I thought I had my husband all figured out, and then he pulls a complete 180. For as long as I’ve known Doug (about 12 years), he’s always despised Apple, Inc. I don’t know what caused his bitterness, but he would roll his eyes any time I suggested we look at an Apple computer or product. In college, I learned my graphic design skills on a Mac and I used a Mac at my first job, so I was fond of them. But I compromised and learned to use PC’s to keep peace in our house. (By the way, I love those “I’m a PC/I’m a Mac” commercials… genius!)

Then on Saturday, Doug announces he’d like to go shopping for an iPod. What?! I thought he was joking, but he was very serious. He had been using XM satellite radio for quite a while, and I think he was ready to try something new. So we headed to Best Buy and Doug said he would get me an iPod, too! Whoa!! (Doug got black, I got white.) So we’ve spent the better part of our weekend ripping songs from our dusty collection of CDs. It’s been fun listening to old songs that I haven’t heard since college. Doug even took his new iPod along with him while he mowed the lawn, and I think he really liked it!

This may be the start of “the Apple conversion”… those iPhones look pretty cool! I’ll keep ya posted!

~ Erin

Okay, sometimes making links to other web sites is way overrated. But occasionally there are some sites you just HAVE to link to. If you haven’t seen these before, check them out…..

wikipedia.org – a free, community encyclopedia, amazing info!!!
Google Earth – a free download of the Earth (okay, cool mapping software)
Konfabulator – a free download that runs on your desktop and has widgets that do many neat things (weather, RSS feeds, monitors your pc, etc.)
Cliff and Buster – some of the best tasting sweets I’ve ever had!!!!
Evalto, Inc. – shameless plug for my company.

That’s about it for now.

Geek Out, – Doug

No, it’s not Reality Shows Suck.
It’s not even close to Republican Slap Stick.
The RSS I’m talking about is Really Simple Syndication.

A simple definition of RSS: a method of new web site summary data sent to your computer, with the option of going to the full web site article.

You’re probably thinking “Why on earth is Doug posting this information? I’m not geeky like he is.” Good question. Well, my answer is this: “Our web site supports RSS. And so does almost every news company (like Yahoo News and CNN), and every major forum group (like slashdot.org), and it’s catching on fast!” More and more personal sites are using RSS as a way for their friends to keep up on the latest.

With RSS, no longer do you have to go out to specific web sites to see if they’ve been updated, or if the material on the site is worth looking at. Now the new material can come directly to you as it is posted!

You can run free programs (called RSS Aggregators) that go get these RSS “feeds” then discreetly display them on your computer. Here are some programs I use that support RSS: Mozilla Firefox, Google Desktop, Konfabulator, and there are tons more out there! So check out an RSS Aggregator program and start looking for the little boxes that say XML or RSS, or links that say RSS!

Here’s a very detailed explanation of RSS at Wikipedia.org in case you’re interested. And finally, here’s the RSS Feed to our blog!

Geek Out, – Doug