Preparing for the Mac mini Arrival

Yesterday, I spent some time at lunch getting our wireless network hooked up. We've had all the equipment, but had not moved things around to make it happen. I moved the dsl modem and hooked it up to our Airport Express, which we have been using to play music through our stereo. I had to wire up the phone jack behind the TV, but that was a piece of cake. I then had to rework some of the settings. I couldn't find my Airport Express manual, so I pulled one up when I got back to the office and printed the two pages I needed for getting it reset. When I got home, it took all of a few minutes to have it all set up and working. I'm now surfing and blogging wirelessly. Oh, and yes, it does have password protection going, and not the default. I was very glad I did that since we learned this morning that the mini has shipped!

This afternoon I headed out to CompUSA. We decided to get an Apple keyboard instead of using the old keyboard on the even older pc. They're pretty cheap, so it wasn't too much of an issue. I had a $50 gift card burning a hole in my wallet for quite a while now, so I was able to get the keyboard and a new trackball. My out of pocket cost was $3.60, and all of that went to Uncle Sam. I've been seriously thinking about waiting on the trackball to get the bluetooth trackball that MacMice will be putting out in April. Who knows, I may still get it, as our older trackball is just too much hassle. It seems like we're cleaning it every two weeks to keep it working. The new one is a Logitech Marble Mouse, which is optical. Very nice. I use the same thing at work, too. It's a four button trackball, but only costs $20. I've been very impressed thus far with my trackball at work. People are surprised that I don't use a classic one button Apple mouse. The fact is, I hate to use any mouse of any kind. I find the trackball so much easier to use and so much easier on my wrist. The whole thing just flows much better for me. The boys do much better with the trackballs too, so that justifies it even more for me. Now I'm all ready for the arrival of the mini. Plan on pictures showing up on my website very quickly!