"Steve"

For the last..oh I dunno... several months...I've been really wanting a Mac, but I've REALLY been starting to voice it within the last three months. Over the years, I've been a faithful PC owner in which I've ignored some of their troubling issues. Which issues, you ask? Mainly when I have to deal with daily updates / downloads..when Internet Explorer / Firefox / Chrome (as of late) like to freeze up my applications (again, daily)..it gets rather frustrating. I guess you can say the icing on the cake was when Eric helped me pick up a Toshiba laptop a few months ago (here's that post).. "hate" isn't a strong enough word to describe how I feel about that thing. Anyway, onward..

Due to the joy of living overseas, I don't want to deal with paying for an iMac via euro since it'd be PAINFULLY more expensive than if I bought it online and had to ship it here. So, I went through my regular source for shopping, which is good ole' reliable AAFES. If you know me OFF of the internet, you heard about the lovely experience I've had with them over the past two weeks...so I won't need to go into detail about the amount of frustration they caused. All I gotta say is...lots of persistence finally paid off because I now have Steve:

Ahhhhh, I'm so inlove! I was so torn between getting the 21.5 inch monitor and the 27 inch..after debating long and hard, I went with the 21.5 inch screen (and I'm SO glad I did)  because I have a pretty limited amount of space on my desk. The 21.5 inch fits on my desk PERFECTLY without having to fiddle with the height setting or possibly having to raise the top hutch to accommodate the larger screen. Whew! Plus, I got the model with the 1 TB hard drive, so I won't have to worry about storage space for all my pictures..at least for a while. Since I'm so used to moving all of my files over to a passport drive, I think I'll just keep with that routine for the sake of ..well, routine. 

When you buy the iMac directly from Apple, they give you the choice of whether you want the wireless keyboard or wired, as well as a mouse or wireless Magic Trackpad. Since I bought mine through a retailer here, I automatically got the wireless keyboard as well as a mouse. Call me a fuddy duddy, or someone who is used to working with numbers, but I opted to buy the 10-key keyboard because I CAN'T stand to use the numbers on the top of a regular keyboard. When I use the 10-key, I just fly with my numeral inputs and roll onto whatever else I'm typing out. 

I also opted to get the Magic Trackpad which replaces the standard looking "mouse" that a usual desktop has. This thing is SO cool! It responds to your finger movements and allows you to scroll like normal, flip through pages, zoom, rotate things while editing, etc. I already love that 10x better than a mouse :) 

I love love love love love my new toy! Ahhhh!! I gotta remember to take some breaks and interact with my family cause it's so cool to fiddle with all the new options this thing has. Not to mention, it's so preeettty!!! When we finished setting it up last night, Eric gave me a kiss on the head and told me, "Love you very much. I'll see ya in a few weeks", lol. Poor guy knows I'm going to be sucked into this thing like a black hole till I get the hang of it! I really can't wait to figure out how to use it's photo editor program!! EEEEEE!!!

Oh..and Piper is displeased with the amount of attention "Steve" has received since he's been here. 

Brat.