Blogging Accoutrement

Our blog, brought to you by Jessie and Tom, with this sweet gear:

Jessie's Laptop - a 3+ (almost 4) year old MacBook.  After 4 years of trying with various Windows laptops and desktops, I dished out the money for a Mac (since I still had my 10% student discount - woohoo!).  By the way, if you are a college student or have one in the house, check out their Apple deals.  Typically, most universities offer a 10-15% discount on Apple products (well, at least I know they do that for computers).  Lo and behold, it's still running after almost 4 years.  Plus, I have this pretty sweet guy in my life that decided to upgrade my hard drive to something pseudo-big so I could actually have more than one tv show and several pictures on it at once.  Yes, I know they have online storage for pictures and I do use Picasa, but I haven't been able to figure out how to link the web address from the online albums to the blog....and I thought I was fairly good at internet-type things.  Argh for always setting my privacy settings to make myself invisible!

After several years of having this great Apple Protection Plan for my computer, which lasts for 3 years, I could not get any chips or cracks replaced for free.  Therefore (yes, I know it is late), I actually got a silicone cover to protect my keyboard, especially since Optimus sheds a bit and his hair gets all up in my keyboard.  Gross, I know.  Anyway, I am in love with this cover.  It took forever to find since my laptop is moderately elderly compared to the current technology of the day, but after some sleuthy detective moves, I found one that wasn't clear or white.  If you just so happen to have an older 13.3" MacBook like mine and you LOVE pink silicone keyboard covers, you can find them here on Amazon.  While Amazon lists theirs for $9.99, you can get them new from the "Used" list for $2.75 plus shipping, which is about half of what it costs to buy directly.

Tom's MacBook Pro, which he got about 3 years ago.  At that point in time, we were in a VERY long distance relationship between North Carolina and Michigan.  Video chatting was weird to me (think Skype), but we needed a better way than talking on the phone every now and then to quell the 2 month breaks between seeing each other.  Enter the iChat feature.  With built in cameras, we used mac's version of AIM (iChat) to be able to see each other face to face even when we weren't together.  3+ years later and his computer is still holding up like a champ. 

 

iPhone.  *Deep breath and pause*  Yes, we are those yuppies...but only in that way...I hope.  Nearly ALL of the pictures we use in our blog are taken with the cameras on our phones.  They even take video, which you may have seen in the post showing our buzzing bees.  In the next few days, I am going to be including a tutorial on how to make a coat rack which will include that exact video feature. 

Of course I am one of those people who has a puppy picture of my dog on my screen.  Optimus was a cute little one.  He looked so fierce and majestic.

So this is the equipment we use.  Well, the aforementioned and these: 

Yes, my incredibly dirty, grody, gross fingers that I use to type out the blog posts.  Also, I may have mentioned in the "Manic Monday" post that I busted through the platinum prongs on my wedding ring and lost the diamond.  Well, we found it next to Optimus' food bowl (the weirdest thing, I swear) and got it all fixed up.  Plus, you can see my pretty thrift store ginormous costume jewelry. 

Before you judge about the Apple products, let me just say it has been the right decision for me.  All of my products have lasted SO much longer than any non-Mac item.  Plus, I like to use the photo editing, video editing and music composing software that comes built in with the computer.  Every now and then, I bust out my guitar and open up "GarageBand" to rock out and record a few songs.  My thesis was composed in my video editing program and all of our wedding photos were edited through iPhoto (as well as every other event in the last 3-4 years).   In the last few years, I've convinced my brother, sister and dad to go Apple.  I'm still working on my mom though.  

Jessie

Currently Listening to "Tennessee Flat Top Box" by Johnny Cash