I think I've created a monster

Granted, it's a beautiful little 13 year old girl of a monster but a monster none the less. It's funny how my youngest child is so into computers. She's completely confident with them, immediately jumping in when my wife has a problem on her XP based laptop and helping trouble shoot any issues. She, like my other kids, can touch type easily and blazes through tasks on the computer like it's an extension of herself.

My youngest was the one that desperately wanted an iPod Touch for Christmas, loving the fact that it had the built in web browser which she uses all the time. As for PCs she's got an older Dell laptop running Windows XP that's been very serviceable. Now that I've gotten into Macs and my oldest daughter has one she is constantly in my office, scheming to get a MacBook for herself.

"Daddy, look at this one on Craigslist!!!"

"Daddy, the refurbished MacBooks are really inexpensive!!!"

"Daddy, don't you want a MacBook Pro so I can get your MacBook?!?"

It goes on and on. This morning she asked if she could sell the Dell she has to help pay for a MacBook for her. I even offered her the use of the HP laptop, the one with Vista loaded on it that now sits unused on one of our desks, and she declined. "No thanks Dad, I really want a Mac"

For those of you blessed with having 13 year old daughters, I'm sure you can appreciate the pressure that someone so tiny can exert, especially on their fathers.

I knew that when I got my first MacBook that it may lead to some additional expenses if I decided to switch to Macs completely; I just didn't think it would infiltrate other parts of my home so quickly.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I can relate. Just over a year ago, my family of 6 was at 0 Macs. Now we are at 2 iMacs, 3 Macbooks, 1 MacBook Pro, and a Mac Pro (and an experimental hackintosh...). All older PCs became Ubuntu machines running VMWare to support my development/experimenting. Collateral damage is easily justified by the cost savings in just my personal time invested in not having to rebuild machines or clean/reload OS's every 2-3 months.
May 4, 2008 at 11:40 AM
David Alison said…
@JT: I'm going to be swapping out XP with Ubuntu on the older machines as they need to be rebuilt. The latest build is really nice. Sounds like we're going in the same direction man.
May 4, 2008 at 11:50 AM
Anonymous said…
Heh... I can really understand your daughter. :)

Mac is really nice and I, myself, planning to buy a Macbook Pro. :D

I'm very interested in Macs but haven't tried anyone except a few minutes in a store. (Not Apple Store - Nothing like that in Denmark, North Europe) :(

I really enjoy reading your blog but I don't know why you have so much against Vista? From my fathers XP with 254 mb ram, a Vista with 1GB is much better. :)
lol...

I've been Mac-interested in a year, this summer, and still haven't got enough money for a Macbook Pro - for continuation school.

Well, a little 'bout me:
I've build a few sites up, with PHP (and HTML + CSS) and are admin at the official Danish support forum for PHP-Fusion. :) (about 2500 users - and the youngest admin with a total of 15 years)
So love developing. :)

I'm thinking of making some WinApps but since I am so interested in Macs I'll start with that. :)

BTW... Read all your "Switching to Mac" (22) blogs and gonna go with the "Mac" blogs... (Why do you have to blog every day? :p)

Greetings from Denmark,
- Johan aka Josso, 15 year old guy!
May 4, 2008 at 1:24 PM
David Alison said…
@Josso: An admin at 15 for a PHP Forum? Pretty impressive! You are a lucky young man that you have found that you are passionate about this kind of technology so young. Invest some time in learning about object oriented development - best to do that while you are young so you don't have nasty habits to undo when you get older. Heck, you may already be doing it though. Old(er) people like me love giving advice.

I write in my blog nearly every day because I really like sharing my experiences, especially since I've found so much to talk about with the Mac switch. I believe there are a great many people that, like me, are starting to look at Mac as a platform after investing so much time in Windows and the feedback I've gotten on the blog (and the ever increasing traffic) leads me to think I'm providing some valuable feedback for people going through the same thing.

Glad you are enjoying the blog!
May 4, 2008 at 2:06 PM
Anonymous said…
And a little comment to your comment on "Have you used Quicklook?":
@David Alison wrote:
"Heck, this morning I just found out what Option-Shift-K does when you are typing into text! Only appears for Safari users though: " (Dunno if it's show an Apple logo cause I'm using FF)

If you add this to your body-"tag" in your css it will show fine in FF (Mac):
font:normal normal 100% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-Serif,'Lucida Grande';

I've added Lucida Grande to the fonts cause it's one of the only fonts that make a Apple logo with that combination. :)

If you add that line, it will also work on Firefox, Internet Explore etc. on a PC IF the user have the font "Lucida Grande" installed.

It haven't been possible before Safari came to Windows.
Go to "C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources\" and copy the two "Lucida Grande (Bold).ttf" files to the fonts-folder.
And restart Firefox. Know you can see all these Apple-logos AND copy them. :p (Can't make the, yourself)

Maybe you can use this PHP-string to make every Apple-logo to a image, so everybody can see it: (That's what I gonna do on my site)

$string = " iPhone ";

echo $string;
echo "\n<br>\n";
$string = str_replace("", "<img src='http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/blackapple.gif' alt='Apple Logo'>", $string);
echo $string;

OK, I've lent the image from Macrumors. :p
If it doesn't show the Apple logo, the Apple logos html-char is
& # 63743 ; (without space)

Greetings,
- Josso

.......
And while I wrote this and read two articles you have answered. :)

Yes, I'm a bit lucky. :D
May 4, 2008 at 2:29 PM
Brian said…
Your daughter sounds pretty smart to me. You should get her a Macbook, they run everything. A PC is rendered generic, and really can't compete. Plus, the PC is an absolute mess, with terrible support. When comparing PC to Mac it makes no sense to get a PC any longer. I used to be PC myself, but I will never go back.
May 4, 2008 at 4:31 PM
Anonymous said…
"No thanks Dad, I really want a Mac"
That is one smart cookie you are raising there, David. :)

Nicest thing my wife ever said to me?
"Honey, I think you need a faster Mac."
May 4, 2008 at 10:02 PM
David Alison said…
@Brian & Partners in Grime: Yeah, she is a really bright little girl. She also knows how to manipulate her father quite well too - a trait she's learned from her older sister.
May 5, 2008 at 11:11 AM
Unknown said…
Your best bet would be to tell her that the new Macbook/Macbook Pro is coming out soon (new design + specs) and that you'll probably get one of the new ones and give her the old one.

I suspect the new Macbook Pro will look a bit like what the iMac looks like now.
May 5, 2008 at 9:01 PM
Anonymous said…
So daddy have i convinced you enough to get me a macbook?
May 5, 2008 at 9:14 PM
David Alison said…
Uh... no. And it's late - go to bed.

See what you guys are doing? Don't encourage her.
May 5, 2008 at 9:20 PM
Anonymous said…
Gee, thanks for this. With to monsters under 3, I have this and probably more to look forward to 10 years from now. :)
May 27, 2008 at 7:08 PM
David Alison said…
@simplyRik: For all the challenges the "little monsters" present I wouldn't trade them for anything. Under 3? You have plenty of time!
May 27, 2008 at 10:31 PM
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