Mom On the Alert

A VERY GOOD DAY

PAINT ME HAPPY! :-)

Today was a very good day. It was one of those days when it just feels good to be alive. Lots of nice things happened. I will tell you about one of them....

At the Apple Store today, I had another ProCare class with a very nice young man who is quite kind and patient with this slow learning Mom.

Because Pete was out of town, I had no one to carry my computer into the store so that Charles could finish loading and installing the rest of my software. Since this couldn't be done today, I asked Gilbert to show me how to work with Microsoft Word on the Mac.

It appears different than it does on the PC. My stalwart instructor said that he would do his best but he wasn't very familiar with Word. Nevertheless, because Charles is a talented young man, he was able to show me the basics.

I asked how I could set preferences to use a particular font as my default font on Word. Of course, I didn't ask him this question using the right terminology, but since he is used to working with clueless people like me, he translated Judi-ese into the proper words and tried to help. After attempting to do this, Charles finally concluded that it was not possible.

Surprised that he wasn't familiar with Microsoft Word, since this program was even on my ancient Mac, I asked him what program he used to compose documents. He said; "I use iWork", and then proceeded to show me how this program works.

Wow. iWork is wonderful! I ask Charles if I already have iWork loaded onto my computer. He said "No". I asked how I could get it, naively thinking I'd already bought all the software packages I would need. Charles explains that I can buy it for $79.OO. I laugh. Every time I go in for another lesson, I end up spending more money.

I didn't buy iWork today. I decided it would be best to actually start working on the Mac before I buy any new software.

After leaving the store, I passed another Mac Genius, who had answered some questions a few weeks ago. He said "Hi. How are you doing on you new Mac?" I was surprised that this young man even remembered me, and would stop me to say hello. I smiled and answered, "I am learning."

He seemed to want to talk, so I asked him if he knew how to set a default setting for word documents. This young man told me that you can't actually do that on Word. He explained that in Word, the next document will use the last font I used on the previous one. I guess that is the way it always was on my PC. But, how very nice that he didn't roll his eyes, or otherwise imply that I was asking a stupid question. He just helped me remember and understand.

As I said before, Mac People are nice.

Of course, I can just imagine the amusement jokes about their 'interesting' senior students.

So here is my very first post from my new Mac. Unfortunately, the little buttons which allow you to link is missing here so in the end, I had to move over to my PC for this function. Maybe Chales will know how fix this when I go back for my lesson next week. Of course there is always the posibility that my local computer expert can help.

Posted by Judi at February 9, 2006 10:16 PM | TrackBack