The Battle is Lost

Well it has finally happened. IT has won the battle and I will be giving up my PowerMac at work. It turns out they found a way to block my MAC address on the network so I am dead in the water via internet. So I'm in the process of switching back to windows (insert sigh here). At least it will be an XP machine with 4gb RAM instead of vista with no hardware power.

So I am beginning to look for windows alternatives to the many Mac apps for which my productivity has come to depend. Here is a short list of what I have found so far:

Mac : PC alternative

Dashboard and Spotlight: Google desktop and sidebar

Adium: Digsby

iPhoto: Picassa

Spaces: I will try microsoft powertoys first

1password: KeePass

Textexpander: Texter

iWork: MS Office (ugh)

Safari: ie7 (IT is blocking firefox, safari and chrome)

garageband: audacity

I am still needing alternatives for: quicklook, imovie, quicksilver, SnapzPro, automator, pdf editing and apple mail (they also block outlook trying to force us into using firstclass).

All in all, I am not alone in thinking our IT department has lost the realization that they are a service department and have become way too controlling.

Easter Egg Hunting

We went to the Citywide Easter Egg Hunt in Decatur Yesterday and the denial I had tried to hold onto was finally lifted. I had tried to convince myself that it wasn't that different here, but when we pulled up to the park and heard the musical entertainment, I was shocked. They were playing countrified gospel music!! Not the obvious choice for a children's event, but I guess it reflects the area.

In better news, at least they had actual eggs (plastic though) for the kids to find instead of the paper cutouts they used in Evergreen Park. They let all of the kids go hunt at the same time, so the bigger kids dominated. Ashley was able to get one egg, but Ryan was to small to get any.

We discussed amongst ourselves ideas to make the hunt more fair, but in the end made our own egg hunt this morning. To paraphrase the commercial, "you live, you learn and then you have your own egg hunt!"