Apple! WHAT THE ....... ?

Well, finally got around to playing with the new and supposedly highly improved Mavericks, and I must say........ I am far from impressed!

It seems like Apple is ruled by a Microsoft reject these days. The features I used most, are no longer there, and IF they are there, they're no longer functional..... Case in Point: 

Dashboard: It used to be this nice see thru overlay of widgets, like currency converter, calculator, sticky notes, weather, college football scores and what have you.  The fact that it was see thru, made it functional. You could look at a list of figures that were on the desktop, and position the calculater in a way that you could see them, and add them up, or whatever you needed to do to them.

Sticky notes: You could easily copy what you needed on a sticky note, and deal with it at a later point. This was especially handy with research, because it worked just like a notepad.... a quick jotdown so you can use the information later.

Currency converter: Same thing, you're looking at different things on one page, and you can quickly and easily see if you're paying more or less than you thought. (This is especially handy for us, since we're trying to juggle expenses between currencies in which we get paid and currency we spend in))

The improved version, has a solid background, so you keep flipping between screens... At that point, you might as well keep a notepad handy. And I have one laying next to the keyboard as we speak!

The big surprise was that they completely took out the functionality OF THEIR OWN MOUSE AND KEYBOARD!!! The function keys no longer work! The sound up and down keys do all kinds of things, except what you'd expect, and the eject button...... has issues.  Awesome move there. 

The other thing that doesn't work anymore is the swipe function on the magic mouse. You used to be able to go thru finder windows, or any stacked part of programs (Safari, PDF's etc) and by swiping left or right on the mouse, you would move back and forth between folders/pages...... no longer, except within safari (sofar). So, in my humble and teed off opinion....... They went Microsoft! Put something new out there every couple of months, functional or not and please, never-mind the bugs, you'll get used to them......   However, the thing that they are very proud of improving, is synching between devices.... Whoopee! 

I agree, that  may seem very important, but what if you can't do what you need to on your primary device? At least you won't be able to do it on multiple levels? Interesting business plan.

I LOVE technology, I really do. I'm in awe of what is out there, and can't wait to see what's yet to come! But those personal computers..... It seems to me they're trying too hard to get something new out there even if it IS at the cost of the user.  I may sound old and grouchy, but can we have 2 versions of things? The crazy stuff for somebody who likes it, and the simpler things for others. Just give us options? 

I know that choices need room in an OS, but just an "either - or" option would be nice. I miss my function keys, I miss the swipe function (Swapping between several external drives in search of that one piece of information takes A LOT time if you have to use the back button!), and I miss that I can't do our books without having to find a calculator, and now have to print out the columns so I can tally them. There's probably features I haven't found, and will love, in time, but for now............. I'm not happy.

I am working at the computer a lot (a bout 90% of my play time is here, in one program or another), but I don't necessarily need to be in constant contact with the world, while freaking out when the internet quits, because I won't even be able to read a book!? Technology is awesome, but there is a limit. If technology does all the thinking, except for knowing which button to push to get a certain result.... were will we end up?  I catch myself when we don't have internet connection that I get fidgety, because there's something I want to look up, but can't. Or when we're in a strange city and we're trying to figure out if there's anything to do besides having a cup of coffee.... Or knowing Johnny-GPS is sending us the wrong way, but not having information that can save us a 3 hour detour because of it..... I get that. But being on a family outing and having everybody check mail every 5 minutes, and completely tuning out a conversation because they receive a text.... not for me, thanks! :-)

Well, that's it for me for today. I'm going to the store and figure dinner, maybe talk to the neighbor lady, definitely hug our fuzzy roommate, and after that....... who knows? I may pick up a book and read a while! LOL.

Don't forget to hug a loved one?

Hugs,

Pauli

End of October already

We've been busy, flustered, frustrated, frazzled and what have you over the past few months, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and this time, I'm pretty sure it's not a freight train...... I hope.

The car is actually being fixed, as we speak! We got tired of the changing prices, estimated time of being done, and the "whatever" attitude at the dealer we had her, so I went looking "up north" where people are different, and you're more readily helped, even if you don't speak the local dialect.... We found this dealership in Eindhoven, and I explained what had happened with the car, and asked what they could/would do. To my amazement, he was very friendly, put up with my half Dutch half English car-part description and talked to me as if I was human.... Didn't dumb it down, didn't BS me, just told me what the going process was when they got a car in like ours. He quoted me 3 prices depending on scenario, and told me that just a second hand engine wouldn't solve our problem, and possibly would cost us more in the longrun, than putting ours through a check-up. So he gave us options.... unheard of! At the end of our conversation, I asked him how much difference there could be in the end estimate, and he sounded confused, so I told him, that where we had the car now, we were made to believe that we would have it back within a week or two, because they would be able to find a revision engine, in no time, than they needed time to put it in, and we'd be driving by the end of the month..... Once we got the car there, it dragged out to 4 months, with no idea where they would get a second hand engine, with a warrantee...... Not one that been gone thru, as they first promised, but one out of a wrecked car, and the warrantee being that it would start! and the quoted price of 4 to 600 Euro's fluctuated now between 8 and 1200...... He started laughing, and said he would put all we had discussed, with prices quoted, estimates and time frame (barring weird things happening, or parts not being readily available) in an email to me.  What do you know..... He gave a hoot.  I told him I would discus things with Mike, and we would get back to him. We set a tentative time and date he would pick up the car, so he could work it into the shop schedule, and I'd get back to him the next day.

The day before the car was to be picked up, we got a call from the garage we had it at, to tell us they had found an engine! SAY WHAT!? It came with a warrantee, as promised, and the grand total would be about 2500 Euro's, give or take a couple of hundreds. I told him that we had sold the car, and it would be picked up tomorrow, as I had already told him the week before and he started to argue that he had put time and effort in getting the engine, and it was a good engine, it came with the guarantee that it would start because it had run last week.... To which I told him that our engine had run up to the moment it quit, and that a guarantee that it would start, was no guarantee at all, and that with everything they had promised and renaged on, this was too little, too late.  So, he gave us a bill of a couple hundred Euro's for time spent and supposedly putting oil in the oil pan after they drained it to see if there were metal-shavings in it.  I couldn't figure out, if you are going to pull the engine, and replace it why you would want to replace the oil, if you're not even going to run the engine, but.... I didn't want to get slapped with a storage bill, so we  paid. When I came in to pay the bill, he told me that if he had known we were thinking of selling the car, he would have given us 200 Euro's for it.... HA!  It proved that it was exactly as Mike and I expected from this shysterbunch.... Drag it along, until you can pick up the car for next to nothing, fix it up, and sell it on.  NA-AH, no way, not anymore!  The funny part of it was, that he told me that "Even with a warrantee we would still have to pay labor if anything went wrong if we bought any car under 3500 Euro's. But we were the kind people that would always buy old cars, and try to get things cheap, so if we had sold the car, good luck finding another one that would run on our budget....." Nice, huh?  (By the way, if you're in this area, and looking for a car, give me a shout, and I'll tell you where NOT to go!)  We should have known better, because when we first got here, we looked at a car there, and when Mike told him the throttle AND the brake felt sticky on use, and the check engine light was on, we were told that "People like us, that had had a lot of old cars were more picky, and most of their customer would have never even noticed....... The upswing, in their eyes, was that they could fix it though, but it would add about 4 grand to the car! We ran, and should have kept running, but what do you do, if they're the only Chrysler Garage in a 150 KM radius.

On to better things though. Our new garage! They've had the car a little over a week now, and within a day, found out it wasn't the engine at all! It was the oil and water pump that were giving us problems. They also found one of the A-arms was broken. They did go thru the engine, and the engine is good. They give a 2 year warranty on parts and labor (so if anything goes wrong, we don't have to pay labor, or parts) and they have checked over the rest of the car for things to keep an eye on, and have found nothing....... YEAH!!!!  I don't know what it is about the cars here, but that's the second car that has a broken A-arm? In all our years driving in the states, we've never had ONE, not even on the trucks! (And I took the mustang successfully up dirt roads I tried later with the Jeep, and she wouldn't pull it.....) Must be all those darned turn-circles/round-a-bouts and tight corners..... :-) But, we should be good for quite a few years, after this.

Not sure if I mentioned it or not, probably not, it seems like forever that I was here..... Mike's brother had a stroke, so, even though we can't do anything about it or help in any way, you can't help worrying about him, and his family. Mike's sister has kept us posted, and last we heard, he was on his way to a rehab facility. Haven't heard from her in a while, so when I'm done here, I'll check in with her, see if all is going to plan.

Over the last month or so, the computer decided enough was enough, and couldn't remember how much free disc space it had... I took of about 300 Gigs of stuff from the 500 Gig drive, figuring it needed the breathing room and it came back within an hour that the disc was full, and it was going to shut down.... I emptied another 50 megs off, and it still showed it had 7 mb room available. We took it to the Mac store in Eindhoven, on our way to see my dad, and they couldn't figure out what was wrong, and why it was doing what it was doing, but they advised to upgrade to Maverick OS........... NOOOOOO!!!! I So didn't want to do that! I like everything about my Snowleopard, the way it works, the way it looks, the fact that the swipe mouse works between finder windows when I'm looking for things on one (or all) of my 4 external drives, and I've read nothing but bad things about Maverick, and you want me to voluntarily upgrade to it?  Well, no, not voluntarily, per se..... Mac is forcing the issue, by no longer putting out security updates, and by making nothing at all compatible with Snowleopard within 2 to 6 months........ So I upgraded, and I've been in computer hell ever since! It DID manage to find the 300 extra gigs on the hard drive, but it's a small price to pay...... Now, it won't charge the mouse, I'm arbitrarily being locked out of my drives, it didn't recognize one all together (I fixed it, but still) the passwords that were in keychain are the only ones it remembers, no matter how many times you change/update them, it keeps putting in the wrong ones, and they're already starting to push for people to upgrade to Yosemite......... It's like having Windows!  As an extra bonus.... I think the superdrive is going out. Every time I put in a disc, it sounds like you're trying to start a really grumpy old dirtbike! (Normally, I would say "beautiful sound", but not if it is being generated from a computer! LOL)

I feel like I've been godawful busy, although, if you ask me with what...... I couldn't tell you. I guess that's where the frazzled part kicks in. I have my check-up a week from Monday, and I haven't been feeling well, so I'm double in a panic. Perky scares the bejeebees out of me, because he is constantly sniffing and doing the mouth-open grimace face, on the spot where they took the first biopsy, and than he lays on it and purrs......... (not helping in the re-assuring department) and on top of it all, Mike has been having trouble breathing, and actually asked me to make a doctors appointment for tomorrow. He assured me it wasn't his heart, but he still feels as if there is a very heavy humidity in the air, and he isn't breathing well.

And I had to go thru this without my therapy of scrapping! Finally, over the last couple of days, I managed to play along in the Progressive Scrap challenge over at the Studio. Not on the regular schedule of days, but with A LOT of patience from Min, whenever I could play, but I got 'em done! Also entered the QP exchange. There were some REALLY NICE pages, so I hope they didn't change them before submitting them as QP. Go have a look in the gallery here

OH! I almost forgot!  Our KA got broken into..... Thankfully, they "only" broke the lock, so we can't leave anything in the car. (Haven't gotten an estimate on fixing it, we're a little short......)  We already had taken the stereo out of it, because it kept falling out anyway, so that's on the hatshelf of the coatrack in the hallway, so what they took, was all there was; the Fuelcard, and the parking permit for Market-day. Neither one is any good to anybody but us, because they are car/base/person bound..... If they were lucky, there was an old broken set of earbuds in the glovebox, but I don't think so.

If you're still reading...... thanks for hanging out with me! And at the same time, sorry for bending your ear this long. Writing the blog is totally opposite of sitting down and writing letters...... There, I think of all sorts of stuff I want to write down, and when I sit down to write come out with nothing as to here, I just sit down to drop a line, and keep everybody posted on what's going on in our little corner of the universe, and I won't stop yacking! LOL.

Well, I hope this found (and left) you in good health and spirit! Don't forget to hug a loved one, (twice if it's a fuzzy roommate) and take care. Hopefully I will be in sooner next time, with less to say :-)

Hugs,

Pauli

YUP! Still kicking :-)

Hi there,

Long time since I've been here, but I promise, I haven't been "idle" LOL.
Mike was off on vacation, and we had plans to go to the beach, Brugge, The Hague, take in some museums in Amsterdam, mainly The Nightwatch and coffee in a sidewalk cafe, maybe a canaltour.... you know, all the things the tourists come to Europe for. And than we found out that there were a BOAT load of activities planned for the 70th Anniversary of Operation Market Garden, and we replanned. We tried cramming every last little bit of things to do in the first week, but ended up doing only a couple, some because everything was going on at the same time, and we just couldn't catch it all, some because we couldn't get any informations as to where/when exactly and some, because we were just tired. LOL. I know Holland is not the biggest country in the world, but when you read: Round Canopy Parachute Drop in Veghel, it's still too big a territory to just drive 147 KM on the off chance that you're actually going to find them. The one group we thought would have an awesome programm to check out, was the worst in actually giving out information. The only people that actually got clued in to the when and where were the re-enactors. I hope the local area had better informaiton that was available to the public, otherwise, I don't think they got a lot of people visiting the site.

My brother-in-law was our main source of information, and he gave us some really good things to go see. One was the building of the Bailey Bridge over the canal in Son. We got up at 4, and were on site at 6. It was AWESOME!!! I caught some really nice pictures....

but I have to say, I'm not happy with the pages I made. The kit, (Boolands and the pictures deserve better, but somehow,  I don't have the vision to put the 2 together on one page. I'll work on them, and you'll see a better version, someday.

After Son, we were going to Groesbeek, they had the screens set around town, and a liberation museum, with a special exhibit on Market Garden. Well, when we got there, the town was not accessible because of Road Closures and the museum was open to invitees only, so that was a bust. After that, we were going to Grave to see the parachute drop at the bridge (according to the website) so we waited, and waited, only to get a text from my brother-in-law, how to get to the actual dropzone. We made it with seconds to spare, but it was cool to see them come down, and hear the roar of the old planes overhead..... A good day, but I could have done without the replanning. Saturday, we went to The Ginkelse Heide (Ginkel Heath) for a 1000 man round canopy parachute drop. It happened, but after we had left, because all indications were that they would not be able to make it. Oh well. Living where we do, there is a lot of history, and we'll just have to figure things to do on our own. 

It WAS a great week though. Saw a lot, learned a lot, and came away with a renewed intrest in my country's history. Not that I wasn't interested in history before, far from it, but having heard the stories my parents told us of what happened during that time, I never wanted to know anything about WW-II. In hearing Mike tell what he knew, without the "personal" interest, other than that his father was in the Navy in the Solomon Islands, and his stepfather was in the Army Air Force, stationed in England, and visiting the War Cemetery in Margraten and Bastogne has raised some questions I want answers to. 

Week 2 was to be "my" week of things to do, but we were both so tired, we went to Hilvarenbeek, Safari Park Beekse Bergen on Tuesday. First off, we sat in a traffic jam for an hour and a half, so we made it there, instead of at 10 when they opened right around lunch time. We took the boat tour first. We thought, to get a feel for what we wanted to go see more in depth, but it turned out, what you saw from the water, was not accessible by foot. It was cool though, so no regrets :-)  We took the walking tour back to the top of the park, and were debating if we wanted to expose our little gumdrop to having animals around it. Especially after we saw this sitting outside the gate. 

Mind you, the lady driving this, either can't drive worth a darn, or the animals use it for batting practice.... Either way, I'd prefer not to put ours in the same predicament.....  I DID like the paint job on it though. Once again proving my point, that whatever you put on a KA it always looks good! LOL

we were too late to do the bus tour, which would have put us out there with the grazing animals, so Mike swore to take me back in spring! I am going to hold him to that. Although I think we saw most of the animals that were on the walking tour, I want to spend a little more time, and do the bus tour. It's really cool. You park the car within the grounds, the gate to the car safari, is right off the parking lot, so you can do the car safari, at any time during the day (or twice, like my niece did) the boats afari and the bus safari are also included in the ticket-price, and there is no limit how many times you do what. So after you walk all day, you can take the bus back to the gate, or you can take the bus out to the bottom of the park, and the boat back up, in any possible configuration, only limited by the time you have in the park. It was fairly quiet, with only a couple of groups of kids going thru with such speed, I don't think they saw half of the animals. The areas where the animals are are quite natural, and sometimes you really had to sit and wait to see them, but it was nice to see happy animals, doing what they're supposed to. (like this lioness)

What was funny about the lions, was that a worker started work on the bridge right next to their area, and the 3 lionesses really got on the alert. 2 were coming in from one side, while the third boldly walked in plain view. Even the cubs were in stalking mode.... That's when you realize that they may be used to people, but they're not tame, by any means.... It was very impressive the see the change come over them form lazy overgrown house-cats, to full-on predators.

I have more pictures, but again... no Mojo to do them justice, so you'll see them, over time.

Friday we went to Leuven, with my sister and brother-in-law. First to see where they lived when they were stationed there for his work, and than to see the town. We have to go back, is all I can say! It was such a neat city. It's not small, but for some reason it has that small town feel to it. People are friendly, and very patient about tourist wandering about from one end of the sidewalk to the other, stopping at the oddest spots to either read a plack, guidebook or take pictures..... For lunch I had mushroom/beer soup....... I know, it sounded just odd enough for me to want to try. I need to find that recipe!

Saturday, we did nothing, because Mike had to go to work on Sunday (bad planning, I know) but even though it wasn't the "doing something every day, seeing things" vacation I wanted, it was good. It is very easy to reign in my wanting to go places, when I see Mike walk in pain, or see him so tired he is asleep at 8 at night.... maybe next year, if we can get into a healthy eating mode on the budget we have.

I DID manage to squeek by and get the Build A Book challenge done over at The Studio. As  promised, it has its own page on the blog. I didn't get to pick up any of the free kits, or even look at the freebies throughout the site, but that's ok. They'll have another birthday next year! LOL

It's time for me to get back to studying. I only have access to the exam until January, and I got stuck on the 5th lesson of 23, so...... I gotta do it. Don't get me wrong, I want to. It is very interesting, and if I can possibly make it a job, and work from home...... I'm home free! 

So, for now, I'm signing off. Glad I could talk to you for a bit. I have missed it, but there seem to be a limited set of hours in a day, and I'm chronically short!

Don't forget to hug a loved one?

Hugs,

Pauli