murrays

I am looking at getting that game for my sons..who are 7 and 9....but am hesitant because of the Teen rating on it. Would it really be inappropriate for kids their age??? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

New batteries aren't that expensive. For example, 5th Gen replacements from Newer Technologies are 19.99 and 27.99 for the 30 and 60gb models. They come with tools to open the case. I replaced the battery in my 2nd gen iPod a couple years ago with one of their kits and it was quite easy. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I see a thread on Apple discussions that seems to be blaming the firmware....if you are using Firmware 1.2.1 this might be the source of your problem. You can check the firmware version by going into "Settings" from the main menu and then going to "About". The Version number will tell you what firmware version you are using. What model of iPod do you have? How long have you owned it? How long has it been exhibiting this behavior? Did this just start occurring? If it is still in warranty have you called Apple? Do you live near an Apple Store? What have you tried already? Have you been letting it get very low by using it for a long time before recharging it? Other suggestions I saw on the Apple discussions recommend letting the iPod battery die completely, recharge, let it die completely and recharge to recondition or reset the battery somehow. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I got that photo in an e-mail this morning...don't know anything else about it. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Good on ya for coming in the winter! Make your first stop Mountain Equipment Co-op in Vancouver to buy lots of good winter clothing. As long as you're dressed for it there is lots to do in winter.... Ski, snowshoe, snowboard, snow kiteboarding, snowmobiling, ice skating, ice fishing, snowmobiling, dog sledding, etc,etc. This morning in Saskatoon: minus 30C and the windchill made it feel like -40....my sons turned down my offer of a ride to school and walked. Be sure to check out the attached when you pass through Edmonton... back yard rink with a home-made Zamboni machine (for resurfacing the ice) 'Shell would be proud! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

You have to get off the TransCanada highway when you are in Saskatchewan ...Cypress Hills, Grasslands National Park in the south, Prince Albert National Park and thousands of other lakes in the north of the province. Lots of beauty in this province and no dang mountains blocking the view!! As mentioned by others, if you have no experience driving in snow, ice, blinding blizzards....most of this country isn't for you until May...three weeks ago we had an incredible blizzard in Saskatchewan...4 people died after abandoning their stuck vehicles and trying to walk to shelter. I believe you can still take a Via Rail train from Vancouver to Toronto/Montreal. I have done this trip many, many times by train and by car. The train can be a fantastic way to see Canada...head down to the dome car, get a seat up top and watch the country roll past. I've lived and worked everywhere in Canada except the Maritimes and far north...it's all good! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Do a search for Hamachi....I believe they have Windows and OS X client software. It might do what you want. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Take a look at Parallels and also vmware offerings. Parallels sells software that allows you to run Windows, Linux, whatever in virtual machines on a Mac and I think they have other similar products for running virtual machines in Windows as well. VMWare is also a big name in virtualization software so they also likely have what you would want. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Interestingly enough, my first son was also born on January 26th...31 years ago! Where did the time go indeed??? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Canadians can get personalized stamps printed through Canada Post. It costs about double the face value of the stamp. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Here's the link to the latest OS X Pro Tip. Apple puts these out every week and I often learn something useful. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Here's a couple of other programs and ideas you may find handy... I use a program called Cocktail to run periodic maintenance routines. There are quite a few others available..Onyx being one that comes to mind. I also use a program called Overflow to reduce the amount of clutter in my Dock. This allows you to set up categories for different types of programs and keep aliases to them i.e. - I have Utilities, Video, Audio,Databases, Photo and Web categories. Photo to Movie is an incredible utility for creating "Ken Burns" type pan and zoom movies from still photos. It's a bit more expensive than I'd like but it really does a wonderful job...way better than what you can do in iMovie. It does a far better job of rendering to video. If you want to keep track of your DVDs, CDs, DVDpedia and CDpedia are put out by the same software house. For making backups....I think SuperDuper! is a wonderful piece of software. I use this with an external Firewire drive to backup my work iBook. It will allow you to create a bootable copy of your entire hard drive. I use this religiously for my work machine at this time of year as I am so busy getting the tax and accounting done for the group of companies I handle that I cannot afford to lose a day or two in the event that the hard drive in my iBook crashed or if it were lost or stolen. All I have to do is connect the Firewire drive to another Mac, go to system preferences - Startup Disk and select the System Folder on the external drive and restart and I am working on my iBook right where I left off at the time I did the backup. Depending on what you are using your Mac for...this could be a lifesaver. While we're on the topic of backups...be sure to backup your iPhoto library to DVD/CD from time to time. It is easy to do...just select Library in the left pane of iPhoto and then click on Share..Burn and follow the instructions that follow. Store the disk in a safety deposit box or your office or someplace. If you note the date you do the initial backup (Say January 15, 2007) you can then create a Smart Album and set the condition as: Date - After January 15, 2007 and it will accumulate all photos taken after the date of your backup. Then you can burn that to disk at a later date and you will have an incremental backup. You can also burn backups of all the Purchased Songs from the iTunes store in a similar manner. Wise thing to do from time to time if you buy music from iTunes. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Thanks for the screen grab reminder...there's also key combos that give you some more options...very handy if you do this a lot but I can never remember them. Here are the instructions I found on another website: Taking Screenshots on the Mac The Mac has a builtin screenshot capability. All you have to do is use these key combinations to take your screenshots and follow the directions above for Elements or Photoshop to open the screenshot in the program. These are for Panther as it is the only Mac OS I have experience with. Capture the entire screen: Command-Shift-3 The entire screen, dock and all, will be captured as a PNG file called Picture1.PNG and placed on your desktop as soon as you press the key combination. If you have your sound turned up, you'll hear a camera shutter as the screen capture is made. This does not capture the cursor. Capture a region of the screen: Command+Shift+4 The cursor will change to a crosshair cursor. Click and drag to capture the area you want. If you have your sound turned up, you'll hear a camera shutter as the screen capture is made. A PNG file will be placed on your desktop. This does not capture the cursor. Capture a window or dialog box: Command+Shift+4+Spacebar The cursor turns into a camera and highlights each dialog box or menu as you roll over it. When the one you want to capture is highlighted, click. If you have your sound turned up, you'll hear a camera shutter as the screen capture is made. The cursor will not be captured. A PNG file will be placed on your desktop. Capture a region and send it straight to the clipboard To take a screenshot that goes straight to the clipboard so you can paste it into a document, use Command+Control+Shift+4 and you'll get the crosshair cursor. Drag to define the screenshot area, and you'll hear the camera shutter sound, but softer this time. You can then paste this at the insertion point into a text document in Word or TextEdit with Command+V, or use the methods above to paste into Elements or Photoshop. Murray

Lots of good program suggestions....Here's a couple of little things you might find helpful.... 1 - Open a Finder window by clicking on the Finder icon (far left in the Dock) clicking on Macintosh HD and then dragging the Applications folder to a position to the right of the vertical divider of the Dock. This will allow you quick access to all your programs by either clicking and holding or right clicking on the folder in the Dock. 2 - Set up a downloads folder for your web browsers (I use Safari, Firefox, Camino and Omniweb) and do the same thing with it. 3 - If you have files you use constantly, create a folder to contain aliases for all of them and put it in the Dock as well. 4 - Drag the System Preferences icon from the Application folder to the Dock. 5 - Any other folders you use a lot...like Movies or Documents...drag it into the Dock (Right side) 6 - hold down the Control, option and command keys and press the number 8 key...then do it again to reverse the effect. 7 - Hold down the shift key and then minimize a window...do the same in reverse. 8 - Learn how to use Smart Folders in iTunes...and in Mail 9 - F11 clears all open windows to the side so that you can see your desktop. 10 - Go to Mac101 on the Apple website and check out the numerous tutorials. Enjoy!!!! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I read quite a few blogs regarding computers and computing. I don't read any on-line diary type blogs but, in some circumstances, they are very useful. For example, my wife was diagnosed with leukemia nearly a year and a half ago and I used a blog as my way of keeping friends and family up-to-date. It saved me answering the same questions over and over again. When my wife went to Seattle for a stem cell transplant, her sister/primary caregiver took over the blogging duties and then my wife learned to do it herself. It's an easy way of keeping people informed without them having to impose on you. Personally, I am very grateful that sites like Blogger exist and make it so easy and inexpensive to do what we did as it was very helpful to us. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I think the Saints and Patriots. I'm cheering for the Saints to win....or the Bears if they make it. I don't like Peyton Manning and I'm sick of the Patriots being in the big game. Unfortunately the Chargers beat themselves and ensured that one of the teams I didn't want to see in the Super Bowl will be there. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

If you have folders set up for specific events/categories, etc. here's a couple of thoughts/suggestions...this assumes you're migrating from a PC and have burned your directory structure, etc to a CD/DVD... 1 - set up a new folder/album in iPhoto with the same name/category. Drag the photos from inside your existing folder and drop them on the album/folder you just created in iPhoto...they will be imported into that folder and into your library. Easy way to keep your photos organized how you already have them. 2 - Set up your key word categories and take the time to go through your whole library and apply them to each photo. You can then easily find every shot of a particular person, etc by clicking on the key icon at the bottom left and selecting the keywords you want to see. I spent several evenings getting my library caught up and now take a minute or two every time I import. If you have an existing iPhoto library, you can use a program like iPhoto Buddy to switch between it and a new iPhoto library that you create. I have 6 different iPhoto libraries. Every year or so I create a new one when the numnber of photos starts slowing things down (I have a 4 1/2 year old flatpanel iMac which is pretty slow compared to the new machines) If you have an existing iPhoto library, create folders with the names you want to save and export the photos into each folder. Then, either burn to disk and import onto your new machine or boot the old machine as a firewire disk (Hold down the T key when you boot it up) and drag the photos into you new iPhoto folder/album (same idea as # 1 above) I'm not completely sure I understand your situation but I hope this gives you some ideas that will help you out. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Haha! I have a framed picture of myself packed away somewhere under my Cobra 10 and it is the very same color pattern. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Google truly knows all! Thanks for telling me what I should have tried to begin with. Paddy has a very interesting life, leading treks of all sorts in the wilds of Australia and very involved in fostering a camel industry in Australia. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

The second year I was jumping, 1981, an Aussie by the name of Paddy McHugh spent a couple of weeks at our dz in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Paddy once rode camels across the Outback in Australia and was on the cover of National Geographic. He was a fun guy and he taught me how to pack a square. Anybody know anything about him? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

A couple of bits of information released today... the Core 2 Duo MacBooks will be upgradeable to 802.11n wireless ... just a firmware/software type upgrade using software included with the new 802.11n Airport extreme base station. Office 2008 for the Mac will be released second half of 2007. It will be a Universal Binary 802.11n is way faster and has greater range than the present wireless standards. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Canada also has no TSO type requirement. I know several people up here that jump rigs they built themselves. There are a few people up here building skydiving rigs commercially. For the most part...no problems but I know a guy that built a rig who didn't do the chest strap sewing properly and it came off on opening...probably lucky we were doing a crw jump when it happened. It wasn't a problem with the design of the rig...it was a problem with the construction...he just forgot. Which is possible with any manufacturer. Does the TSO actually protect people? Good question but I doubt that we would ever see it change when extending a repack cycle provokes furious debate. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Very similar to what he says. My first square was also a Cobra 10, after one jump on a Para Plane Cloud that had been modified and relined to Strato Cloud specs. If it opened hard I wouldn't know, it didn't feel any different from any of the other canopies I jumped back then. The biggest beef with the Cobra 10 was its shitty construction, the things started to tear out at the load bearing ribs very quickly. Mine started to tear after just sixty some jumps, so I sent it back to Para Flite for a free repair. another forty or fifty jumps and it was tearing again. That time I sent it back to National after an angry letter resulted in a cash settlement. I used the moeny to buy a Pioneer Viking Superlite (230 ft 7 cell), which I was very happy with. As one of my friends put it, "Final score is: Cobra 10, People Zero !" (By the way, the Cobra 10 came and went in 1978.) It opened so hard that I couldn't sit up in bed the day after making a couple of jumps...I'd have to roll over to the side of the bed and push myself up. In fact.....likely in conjunction with the shitty construction you mention....the guy that I sold it to had it explode over his head on its last jump. It ripped practically in two. Good riddance. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I owned one. It was the first square I owned. Opened hard, landings....not good but I only had 1 jump on a StratoCloud before I started jumping the Cobra! I replaced it with a Pegasus. I remember landing the Pegasus for the first time and thinking why did I wait so long to replace the Cobra. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

More than Apple fans are excited about it....Apple shares were up $7.10, 8.3% on the day! My boss has a Treo that cost about $600 CAD when we bought it 3 years ago. The iPhone would likely be a million times better for him as he is technology impaired....and he wouldn't flinch at the price for a moment. If it is easier to use for websurfing, e-mail, etc....and it looks like it is very easy to use...he would buy one in a heartbeat. He travels a lot and the difficulty of using his Treo for internet stuff prevents him from using it for that purpose. I'm not a big phone user. I carry around a cell phone for the occasional call every day or two so this wouldn't be something I'd buy. But, I'd buy a new iPod with the widescreen and touch technology of the iPhone....and you know that is coming! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey