I'm wondering if my host, A Small Orange, is kaput. I can't reach www.rustyhinges.com nor can I pick up my mail. Ouch. No news from anyone. Is anyone having the same experience?

I'm done with blogger for the time being. You can find the Smith's weblog at www.rustyhinges.com. Click here to go there!

I'm hoping that our new blog will be "fully functional" fairly soon. You can find it here.

Lord of the Rings Spoof

This is good for a laugh.

Mac Printing

The Macintosh seems to have printing figured out. I'm printing a few web pages this evening, doing some research and reading. You know what I see? Printing a web page from the Safari browser turns out a nice product. It doesn't have those pointless headers with all sorts of weird characters that my IE browser churned out so often.

Long story short: another reason to be pleased.

Understanding the Mac

This is for Jeff's reference. This article discusses how the mac works. Its Macintosh for the newbie.

Madie in Alaska... not yet 2 years. 

I think this was the 2003 annual meeting. Shows you a typical Sunday type set-up. Projection screen is on the right. Three completed stained glass windows. 

Clover Pass Church, Ketchikan's multi purpose room (partially set up for Wednesday Bible study). This room had several configurations throughout the week: empty for school, Bible study, Sunday a.m. and p.m. 

Clover Pass multi-purpose room facing towards foyer. 

Clover Pass Foyer. 

Foyer at Clover Pass Community Church. I was a part of youth group there for a lot of years. 

Francis Schaeffer on the Life of the Church

The local church or Christian group should be right, but it should also be beautiful. The local group should be the example of the supernatural, of the substantially healed relationship in this present life between men and men. . . . How many orthodox local churches are dead at this point, with so little sign of love and communication: orthodox, but dead and ugly! If there is no reality on the local level, we deny what we say we believe.

Resource

Answers looks like a good resource. It has recently been made free so there's bound to be some good information in there.

New and old. 

Processor box 

Adding ram to the iMac. 

From road at front. 

Front (scraggly lawn) 

Back porch and back yard. 

The New iMac

Got the iMac up and running finally. This is like learning a whole new language. It's taken me a little bit to just know how to find my way around some very simple things. In Windows XP everything is limited to one pane or "window" that you are looking at. OS X deals in smaller "windows" with the active window's preferences all in a menu bar at the top of the screen. that was a simple, but tough one for me to figure out at first. I'm thinking, "Where the Sam Hill is the stupid preferences!?" All the while they are hiding in plain view at the top of the screen. Uhhg! I'll learn, just give me time.

My first impression out of the box is that this machine is very well built. In fact, it makes every other machine I've worked on seem like a cheap imitation. I installed a 512mb stick of ram and was floored by the simplicity and beauty of the machine without ever turning it on. These machines just look great. Very impressive.

Set up was fairly intuitive. I didn't know the finer points of my internet settings and fiddled with that for a while. Turns out all I needed to do was ignore the questions and proceed. It worked without a hitch. Seamless. Overall, I'm pleased. I feel that I have way too much to learn before I get to the point where I've got a handle on how these things really work. It's been fun searching around this evening.

You can expect some posts regarding my experience as a "switcher" in the coming days.

You love this... iMac G5 ram is here, all 512mb to add to 256mb when I get home. More to come. 

More playing around. Today's desktop. 

Just playing here: Our 112 mile route from Neighborhood Alliance Church to Jantzen Beach for District Youth Conference. "Alt>PrtScn" and a little cropping. 

Happy daddy. 

Owen sleeping just before dinner. 

Sister and brother. 

Papa Poet and Owen. 

Owen last weekend. 

Heidi and Madeline over the weekend. 

Audion

This is for my reference as we'll be switching to the Mac platform oh so soon.

Rafael (exchange student from Spain) and yours truly. Photo taken in December 2004. 

Madie and the horsey. 

Madeline with "Jersey" the horse. 

Madeline