Had a great couple of times this week with both grandsons calling just to fill us in on what’s going on in their life. Tommy just got back from a Spring Break vacation in Bozeman. One of his college buddies lives there and invited several out for the experience. In about two months he heads off for an internship on a magazine in LA and really seems to have his head screwed on right about his future. Simon called to confirm that as soon as school ends, he wants to come up to spend a week at the lake before he starts his summer job. We discussed such details as him bringing up a kayak and exactly where we’d be fishing. It’s funny, no matter at what age I interfaced with them, I always thought it was just the perfect time in their life to bond. That is anytime after they were old enough to go off camping or fishing with me – age 4+. I know I taught them lots of stuff and it’s neat now to be on the learning side of the relationship. It really makes me feel special when they ask my opinion about something.
Then to put the icing on the cake, Olivia called and asked if I could help her with some algebra. Tom is out of town and she has a test pending and was not too sure of herself. I haven’t done any math tutoring since Chris was in high school so rusty is probably too kind an adjective to describe the current state of my prowess. I looked up material on the internet to see if there was any hope I would understand it and surprisingly, It came back fairly quickly so I took a stab at it. I actually think I was able to shed some light on a few things for her but came away feeling good that she was right on top of it. She has the basics down well.
Had another go at the Apple store. The ear phones that came with the ipod seemed to me to have a broken wire or bad interface that caused it to occasionally drop out. So I took it in and found out in about 3 seconds that the problem was that I wasn’t pushing the connector all the way in. That felt good. But aside from that, I didn’t really feel comfortable with the ear buds that come with it. I have a size 2 ear and they are size 4 ear buds or something. So while I was there it made sense to check out other earphones and sure enough they had an array of fine offerings starting at about $150 on up to some very nice Bose noise canceling headphones. I asked the guy if the bigger headphones would cause the ipod battery to discharge faster. Nope, the earphones are totally powered by internal batteries. Any chance my 10 year old Bose QuietComforts would work – special adapter or something. Not to worry says the Apple dude – your old Bose will work just fine. And they do and are awesome. Bye bye size 4’s. So the cockpit problem with the earbuds saved me a couple hundred dollars. And just for kicks I asked the guy if there was any way he could help get the Appleworks program I have, which is no longer supported, working on my laptop. Turns out the magic program that does just that is on the OS installation disk and he told he how to load that program specifically and nothing else. Haven’t tried it yet but if it works as advertised, that was the best trip to the Apple store ever.
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