Learning the Mac

I am using this blog post to practise working with a Mac laptop we now have. This Mac will help me take a more active role in the production and design aspects of the paper, as well as be a backup if anything ever happens to Vikki's system. I used a Mac in high school and in University for a couple of years until PCs took over everything. So, this is a real adventure familiarizing myself with all the different menus and commands once again. Actually, it is also a lot of fun. Combine this with a Blackberry I recently was upgraded to by my cell phone provider, and I have had to learn a lot of technological things over the past few weeks. But that is okay because I like technology. In this line of work, I don't really have much of a choice!

Internet Problems

Sometimes I feel more like a computer technician than an editor/writer. Today was one such time. This morning, I downloaded a Windows update and installed it onto my computer, as I do routinely. Immediately thereafter, I lost my Internet connection entirely. After spending an hour on the phone with tech support from my ISP, I was told it was a hardware problem. I switched to my laptop and connected via dial up. The same update downloaded and installed and -- you guessed it -- I lost my connection on that machine as well. At this point, I began to think that the problem had something to do with the update so I did a System Restore to yesterday and behold, my Internet was working once again. Apparently, there is a compatibility issue between the update and the ZoneAlarm firewall, which I have installed on both computers. We don't have ZoneAlarm on the office computer, so when I did the update on our computer this afternoon, there was no problem at all. All in all, I basically did little productive at all today except deal with computer issues.