Even back then, I was taking myself way too seriously. My uncle had given me the pictured “stick camel” for Christmas that year. That was all fine and dandy, except that my friend Noah had a stick horse. In a demonstration of my characteristic stubborness, I refused to believe that it was a camel. If anyone asked, it was my HORSE, goshdarnit. Can’t you tell it’s a HORSE, people? Only CRAZY PEOPLE would call this a camel.

… And so began the long road to my parents’ gray hairs.

If you have any connection with the Mac world at all, you have probably heard about this tasty little development: Apple has just released a beta version of Boot Camp, an application that allows users to dual boot their Intel-powered Macs with both Mac OS X and Windows XP. In other words, as Apple says, “Macs do Windows, too.” Plenty of people all over the blogosphere have already combed this news up and down, frontwards and backwards, squeezing every iota of meaning that they can out of Apple’s announcement. I don’t have much new to offer to that table, except what this announcement means for me.

I do not have operating system attachments. I like Windows fine. I have tried Mac OS X, and although I am not proficient in it I like it quite a bit too. So I have a little bit of a hard time sympathizing with the people who are screaming bloody murder over the idea of their Macs being blemished by the unholy stain of Windows. But I know you are out there, so if any of you are reading this, consider this: As you may remember, I have been considering the purchase of a laptop sometime this year. I was already leaning towards a MacBook Pro (which would be my first Mac), but Boot Camp has made it many times more likely that I will actually buy one. From my perspective, Apple has sweetened the deal: not only can I get a kick-awesome laptop complete with Mac OS X and all its associated goodies, but I can run my Windows-only software on it as well! I could play Sims 2 on my MacBook Pro! If that’s not grounds for major excitement, I don’t know what is.

As with anything to do with computers, however, this scenario has its own problems. The first and foremost for me is: I don’t actually have Windows XP. That’s right, My computer is still in the dark ages of Windows 2000. (Which are not so dark, really; Mac users always talk about how much Windows crashes, but my operating system has not crashed once that I can remember in three years of owning it. Maybe XP crashes more, but I don’t think so.) I am O.K. with buying a copy of XP, because I would like to upgrade my desktop PC to XP anyway. But… XP’s notorious registration requirements would not allow me to legally install it on both my desktop and my laptop. I suppose I could just put it on my laptop and live with Win 2000 on my desktop, but is it really worth $140 to be able to play Sims 2? (Okay, that wouldn’t be the only purpose… )

I don’t know. But one thing’s for sure: Apple’s release of Boot Camp has only made it more likely that I will end up purchasing their products. Thanks for making it easy for us, Apple. Way to go.

Thank you for the kind gesture, but we’re full up on smelly old shoes here. I don’t mean to be ungrateful; I know that where you come from, the depositing of one’s old running shoes upon the driveway of someone you admire is probably a sign of great affection. Here, it only makes us wonder what kind of foot fungus you are trying to escape.

And, really, what were you thinking? I know it was sunny that day that you left them, but it wasn’t that warm out. C’mon, it’s Oregon. I guess you really just like being barefoot. But did you have to abandon your shoes completely? I’m sure they would have been perfectly happy being carried instead of grinding into the cement step after step.

This just occurred to me. Maybe your shoes left you! I suppose there’s really not much you could have done in that case, if they just refused to walk another step with you. You must have treated them pretty badly to get dumped by your shoes.

But just in case you feel like making up, they’re waiting for you on our mailbox. They may be enjoying their solitary time perched there, but perhaps if you approach them nicely they’ll relent and go home with you.

It’s worth a try.

Sincerely,

– Erin

In case you missed it, the photo of our Performa that I featured in this post the other day was chosen for the unofficial Apple weblog’s rig of the day! I discovered this when I got up this morning and had not only several new comments on the afore-mentioned post, but also dozens of new Flickr comments and literally HUNDREDS of new page views directed from tuaw!

All of this meant that by 2:00 pm, when it was time to go to the dentist for a routine cleaning, my ego was roughly the size of a swollen melon–and growing by the minute. As the smiley dental hygienist started ordering me around and poking me with menacing dental tools, I felt like telling her, “Hey, Lady, you don’t know who you’re dealing with! My photo was featured on TUAW today. I’ve had 300 new hits since breakfast. Can you compete with that?” But instead I just lay there all limp-like and let her shove things around in my mouth.

In addition to a cleaning, I was scheduled for a panoramic X-ray today to look for my wisdom teeth. I’m at that age where we need to start worrying about the little buggers erupting out. Now, I don’t know if you have ever had a panoramic X-ray of your head before, but let me tell you: the dental technicians (or whatever they are) were bored the day they came up with this process. Their thinking must have been along the lines of “Let’s devise a method of X-raying a person’s head that makes them look as completely ridiculous as possible!”, because I don’t think they could have succeeded so spectacularly otherwise. Smiley dental hygienist lady: “Now just walk around behind that machine. That’s right. Now stick your chin on this plate. And bite down on this stick. And put these prongs on the side of your head. And do the monkey dance. There you go! Just one moment.”

So, long story short, I have wisdom teeth. Four of ‘em. And they’re looking ripe. They said it’s not urgent that I get them removed immediately (groan), but sometime this year I need to. So probably we’ll do that this summer–and I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to the days of numb-mouthed puffy-faced drooly eating. Oh joy.

(BTW: Lylium.org seems to have developed a really annoying problem. Everything is fine in Firefox, of course, but in Internet Explorer my right sidebar is being pushed all the way down the page beneath the content. Any ideas as to why this could be? It didn’t used to be this way, but I can’t think of anything I’ve changed. Also, does it look this way in Safari, Mac users? Thanks in advance.) Thanks Phil!

I have now attended four, count ‘em, FOUR wedding showers for Melanie (my brother Brian’s fiance). This is perfectly okay with me, not only because I am very fond of Melanie, but also because I have somehow been designated wedding shower photographer; and any afternoon that I get to spend wandering around with a camera in my hands is a good one.

This afternoon proved to be particularly fruitful photography wise; not only did I get a lot of good shots of Melanie and her shower guests (I didn’t post many of those online), but I managed to snag a lot of photos of other things that I’m quite pleased with. This is probably partially because this shower, which was for her relatives and family friends, was held at her grandparents’ charming farm house in the country.

I have discovered that not only are Melanie’s grandparents some of the sweetest people I have ever met, they also have a beautiful house full of photo opportunities. Her grandmother has lovely vintage collections sprinkled through their home, and just the fact that the property is a farm provides endless character waiting to be photographed.

I have posted my favorite shots from today in a (large) photoset on Flickr. I would definitely encourage you to check it out; I’m eager to share these photos with you. You can see them here.

This Dilbert comic almost had me in tears of laughter: (Sorry for the image distortion, click on it to see the full image.)

I know some of you may not share my sense of humor, but… I had to show you this.

You know how sometimes families will develop a reputation with other families in their community? Not even necessarily in a bad way, just in a “that family’s really outdoorsy” or “Oh, that’s just the family that practices cannibalism,” kind of way.

Well, for better or worse, my family and I have been branded as computer nerds. (I suspect that when we’re not around we’re also known as the ‘boring’ family, but that’s a whole different story.) Whether this is deserved or not I will leave for you to determine, but the fact is that our friends and acquaintances regularly come to us looking for technical advice/salvation, because it is an accepted fact that we Julians are “computer people.” This is partially because for much of my life we have had at least one computer per person in our household; but also because at any given moment the odds of finding us all sitting at our computers are… high.

It seems that my family’s affinity for computers began before either my brother or I were even conceived, because as my parents like to tell us, they spent long nights when they were newly married playing those new-fangled TEXT-BASED ADVENTURE GAMES! (Emphasis added to demonstrate their excitement.) I believe they were also some of the first people they knew to actually get a computer (An Apple, of course), but I wasn’t around so I may not have the details completely straight.

One thing I know for sure is that computers have been a gigantic part of my life for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of computer-excitement is from that fateful night when my parents came home from shopping at Costco. Dad walked in the door with a big cardboard box in his arms, set it down on the table, carefully opened it up, and pulled out… a brand new computer! It was a Macintosh Performa 578, but in my six-year-old excitement, all I noticed was that it was COLOR! Our first color computer! I loved this computer, because it had Kid Pix (which rocked my world like you would not believe) and Mario Teaches Typing and Wacky Jacks.

This little computer served us faithfully for years, but pretty soon my family started switching to bigger, faster, (at that time) better PCs, and they gave me the Performa to keep in my room. So it became the first computer I was responsible for, as well as the machine I used for school reports and on which I designed my first website (The story of my introduction to the internet is worthy of its own post. Let’s just say my tagline is right: I grew up with the internet. ).

Finally, one of my family members upgraded their PC and gave me their old one. So my days as a Mac user were over, and I happily accepted my newer, faster (although still hopelessly outdated) PC. Since then I have upgraded to new PCs several times, but this post is growing unwieldy so I will spare you the details.

Except to mention that three years ago I bought a computer for the first time, which is the PC I still have, and let me tell you: I love it to death. It’s slightly outdated now, but has aged surprisingly well, and with my new monitor it is a thing of beauty. (I told you I’d post pictures of it someday!) So take that, Mac users, PC people can get attached to their computers too.

But anyway, back to how my family is made up of computer geeks… these are the computers that currently make up our household:

• Mine (see above)
• Mom’s (newest computer we have)
• Dad’s (newer than mine, older than Mom’s)
• An old Dell laptop that is rapidly growing decrepit
• The afore-mentioned Performa (Yes, we still have it! It probably hasn’t been turned on in a year, though.)
• An older-than-dirt “laptop” (affectionately known as the “luggable”) that probably doesn’t work anymore.

This is not including my brother’s TWO computers (soon to be three, including his Fiance’s laptop) since he doesn’t live here anymore; but he’s definitely still part of the family, and demonstrates the family computer geekiness.

Now, in a surprising development, this history of family computing may be about to come full circle! For the past six months or so, I have been researching Apple computers. It started because I wanted to upgrade my beloved PC, and the more I looked around the more attractive Macs were looking. I’ve gone back and forth so many times, talked with countless people through countless arguments about why one platform or the other is better. And, slowly but surely, my desire to own a Macintosh has been increasing. I have surreptitiously been reading The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and keeping up on Apple’s latest releases.

It is entirely possible that I will purchase a MacBook Pro later this year. This would be new territory for me in many ways: My first OSX Mac, my first laptop (…my first computer that costs almost as much as my car did =-o…). I want to wait till later this year to purchase one for a number of reasons: First and foremost, I need to save some more money. Secondly, I want to wait until some of the issues that I’ve read about have been worked out. (Computer whine, screen issues, etc.) I’m also kind of hoping that Apple will do a similar deal this year as the one they did last year, where they gave away an iPod with Powerbook purchases. But most of all… I’m just not sure yet. Is it really worth the expense and the hassle of incompatable software? Of not having Photoshop?? I don’t know. But it’s darn attractive. And it would seem particularly fitting, in view of my family’s reputation, to be a bi-platform computer user.

My parents probably never guessed, back when they were staunch Macintosh users, that they would one day be trying to convince their daughter that switching from Windows to a Mac would be too much of a pain. What silly problems and decisions computers have created in our lives… things that we never thought we’d have to think about. But here we are. And, for better or worse…. I am a computer geek. And proud.

Update: My brother tells me that the Performa was actually our third color computer. Oops. I guess that just goes to emphasize the technological-forwardness of my family; but as far as I’m concerned, it was our first one because it’s the first one I remember.