We got snow! Genuine, honest-t0-goodness snow! I woke up one Saturday Morning a couple of weeks back and...surprise!...the ground was lightly dusted with the white, fluffy, cold stuff.
This wasn't a huge amount of snow, let me tell you. Most of the grass was still very visible, and the cars had so little on them that none of the windows were remotely covered over. You would not have felt compelled as a Michigander to brush your car off.
A quick swipe of the wiper blades would be all it needed.
Still, as a spectator you could be forgiven for thinking (probably very reasonably so) t
hat those playing in the snow had never seen a flake of it in their lives. Even Helen, my darling wife, was so excited by the mild spit of slightly-more-than-frost that I thought she'd n
early join in the festivities. All the same, it was lovely for a bit of a reminder of the States.
In other news, we finally replaced Helen's 8 (-ish) year-old PC with a brand-spanking-new iMac. Okay, in all actuality, it's a certified refurbished iMac...but that doesn't matter. It's barely worth mentioning except to point out that it saved me 18% and cost me nothing in regards to quality or performance.
The Apple Shop has a section with what they call certified-refurbished products. I was after a 20" iMac - the version with the slightly beefier video card with 256MB of memory rather than the standard 128MB. Normally, this would cost me £949. However, it cost me less than £800 via the refurb.
I have the luxury of having shipped an iPod Mini off to Apple USA a couple years ago for a duff battery. The little gem they sent back to me was in better shape than the iPod I shipped to them! Truly, it was in new condition. Not a fleck of dust, not a scratch on the paint or the screen...not a finger print to be seen. It had the little plastic protectors you have to peel off a new product. Indeed, if I set this little iPod Mini which was 'refurb' next to a brand new iPod Mini, I defy anyone outside an Apple technician from telling me which was which.
Such was the case for the iMac. It came in special packaging which denoted its 'certified refurbished' status - that is, it was in a plain brown cardboard box instead of the printed Apple boxes, and it had a white sticker on the outside with the Apple logo and said "Certified Refurbished" on it.
But that's where the differences ended. Inside, you got the same foam packaging to protect your new baby, the same keyboard box and keyboard, the same 'mighty mouse', the same printed materials and software. And once again, like the iPod, the iMac had the plastic peely bits that we all love on new electronics.
It is immaculate and it's mine...er...ours. Of course I jest...it's a family computer. Helen's PC desperately needed replacement and she was kind enough and trusting enough to take the Mac leap with me.
Now that I've installed MS Office for Mac '08 to give her a bit of a 'safety net' of sorts, I don't see us ever turning back.
Not much more to tell, really. We'll keep y'all updated on the baby news as it happens!
~Jer
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