We All Wear Masks May 28, 2008
Posted by gerryc in Personal.1 comment so far
Those who know me can attest to my fascination with Halloween. Not for its witchcraft and pagan underpinnings, but for the whole childlike allure of wearing costumes; pretending you’re someone else for one day.
Life in general is not without these moments, but you don’t need an elaborate mask made of rubber to hide behind. Depending the situation or environment we’re in, we choose to “be” different than who we really are. The norm for some people is to usually “wear” two. In my case, well… I’d need an entire trunk!
I have one for the family, the serious, uptight older son/brother; one for the office, the uberpatient, easygoing tech guy; with my close friends, the loud and goofy jokester; with women, the romantic and kindhearted gentleman; and the list goes on…
So, why not be the same in every situation? It greatly depends on my mood and how comfortable I feel around the people I’m with. Mixing it up hasn’t worked out that well for me.
How can I put this? Like appropriate attire, you simply don’t go in swimming trunks to a wedding.
Yes, I’d Like To Order a Productivity Suite, Hold the Microsoft May 21, 2008
Posted by gerryc in Tech.2 comments
Those who’re in my circle of friends know me well enough to confirm that I’m a Mac Evangelist. Almost everything and anything Apple produces I lust over and try to get others to feel the same way. But, in certain circumstances, you have to look outside the company’s offerings to get things done.
Enter Microsoft Office: the necessary evil of the business world. This suite of apps has a stranglehold on the productivity market. Many companies have adopted the software giant’s cash cow as their defacto tool for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, leaving little space for other competitors to offer any alternatives.
In 2003, Apple tried to make a dent in Office’s impervious force field by releasing Keynote, a presentation software with stunning visuals, sleek transitions and their trademark ease of use. Even though it wasn’t touted as direct competitor to PowerPoint and lacked certain advanced features, at a $99 price point it was pretty obvious the direction where the engineers at Cupertino were headed: to offer an affordable productivity tool for use at home, school or even the workplace.
Let’s skip ahead to today. Apple now offers a suite named iWork, which includes Pages, a simple, yet robust word-processor and visual page-layout program; Numbers, an easy-to-use spreadsheet application with gorgeous graphs; and, of course, Keynote, including even more eye-catching transitions, templates and advanced features. All this for a mere $79. Huh? What’s that? How much for Microsoft Office for Mac? A whopping $400 bucks!
Ok, ok. Before I get the Microsoft-nerd hate mail, I’ll admit I have Office installed on my computer and use it fairly often. This is due to the almost daily exchange of .doc and .xls her at work, but personally I prefer to use iWork for my personal projects. Know what else? I can open those files in either Pages or Numbers and they almost look better! Oh, and I don’t bother PowerPoint. Keynote wins hands down!
So, if your business thrives on anything made in Word, Excel or PowerPoint and you have the money to burn, Microsoft will gladly take your dollars. On the other hand, if you need an affordable and uncomplicated way to be productive on your Mac, give iWork a try.
Trust me. It’s so nice to see my Mac OS X Dock Microsoft-free!
Hello world! …again. May 20, 2008
Posted by gerryc in Personal.1 comment so far
Welcome to iThoughts 2.0!
What’s new? Nothing much. I just wanted to try out a new blogging platform and heard high praise of WordPress. So here I am, typing up my life’s occurrences, one post at a time, for Interweb posterity…
That, and if I ever go senile I can at least have a record of what the hell I did with my so-called life!
