Robert A. Sloan

Yay! This morning I talked to Kitten on the phone, she texted me with a few hours free to game in chat. So I booted up the Mac and warned her about the cursor jitters problem. We brainstormed it while I booted and tried different suggestions.

Then she said "You could put a piece of cardboard or something over the touchpad."

BINGO! That was it! I went back into System Preferences and Mouse/Touchpad and checked something I remembered seeing. Yes, right with the slide for speeds of cursor and double-clicking, I found an option with a checkbox: "Disable Touchpad when Mouse is Present."

I checked that option, it wasn't checked. I plugged in the mouse again. I opened chat and typed... a short line... another short line, again and again. Now I can type like normal. The cursor stays where I put it. The jitters were my hands and thumbs brushing the touchpad and sometimes resting on the part where it left or right clicks. Very sleek touchpad but when I'm typing, it's in a bad place for how I rest my hands on the front of a laptop.

So now I'm back for real! I am so happy with the Mac that I'm probably going to do what I did when I had both a Linux desktop anda PC laptop - open both at the same time and use both for different applications. Depends on the size of the one Nonny's ordering but I might be able to fit two of them side by side on the folding TV table if I don't have USB stuff sticking out of the left side of the right side one. Mac wants to be on the left because its two USB ports are on the left.

I will also now have that happy safety net against virus problems. If I get a virus, I'll still be able to go online to get help in saving the PC. Apples are safer from viruses. For about 20 years I've wanted to have both an Apple and a PC side by side to protect the integrity of my writing backups. Now with the size of these hard drives, they'll protect my photos and art images too.

I also went back to WetCanvas and opened the Weekend Drawing Event tab. I have this week's WDE references out and might sketch them today. It's Sunday. I can relax and enjoy myself and hang out online, will try to snap a photo of it if I do paint or plug in the printer-scanner again so that I can use the scanner. I had it unplugged because I wasn't painting and thus wasn't scanning, but it took power and I was getting power outages on the power line that the computer plugged into. The Mac has to go into that power line so I might want to try putting the printer scanner across the room to go into the other one. It's wireless. It can wait, so I'll probably do that later and just use my iPhone for now.

Let's see... cool things to do that I put off and now CAN do... maybe pull my photos off the iPhone so I can actually take new ones. I have good kitty pics and photos of San Francisco from my first year that I want to save, so I need to do that if I'm going to clear it out. That'd rock. I need to look at the hard drive and see where photos go or how to route them to a good folder. Make a folder for them somewhere and figure out how to get them into it.

With only two USB ports, I do need to get a USB hub. I know that might not be that expensive though. It might be worth making an expedition on a good day to get one from a store where they'd be cheap rather than pay shipping to buy one online, if I find one that's affordable. I will have to check my budget and decide - and till then just swap out the key drive for the iPhone charger making sure I do have enough charger time the phone doesn't run down.

It should be happy compatible, they're both Apple things. :D