last night i tried to go to the iTunes music store, but couldn’t connect. i kept getting an error message.
what? my mac isn’t perfect?
no, of course not. we had an issue with the isync in kirk’s account that was particularly vexing. but other than that, i’ve had no problems and have done little to no maintenance. 99.9% of my time on the mac has been completely productive.
sometimes i kind of miss pc maintenance–spending hours tracking down a device driver conflict, or manually removing a particularly insidious piece of spyware. the detective work was kind of fun.
yeah, right.
anyway, i was aghast when i couldn’t connect to the itunes store. thought that there was a problem with my mac. fiddled a bit (though there’s not much “under the hood” to fiddle with, to be honest) and nothing worked.
today, i read that the problem is with time warner cable, and nothing to do with apple.
well, of course it isn’t.
in other news, it might be obvious to everyone but me, but i didn’t know about this fun mac activity that i just discovered:
» download a .midi file. you can start looking here. there are .midi files for every song you can imagine.
» open garage band and drag the file into the open window for the new file. it instantly populates with all the tracks and all the instruments.
» fiddle and change the instruments and sounds to your heart’s content. speed it up. slow it down. add a sound loop. hook up a microphone and sing along. send it to itunes and burn it on a cd.
instant rock star, and you don’t have to know how to play musical instrument number one. hell, i can’t keep time with a stick and a tin can. garage band sat on my computer for a year, and i never bothered with it. now i can’t stay out of it.
of course, you could do something constructive for work or whatever with microsoft office too, if you have to. i do that once in a while.
but mostly, i just have a blast, do fun stuff, surf the internet without fear of viruses and spyware and keyboard loggers and such, and generally enjoy myself. when i get a few more songs done, i may just post them for download, so you can see for yourself how easy it is to make good music, if you have some talent. and make music that’s a step above mediocre, if like me you have no talent at all.
i enjoy my mac much more than i used to enjoy a pc.