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Truck Driver: I Am Not Alone Because I Have My Mac Laptop My Trip to the Laundromat For the first time in about 30 years I went to a Laundromat one day this week. I know, I know, I lead such an exciting life, but adventure is where you find it right? There were three things that I found out while I was there. First, you can't wash and dry a load of laundry for 35 cents anymore. Second, more than half the people doing laundry were men, and third, people were very helpful and interactive. I sat and waited for my laundry to finish and listened to the conversations going on around me. One young man was driving a big rig and someone asked him where he was from. He answered that and explained what he did and why. Someone else asked him how he passed the time traveling all alone across the country and he replied, "Well, I'm not really alone because I have my Mac laptop." With great restraint I kept my mouth shut and listened. The young man explained that most of the motels and truck stops have internet connections available for a fee and as soon as he checks in he can hook up and check on his business interests, his family, and sports scores. He also said that in a pinch he could connect to his cell phone and get an internet connection. Someone asked him the inevitable question of why a Mac and he replied that the Mac was the only computer he had ever tried that didn't break down all the time. His next comment was the most profound and is the reason I am writing about this. He noted that no matter what part of the country he was in he always found Mac users to be friendly and helpful. He said: "I don't know what it is, but they don't seem to be interested in showing off how much they know, they just want to help." A Few More Acronyms A couple of readers took the time to write, following last week's column, with more chat acronyms. William and Ralph, neither of whom included their last names, both said that a common acronym is IMHO (in my humble opinion). Ralph also added CUL8R (see you later); IANAL (I am not a lawyer – usually said after shooting ones mouth off about some legal issue); and IMNSHO (in my not so humble opinion). Thanks William and Ralph for your contributions. Organize Your Hard Drive I have written before about the need to keep your Mac organized. I write about this, of course, because it is a problem for me. Lets be honest here, I have a problem keeping my internet Favorites organized, much less my whole computer. After a few months with your computer you will find that you have accumulated a lot of things and it becomes more time consuming to find what you are looking for. At this point it would be constructive use of your time to evaluate the folder hierarchy on your hard drive. Your hard drive is the primary storage container in which your computer keeps all your stuff – the operating system, all your software and applications, and all the files that you create. Think of it as your garage on a bad day. The good news is that the operating system takes care of its own organization in the System Folder. Sub-folders are automatically created for all of its components (control panels, extensions, fonts, preferences, etc.) When ever you drag and drop some things into your System Folder they are automatically sorted to the appropriate sub-folders. Frequently, when moving something to a closed System Folder (meaning the folder is not open) you will receive a small window asking if you want everything put where it belongs. All you need to do is click yes. That's the easy part. The organization of the rest of the hard drive is up to you. The normal behavior of new users is to just accumulate things in one long list of documents. For most people, there are way too many other things to learn first to worry about keeping things organized, but, before long you have this:
An Unorganized Hard Drive This, I am embarrassed to say is only about a fourth of my hard drive before I worked on it. This is that same area after a bit of organization.
A More Organized Hard Drive To see what is in each folder I just have to click on the little caret to the left of the folder icon. The next step then is to organize each of those folders if they contain a lot of stuff. Tip: to move the extraneous files into main folders all you have to do is drag and drop. The same is true once you open any individual folder and want to create sub folders.
If you noticed that the first folder in my list has a different look it is because I created a unique folder icon. If you are interested in doing that yourself you can read about it in a column I wrote last February Would You Like Your Computer To Talk To You? This can fall under the heading of "fun stuff" for most of us, but for those of us with significant vision problems, it can be a tremendous help. Not only can you have your computer read text, you have numerous choices as to which voice you use. For this to work, you have to be using a program that can make use of the Mac's ability to read text. SimpleText is one such program that everyone has at least 5 copies of (go ahead and check using "Find" or Sherlock), so the first step is to open SimpleText. (To find SimpleText select Fine under the File Pulldown Menu and type in SimpleText.) The second step is to add text. Type something in or cut and paste from another text document. (For help on cut and paste refer to the Computing With Bifocals Index.) Third, select the text by holding down the Command key while pressing the "A" key. Fourth, Go to the Sound Menu at the top of the SimpleText page and select Speak All. The computer will read the highlighted text. Hint: remove the >> signs if you cut and paste from an e-mail message. Your very efficient Mac will read them along with the text which is somewhat disconcerting. The voice selection is also under the Sound Pulldown menu. Is this cool or what? If you have ideas related to using your Macintosh for the upcoming holidays that others would like, please take a moment to write me about them. |
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