My Good Friend

My school runs on a quarter system. Each quarter is 10 weeks. It’s brutal. It seems like every minute of my day is spent doing work. Especially week 10. Only my peers know the pain that we all feel the last week of class, and the lack of sleep that ensues. But this quarter, I really have to take some time out to thank a good friend of mine that helped me through the last week and into the summer – it was my Mac.

Corny? Yes! Realistic? Completely. As an New Media Publishing major at RIT I am constantly working on my computer. This quarter I dabbled in FileMaker Pro, Macromedia Flash, Movable Type, and learned about high-end printers from the Xeikon to the Kodak Nexpress. Is that enough tech jargon for you?

Each project I was able to complete with speed and ease because I had a Mac. During presentation time I wowed all of my classmates with Keynote 2. Suddenly their PowerPoint slides didn’t have the same zing that my preso did. Pages brought my reports to a new level, allowing me to easily produce a good looking report without spending hours tweaking the typography and design of the layout.

So as summer rolls around and I can foresee the endless barbeques and good times in the future, I want to say thank you Apple, and thank you to my Mac for making this quarter a lot easier for me. I know we’ll be hanging out together soon.

— Sarah Friedlander @ 10:35 am

Graduation

I’m graduating tomorrow. I can’t believe it. I can’t remember a single time in my life previously when I’ve felt so sad and so exhilarated at the same time. I am thrilled to be entering the real world, starting a job, etc. But I am sad to leave behind a place, a group of people, and a time in my life that I have loved so much. There’s no getting it back.

I was thinking earlier today about the answering machine message my roommate and I used during our freshman year. It was a quote from “Ghostbusters.” One of the characters is complaining after he’s been thrown out of the university where he taught:

“The university was great. They gave us money and facilities, but we didn’t have to produce anything. I’ve worked in the private sector. You don’t know what it’s like out there. They expect results.”

Of course, we had to remove that message as we got older and needed to sound professional when potential employers called. Still, it sums up for me everything that I’ve loved about college. And having to replace with a bland, traditional message so that I could be taken seriously sums up all the scariest parts of being forced to enter the “real world.”

— Stephen Jendrazak @ 10:04 am

Graduation time! Got gift ideas ready?

Graduation day is just around the corner for both college and high school seniors alike. It’s about time to be thinking of something cool to give for presents for graduating friends and family. Instead of doing the mindless “Con-GRAD-ulations” card and cash bit– or worse, teddy bear with a mortar board hat on, try something that will get loads of reaction for the smallest effort: a photo book using iPhoto 5. My good friend’s little sister is graduating high school this year, so a perfect opportunity is here to give this book-making a spin. She’s digging up some older, memory-type photos that still need to be scanned in, and sorting through her iPhoto library for the perfect shots. (That’s the hard part.) The easy part will be making the book! Once she has all of the images picked, putting the book together is just dragging and dropping the photos into the order she wants and typing little text blurbs. A few clicks later and a completely custom keepsake will be in the mail. Easy to do, totally unique, and absolutely thoughtful.

— Kelly Alford @ 10:04 am

Seniors — Time to Buy!

My graduation is fast approaching, and I know I’m not alone. This message is for all you seniors out there.

Now is the time to buy an iPod or a new Mac. For couple of weeks, you still have access to your student discount. And, since Tigerhas been released, the deal is even sweeter. If you a buy a new Mac now, it should come with the new OS pre-installed. If not, all you have to do is pay $10 shipping and handling to get it.

Tiger will makes a new Mac even better, with features like Spotlight , which can search for information in basically any file on your computer, and Dashboard, which provides a new and easy way to access information quickly.

For all us in the Class of 2005, there will never be a better time to buy.

— Stephen Jendrazak @ 9:58 am