Jared made his way up from Salt Lake to spend a couple of days with us. He’s moved out of Denver and has been staying for a couple of weeks with his brother Daryl. On Monday Jared heads northwest planning to stop around Seattle. Then comes the fun part of finding a job and an apartment. This is a good change for Jared and we wish him great luck in his new adventure. He’s excited and energized. An occasional change is good for the soul.

I’m writing this from my new Apple Mac Mini. It finally arrived. Assembly occurred in Shanghai, China. Perhaps that’s why it took so long? Dell doesn’t have much to fear from Apple in the build-to-order and deliver-immediately categories. I ordered Nina’s new Dell computer on a Monday evening and it arrived the following Friday. However, the computer works well. The iPhoto program is very easy to use — until it came time to set up the picture so I could upload it to the blog! I’m missing some kind of a step in that process as I couldn’t get the picture to compress small enough. I found a round about way, but there must be a better method. I have the computer hooked up to a very old 17" monitor and will look to see if I can somehow put this into the computer room and hook it up to my normal monitor. The Apple mini wants a USB keyboard and mouse. My KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch is all set up for Intel-based computers — that is, PS2 type connectors. There are PS2 to USB converters, so I’ll try that out to see if it’ll work. If so, we can use the Mac Mini in the computer room. Otherwise, I’ve got to find another place to put the computer! There aren’t many choices, either, not with a monitor this big and bulky.

That wasn’t the only new toy for the week. For a long time I’ve wanted a digital camera that uses real lenses and works more like a film camera. I’ve had Minolta film cameras for about fifteen years and own their top-of-the-line film camera. Meanwhile, Minolta and Konica have merged and kind of lost their way in the digital camera world for a while. They have finally come out with a terrific digital camera completely compatible with all the Minolta lenses. I finally bought the camera body and it arrived on Wednesday. It’s a great camera and I’m very satisfied with the purchase. Now I need to sell off the other cameras to help pay for the new one! We’ve had just outstanding weather this week and I’m looking forward to doing a little picture taking over the weekend. Who knows, more pictures may end up on the web site!

The disappointing part of the week has been how long it has taken for the motorcycle shop to get the oil changed and the bike checked out. When I called on Monday, they said to bring the bike in and they would get to it as soon as possible. It’s now Thursday and they haven’t started on the bike, yet. Maybe tomorrow?? Next week’s weather is forecast to be much colder with possible snow on a couple of days. That means the bike will stay in the garage and I’ve missed this week of being able to ride it. However, I really don’t have much to complain about, do I? Toys are Great!