Transplant Success!!

Over the summer, we picked up a little Mac Mini for our everyday computer. It has no doubt been one of my favorite computers. I love it's size (picture four Ramen noodle packs stacked together), the fact that it can run both Apple's OS-X & Windows XP, the speed at which it wakes up from sleeping (2 seconds max!), and the fact that it shares the name of a very cool car!

Unfortunately, we had picked this little beaut. up from Craig's List (read: slightly broken in). Apparently the previous owner had opened Mac up a bit and didn't get him put back together 100%. Sometimes the audio would crackle & cut out. And the wireless didn't get nearly as good of a signal as it should have. And there were a few parts - memory & hard drive - that I had been itching to upgrade. So with my Amazon store going so well, I took some of the proceeds and bought the upgrades. Last night I sat down to work.

Never before have I had to open a computer with a putty knife, but I guess there's a first time for everything. Once I got it open, there were a few of the usual steps involved with switching out memory & hard drives (I'll save you the boredom). Needless to say, things went well - and while I was in there, I reconnected a few cables that had gotten loose.

After reassembling, I plugged in my external hard drive (Time Machine backup), ran the setup program and now things are running perfectly. Not only that, but Time Machine maintained all my settings - it's like I'm l0oking at the exact same computer - just with new insides!

Brain transplant & heart valve replacement, success! Mac feels like a new computer.

Email updates

We've set up a GoogleGroup for those that are interested in being notified by email when a new posting is made to our blog.

Instructions: (this will take 1-2 minutes)
Visit our group's webpage.
Click on "Join this group"
Login to your Google account (gmail, calendar, etc.) - if you don't have a google login, you'll need to create one.
Decide on what format you would like to receive the email in (digest, full, or abridged).

That's it. You're all done!

By the way, I've changed the settings so that you don't have to login to blogger to post a comment to our blog (sorry to all those who attempted to do this in the past - it should be easier now).

the new blogger

We recently switched over to the new beta blogger (operated by Google). Not too much different - a few changes here and there, but it is easier to add different elements now (such as tags, links, etc.). You'll probably need to update our address in your feed reader - the addresses are below. By the way, if you're looking for a good feed reader, I'd recommend Sage. It's a plug-in for Firefox and integrates really well.

Here's a screen shot of what it looks like:

When you click on the icon for Sage, it pops up a sidebar that shows the blogs you subscribe to on the top with the individual postings below. When you click on the refresh icon (located at the top of the sage bar), it checks for any blog updates and lets you know it's new by bolding the text. Also, the magnifying glass next to the refresh icon searches a site for a new feed. So, if you are visiting our site (mike-tina.blogspot.com), you can click on the magnifying glass and it will automatically grab our feed so that you can subscribe to it. It makes life much simpler.

New Feeds for Mike & Tina (either of these will work):
http://mike-tina.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://mike-tina.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss