Evan Agee: Live from Richmond Indiana

As you may or may not know, I’m taking a business law class this semester in school. So far it has been more like a general law class with the majority of the discussions and examples being unrelated to business. However, that has made things very interesting. I’m constantly amazed at how many people have absolutely no sense of social etiquette.

The man that teaches the class is a lawyer from Ohio, and has been for over 25 years, so he knows his stuff. You would think that any average adult would understand that he is teaching the class in order to bestow his knowledge of the law to us, and that he’s not there to give legal advice during class. One would think. However, that has somehow escaped a few of the students in the class. There’s a woman in the class that is probaly in her 30s or 40s that is constantly asking for personal counsel. You’d also think that a person would want to keep their private life PRIVATE, but not her. Every once in a while the instructor will be talking about a particular aspect of the law and all of a sudden she’ll pipe up and say something like "so, okay. My husband and I were being sued at one point and…". It’s crazy. She’s mentioned at least 3 different time that her and her husband have been sued. Only in good old Indiana.

Another great case was a 19 or 20 year old guy in the class. He looks like he’s probably into hunting, beer, women, beer and beer. He’s sitting there in class silent the whole time when all of a sudden he raises his hand and asks if there is "any way to remove a felony from your permanent record". The class got uncomfortably quiet and everyone just looked at the instructor as he squirmed under the question. Good stuff.

The class has been very interesting though, I’ve learned a lot about how the legal system works and all of the various things that you would expect to learn in a law class. There’s no homework and all of the exams are take-home, but they’re also essay questions, so it’s going to take some time to finish.

With a possible Apple computer purchase on the horizon I found myself in a bit of confusion on the upcoming switch to Intel processors. For those who aren’t familiar with this news, the basic story is that Apple, after using IBM processors for quite some time, has decided to switch to Intel processors. The switch begins in the early summer of 2006 and should end by the end of 2007. So, with my mac purchase being somewhere around January I had to ask, should I just hold off and wait until the switch happens and buy a mac then? It wasn’t as easy to decide as I thought it would be.

There are a few things that I have to consider. First the pros of buying now:

1. The current PowerMac line is increadibly fast, even at it’s lowest model. I believe that I can get buy with a dual 2.0Ghz machine thank you. Even though the primary motivator for Apple’s switch seems to be processor speeds, I don’t think there’s really that much different between the current G5 chips and the current Intel chips.
2. Even after the switch, most all software released for macs will be compatable with both the IBM and Intel chips. It’s not like I’m going to be left in the dust wishing I had the Intel mac. Most are saying that Apple would be forced to support the IBM macs until around 2009. By then my computer would be a candidate for replacement anyway.
3. The current PowerMac G5s are tried and true. They’ve been on the market long enough to have the bugs worked out and have been found to be very nice machines.
4. Most are saying that the PowerMac line won’t be updated to include Intel processors until the end of the transition in 2007. This means rather than waiting a few months for my purchase I could likely be waiting more than two years. Yikes!
5. There is an old rule that I haven’t seen mention of in a while: Never
   buy revision A of Apple hardware. How this applies in the x86
   transition is going to be interesting to see, but in the past Apple’s initial releases of new hardware have been plagued with problems. Most will remember the iBook recall issues a year or so back. I don’t want to be party to such a fiasco.
6. Apple has said that they’re planning on releasing more IBM-based hardware before the transition is complete, so they’re obviously not planning on abandoning all of the IBM users out there if they’re going to release new IBM hardware before and during the transition.
7. Apple’s next OS release, Leopard, will be supported by the IBM models. This means that Apple must support all IBM machines until around at least 2009.

The pros of waiting to purchase an Intel based mac:

1. Having the newest hardware Apple offers. This is one of those hidden benefits that often takes a stronghold on me. Many of us want to have the newest, best version of everything. This is especially true of me when it comes to computers.
2. The ability to have a dual boot Mac/Windows system. As much as I hate Windows, it’s a necessary evil for the time being. It would be nice to have Windows running on the same machine and have the ability to load Windows-only software.
3. There are going to be some overall hardware improvements coming with the Intel macs. Speculations include: PCI Extreme, new motherboard designs, DDR2 memory, etc.

Personally for me, I’ve decided to purchase a current IBM system rather than hold off and purchase an Intel system. If you’d still like to read some other opinions, here is a good thread posted on MacSlash about this topic. It answered many of my questions.

Last night I decided to take some photos over at the high school next to our house. After a little while I heard some boys skateboarding in another area near the high school so I went over and asked them if I could take some pictures while they were skateboarding. I needed something more interesting to photograph than the school building, and thankfully they said yes. They seemed very excited to have someone that was interested in their skateboarding. I guessed that they probably were used to being ignored or told to get off of the school property when they were skateboarding.

Most of my photos didn’t turn out to well because of the light, but I really love this one. One of the guys sat down to rest for a while and I snapped this photo.

Once they were done the other boy asked me if I would be willing to help him film a "sponsor me" video (whatever that is). I told him that I would and gave him our phone number and then he went home.

Yesterday I had some free time in the afternoon so I decided to drive around out in the country and take some photos. There are few things I love more than being out in the middle of nowhere and feeling the quiet around me. I drove to Abington and found a road that I had never been down before so I went down it. The road continued for some time and I was soon in an area that I had never been before. The excitement of being lost was starting to set in and I knew before long that I would be at the mercy of the constant left in order to find a road that I was familiar with.

I got out into the deep country where the roads weren’t so smooth and eventually came across an old school building that I had never heard of. I turned left at the school building and continued down the road and eventually I started to recognize some things. A few minutes later there I was, back in Abington.

I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I expected. One thing that I’ve noticed lately is that my eye is improving. Before I would find anything that looked at all interesting and then take a photo of it, thinking very little about how to frame the shot. Yesterday I found myself not even stopping at some of the places that I would have photographed before. I did see a horse out in pasture, and I couldn’t resist taking some pictures. They turned out rather well, and I’ll have them on here soon.

I’ve been going through my gallery lately as well to try and get rid of some of the photos that don’t serve a purpose or are generally just ugly. I really want to improve as a photographer and the way to do that is to keep taking pictures, so I need to make room.

On somewhat of a whim, Kristen and I decided to start scrapbooking this weekend. We went out and bought some supplies (including a photo printer) and sat down most of Sunday Afternoon and worked on a scrapbook to try and capture some of the memories we have.

The photo printer we bought has been so much better than I could have hoped. It was less than $200 and it makes prints that are every bit as good as the ones I would get from photo place. It is able to print at various sizes and doesn’t require being hooked up to our computer to work so I can sit at the dining room table and print photos for the scrapbook.

We’re planning to work on it whenever we have a chance (we’re planning to work on it tonight) and so far we’re having a great time doing it!