Cherokee, I happened to notice the driver's window was down.

WTH!?

"I know I didn't leave that window down," I thought to myself. "Somebody must have broken in!"

I immediately thought of the brand-new DVD player attached to the rear headrest that we had purchased to entertain LO on the trip to Ohio. I literally had "installed" it just before heading out to the stores, so I figured somebody really wanted that DVD player and had durn broke in our car to take it!

I immediately called hubs in a bit of a panic and explained the situation. Like the always calm hubs he is, he told me to calm down and said everything was gonna be okay.

Whew!

I checked and noticed the DVD player was exactly where I left it.

Whew!

So we get home from our little shopping experience, and I put LO down for a nap. I then turn to my trusty best friend, the World Wide Web.

After a little googling (yes, I believe that's a word!), I found hundreds of blogs and forums discussing this lovely little defect that apparently all Jeep owners have the joy and privilege of experiencing: the window regulator and motor in our driver's side window had failed.

I found a lovely site where some super-kind man had taken the time to write up instructions--including detailed photos--on how to fix this problem oneself.

Reminder: This happened just 3 days before we were to leave for a wedding in Ohio.

Although hubs is great with car repairs and such, he just didn't have the time to order the part (around $90) and replace it himself (estimated 2-3 hours). SO... we took it to a local “mom & pop” auto repair spot we had used in the past for a quote. This place was a little family-owned business and hubs made friends with them when the clutch went out on our Eclipse a few years ago.

When hubs hadn't heard back from them by the time we met for lunch, I suggested he give them a call to see if they had a chance to scope it out and prepare the estimate we requested. He called around 2:00 PM and they informed him it was fixed and ready to be picked up! So they didn't call with a quote, they went ahead and fixed it and provided us with a bill for $415!!

That sucked.

I happened to prefer the $90 "fix it yourself" option compared to the "pay a car payment to have someone else do it for you" option. Really, I guess in either scenario, I myself wouldn't be the one fixing it, but you get my point.

Now let's fast-forward to today. I was heading to the Jeep after spending some time at the pool with LO and one of my bestest friends. I went to put the windows up and turn on the A/C (it was HOT!) and noticed the passenger window was mysteriously slinking downwards into the door frame.

"Hmmmm..." I thought, "this can't be good."

Turns out window regulator and motor #2 had failed.

I didn't have the gall to tell hubs over IM that afternoon. I went ahead and printed out the instructions and photos for him, and presented him with the opportunity for a fun "project." I handed him the instructions and he was, well, I guess "not so excited" would be a good way to explain it.

The poor guy was outside this evening for well over an hour just taking the inside door panel off so he could shimmy something in there to keep the window up until he could get the part and fix it.

Ye-haw.

As a final note on this here post, I just have to add this little convo hubs and I had earlier:

"Hey, can you come help me for a sec?" hubs hollered from the garage door at me, as I was comfortably lounging on the couch watching "The Baby Borrowers" for whatever reason.

"Sure!" I responded as I hopped up, put my flips on and headed outside.

Hubs had most of the inside door panel off but it was still attached by two little thingiemajigs.

"Can you hold the inside door panel so it won't drop? Oh, and here's the flashlight. Can you point it there at those white things?"

"Sure!"

Hubs then starts prying at the little white guys, trying desperately to get them to turn in whatever direction he was after so the door panel could be fully detached.

I offered a suggestion or two on how he could try it differently, which he did, and he got them off. The door panel was now completely removed.

"Thanks," he said. "I've spent 30 minutes just trying to get those things off."

"Ah. Is that all you needed?" I inquired.

"Ya, thanks!"

"Cool. Can you please let me know if there is anything else I can help with? Perhaps before fiddling with it for half an hour?"

"Okay."

About 10 minutes later, I'm still on the couch (I think I've got a permanent butt-print on this couch of ours) watching TV and surfing the 'net for a Bluetooth headset for my new phone.

"I need your help again," came the summon from the garage door.

"On my way!" I responded.

I walked out to the Jeep, which was parked in our driveway. It was well on the way to dusk (read: it was dark out). The external light above the garage door was on, but with the Jeep door open, and hubs working on the inside panel, he had no light to work with to see what he was doing.

"Can you just hold the flashlight here so I can see this thingy?" he asked.

I thought about it for, oh, I dunno, like .2 seconds and responded with, "Um, wouldn't it make sense to just pull the Jeep in the garage so you can see? You know, with the garage overhead lights on? That might help."

Hubs had a slight look of wonder and awe. "Huh. That's probably a good idea!"

He moved the Jeep into the garage and was able to finish up his task all while I hung out--you guessed it--on the couch!

What fun!!

LG x Motorola / Verizon = Headache!

I've had the same cellphone with Verizon Wireless for like 4 years. It's the LG-VX6100.














It's served me well. Until about 2 months ago when I decided it would be fun to create a ringtone of LO laughing and talking. I went through hoops that I can't even describe. The sheer pain of sharing what I put myself through over the past 2 months is still too frustrating to recall right now. Maybe later.

Anywho, let's move on. So I'm shopping for a new phone from Verizon. I'm logged in to their site and am comparing phones. I have questions, so I use the handy little "chat" feature to talk to a Customer Service Rep. I had several of these chats, and they got more frustrating and less helpful as time went on. I decided to go to the Verizon store, which, if you don't know by now, I like to do everything online if at all possible. I can get so much more information about a product or service online versus physically going to the store. Well, I did go to the Verizon store, and after waiting for my name to come up on the screen queue, I finally got my chance to speak with a knowledgeable Verizon sales rep. ((read with much sarcasm))

I basically asked the guy about the new phones, features, etc. I tried to explain that I wanted a phone that would "talk" to my MacBook, whether via USB or Bluetooth. I wanted to be able to share pics, sounds and ringtones between the two. He said I could share pics, but not sounds or ringtones.

Say whaaa?

I asked if that was specific to the most recent phone we were discussing (Motorola RAZR2) or if it applied to all of Verizon's new phones. He said it was on all of their phones.

After hearing that, hubs, LO and I walked out and I made my mind up that I'd be heading to AT&T for the new 3G iPhone.

I was still quite irritated when we got home, so looked online for an email address for Verizon's CEO. I sent an email sharing my experience and frustration with Verizon.

The next day I got a call from a nice lady at the Verizon Executive Relations department. Long story short, she worked with me, answered questions and renewed (somewhat) my faith in Verizon Wireless.

So now I'm trying to decide on a new phone. I know I like LG phones, and they have a new one--the LG Chocolate 3--releasing this Sunday. I'm quite interested in that one, but I'm also considering the Motorola RAZR2, the LG Venus and the Motorola W755.

Isn't the new Chocolate 3 pretty? It's supposed to come in both black and light blue.











Sometimes I wish I could be more like hubs. He'd walk into the store (vs. me and my online addiction), ask the sales guy what phone he could get for free (vs. my need for fun features which always means I'll be paying for my phone), and walk out the door with his new purchase (vs. me spending a combined total of no less than 12 hours online over the course of 5 weeks researching, reading user reviews, checking out Consumer Reports and downloading user manuals in order to make an "informed" decision).

Argh. Guess I'll wait and see what's up with the new Chocolate and make my decision from there.