Jump to content


  • Content count

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Community Reputation

0 Neutral

About TheMacMommy

  • Rank
    Mac Geek Apprentice

Contact Methods

  • AIM
  • Website URL
  • ICQ

Profile Information

  • Gender
  • Location
    Tucson, AZ
  • Interests
    Kids & Computers, getting the most out of my Macs, listening to podcasts, digital photography, graphic design, IT consulting
  1. TheMacMommy

    Labels in Pages?

    I love the iWork suite. I use it every day. I would love to be able to prove that it really is a complete M$ Office & AppleWorks replacement to the naysayers I encounter. There are just 2 little things that are bugging me right now: Labels and Capitalization. I posted a question about capitalization a while ago in this forum but it seems it's still a bug in Pages. Every once in a while you have to copy and paste a section of text from one place to another and when it's been typed all in caps, you should be able to select this troublesome text and then Format/Font/Capitalization/None or Title and the go about formatting the text the way you wish. When you copy and paste text from another source, this will not work. It works fine in AppleWorks. (I don't use AW, just used it to test the theory) Anyhow, so that's my one pet peeve. I'll keep waiting on that one. The next is why can we not create automated labels in Pages? I mean, the way Word does it? (I hate Word BTW) I know I can create labels in Address Book and I've read the forums for iWork where they discuss the same issue. The kind of labels I'm talking about are where you have a sheet of 30 on a template. You should be able to set up one label the way you want it and Pages should just automate the process without having to get Address Book involved. I would like to be able to use it for patient ID labels. The clinic I support sees sometimes up to 50 patients a day. Each of those patients can generate a boatload of labels depending on what they are seen for. We are using DYMO label printers for this with one of the smallest labels they make for the printer. It's still creating a huge expense and we are wondering if it might be less costly to use a sheet of labels. I really believe right now, that a dedicated label printer is the way to go and have convinced the medical director that it's just a cost of doing business, so it's not crucial that I figure out a way to do it in Pages. The point is, I WANT to figure out a way to do it. There SHOULD be a way to do this. It erks me that I can't just figure it out on my own. So, that's why I turn to the my beloved MacCast Forum. (Thanks to Adam that I can post again, Yay!) What bugs me is that I can not say to someone, "Pages does everything Word does, we don't need Word. Nanny nanny boo boo." A couple of the staff members think we need to be using Word but I have been working really hard at convincing them to stick to just using Pages. I know I could probably download Open Office or Neo Office or some opensource s.w., but I don't want to complicate things for the staff I support. I just want it to work in Pages. Right now I am not hard pressed for finding a way to make a sheet of labels using Pages, but at some point they may want to use sheets of labels for something else and I just want to be ready for when the time comes and they ask me, "so, Miss Smarty Pants, how do I create a sheet of labels in Pages?" Here is a screen shot of a sheet of labels I set up using an Avery template in Pages. I set up the first one and I also defined placholder text so that the boxes would be easier to select. I had to copy the first column, then paste it to the other columns. Ok, so I'm fast at it, but the average registration clerk would find this workflow very cumbersome and make more mistakes this way if they lack the finesse of copy and paste. (Believe me, it happens!) I would rather see some type of workflow where one label was created and then automatically duplicated during the printing process, like set one,print 30 up (1 on/30 up). It would be really great if you could select the first text box, press the tab key and then enter the rest of the data using the tab key to advance to the next box. I'm wondering if I need to explore this in more of a spreadsheet table setting instead of just Avery label table templates. Anyone have any suggestions or ideas how to make labels in Pages a more automated workflow to minimize on mistakes during data entry? I would greatly appreciate the feedback. Thanks! Mom
  2. TheMacMommy

    Malware Alarm?!

    ok, I'm a little freaked out right now because I was responding to a message in MySpace and I got this Malware Alarm website come and take over my computer! WTF?!! (sorry, but I'm mad) Ok, well the fact that it happened while in MySpace doesn't shock me. I'm beginning to grow more and more untrust for the thing. Has anyone else experienced this? I googled it and some are posting about it in the Apple forums but no soultion has really been posted other than helpful suggestions. I wonder what the MacCast community has to say about this though. This is just so freaky. I was using FireFox as my web browser and all of the sudden - automatically without me clicking on anything - a pop up window appeared. I have pop ups turned off. Then a website came up and told me that I needed to run some bogus Malware. Here is a screen shot hopefully you can see it. I took screen shots because it was really fishy looking. I immediately quit FF and logged out just in case. So far everything is ok but now I'm freaked out. I wonder if it really did scan my HD or if that was just some graphic. I'm going to go and clear out my cache like some recommended on the other forum but is there anything anyone else recommends? Maybe I'll also check out the ClamX or whatever it's called. Anyhow, thanks in advance for any advice. Mom
  3. TheMacMommy

    Really strange iMac video issue

    it's so weird. I don't understand what the problem is. I created a new user account and ditched the old one and haven't noticed the wiggle. That makes me think some kind of software. I haven't had time to swap out the RAM and test that since both computers are now in use at the clinic and I can't disrupt work flow. Kinda hard to do that kind of tech support when they are open 7 days a week. If I find anything else though, I'll be sure to report back, but this is what I know so far.
  4. TheMacMommy


  5. TheMacMommy

    Illustrator CS3

    Love AI CS3. The only pain is the updater but I suppose it's a necessary evil. I would recommend CS3. The Adobe Bridge looks like it's a really great tool for designers who collaborate. I do miss the way Pshop used to have the built in previewer. I don't like having to launch an additional app for that. Adobe products are always bloated but, oh well, we're kinda used to it by now, right? Maybe this is a chic thing, but do you ever guage how you feel based on how well your clothes fit? It's kind of like that when it comes to computers and Photoshop. Know what I mean? Anyhow, AI CS3 is good to me so far. I hope you like it.
  6. TheMacMommy

    Bootable flash drive

    Let us know your progress on this because I'd like to know if you can get it to be smaller than 4GB. I used to be a site tech at an elem school where I managed/imaged about 140 slot load iMacs and about 3 tray loads. The HDs on those G3 PPCs were 10GB drives so I needed the image to be as small as possible and I got it stripped down to about 5GB I think, maybe a little smaller. The tray loads had to be even smaller and I think I only kept the most basic of apps like text edit and the school's email client (FirstClass) and Safari. I used a combination of CCC, bootable Tiger CDs as well as a bootable FW drive and I could image 10 iMacs simultaneously in about an hour. It's been so long since I had to do that and I forget all of the steps, but it was a very interesting process. If you're trying to make your clone fit onto a drive that small, don't forget to clean out all of the extra language files using Monolingual. Also clean out the Receipts folder. Like joshr said, ditch all extra apps you don't need like GaragBand, iDVD, etc. if you're not going to use them. Let us know how it works out for you.
  7. TheMacMommy

    Still alive...

    Man that bites! I would cry - backup or no backup. (luckily I back mine up too on an external HD) Are you worried about security issues now like all your personal info and stuff? If you don't mind sharing, what steps have you had to take since this has happened?
  8. TheMacMommy


    Oh boy. This takes me back to a time when I used to obsess over fonts. I once spent 2 weeks organizing over 3000 fonts while I was trying to decide if I wanted to use FontBook vs some other font manager. (FontBook crapped out on me after about 500 fonts) I mean we're talking color coded labels in the Finder, separated by font type and genre...major OCD. Extensive therapy has enabled me to simplify things a bit more now that I at least have a library I can grab from when need be and I only manage a handful of my favorite fonts in FontBook. (just kidding about the therapy part) Let me first ask you this. What is your main reasoning for wanting to use the PS version of Helvetica? If you work in a production environment where you're dealing with files from other clients and need to be able to preflight or print graphic files properly because there is a reflow issue in text, that's a very good reason for needing to have the PS version of Helvetica. On the other hand, if you're wanting it because you are designing something and would like to use Helvetica as your text font and would like to choose from all of the various weights that only the PS version has to offer, my advice would be to use another font and save yourself the trouble. Same goes for Times. There are bajillions of other fonts out there just as nice and better that DO play nicely with the system dfonts (because they aren't dfonts) that will make your life easier than having to deal with conflicting system fonts. If you're designing something for print, avoid using the System Fonts Folder fonts all together and it will save you headaches. Don't take this the wrong way, but in design school I was taught to avoid those fonts because they are so over used. However, there were times on the technical side of things where I prided myself on having the cleanest Helvetica and Times Font Suitcases. I never had any orphans or missing printer files and my preflighted jobs were always good. If you really want to use the PS fonts, you need to be super organized and use a font manager other than FontBook like Linotype FontExplorer. (it's free) If you feel you have clean suitcases that have the correct screen and printer files, go ahead and give your suitcase files a suffix at the end dot t1. I have all of my fonts renamed with suffixes on the ends of them that are either .At1 or .t1 reason being I had to have different copies of font files due to client modifications and I needed to be able to tell the difference between the pure Adobe Type 1 fonts that came off a CD vs the client's supplied font for which I could not validate the origin and so I called them t1 for just Type 1. Nowadays, the font managers, even FontBook, can display metadata within the font file that gives you more info like foundry and year, etc. which is nice to have available in the event of troubleshooting. Truth be told, it's been so long now since I've worked in prepress that I don't believe the same issues exist now with opentype and more sophisticated RIPs and digital printing. I do understand where you're coming from though and HELLvetica is a good name for it. I've always wanted to wear a screen printed Tshirt that says "Helvetica Sucks" on it, just because it has caused me and so many other grief over the years. Hope this helps if not at least to know there is someone more insane than you for wanting to use PS Helvetica.
  9. TheMacMommy

    CCC vs SuperDuper?

    Neil_jo, thanks...that's interesting. So let me ask this just out of curiosity. If you had 2 equal machines (same specs) running side by side and one is Tiger and the other is Leopard, which one do you think boots faster? I'm sure YMMV but in general, I wonder if someone has compared this. Then I wonder what the speed differences are between bootable disks using CCC vs SuperDuper. What if you used SuperDuper for both, would they boot in the same amount of time? I wonder wonder wonder. It's just interesting to know that the boot up times are getting faster with each upgrade despite seeming to be more and more bloated each time. Now, you said these are bootable backup copies you're talking about right? As in an external HD that you've got partitioned? What I'm wondering is if I could partition the HD of my MBP and have 2 separate startup disks. Remember how you used to be able to select the startup disk with a restart by pressing the X key to get it to switch over from OS9? That was back in the day when I was a production manager where we still worked exclusively in OS9 because we were Quark slaves but I always liked to dabble in OSX in other things every so often to get my feet wet and become familiar with the newer OS so that I could be ready when the time would come to switch over. That's kind of what I'd like to do now...again. You know what would be really really awesome is if it could be as easy as switching between users with the icon in the upper right corner where the cube turns the corner. I love doing that in front of people. Between that and the Photobooth app, it's one of my favorite things to show off.
  10. TheMacMommy

    CCC vs SuperDuper?

    Thanks for all of the great comments and responses! Eventually I'll upgrade to Leopard but I'm waiting until it's been out for a while and also for when Adobe says boo since I recently started using CS3. I am also really looking forward to what Time Machine has to offer. So I was thinking, would it be possible to partition your HD so that you could boot into either Tiger or Leopard? I guess this is a whole other topic but I was thinking I'll have to use some type of cloning tool like the ones we're all referencing so I thought I'd add on to this thread. My situation is such that I would personally like to upgrade to Leopard so that I can learn it and then implement it at the medical facility I support but I still need the ability to work in Tiger since that's what they are all currently training in and I still need to help them out with it. Is it possible to make my MBP have 2 different startup disks kind of like back when we could choose between OS9 or OSX except this time it would be between 10.4 or 10.5? My brother-in-law has a Macbook Pro I'd call "Neapolitan" because he can choose to boot in either OSX, XP or Linux but I've never seen anyone partition their Mac for different flavors of OSX. Now that Leopard has been out for a while, is anyone doing this so they can ease into the transition like we did when OSX first debuted? If so, how will your cloning and backing up methods change or not? TIA, Mom
  11. TheMacMommy

    Creating an admin user after initial setup

  13. TheMacMommy

    Punk Mac

    Flaming would be cool, but I think it would be funny if I could make mine look like a sloppy peanut butter and jelly sandwich. What do ya think? I've even tried licking it to keep my 1 yr old away from it, but he's too young to understand that concept. (just kidding)
  14. TheMacMommy

    Punk Mac

    oooh be careful about the Speck covers. I've tried 2 on my MBP and neither fit sadly. I was really hoping it would work because as you know I am on a mission to try and toddler-proof my MBP. If you want to get a Spek cover, my advice would be to get it from the Apple Store and try it on in the store before you walk out with it. The first one I had on there fit, but not PERFECT and one side kept coming undone a little bit. For 50 bucks, I expected it to fit perfectly, but maybe I'm just picky. There were a lot of times where I'd find myself scooping up my child in one hand and my MBP with the other hand and it annoyed me that the one corner of the Speck case kept coming loose. The other thing is that I have one of those Huckleberry cameras that makes your built in webcam view the other way (what's in front of you) and wit the extra thick plastic on there, I could not mount the reflective mirror. Bummer. So, that's just my 2 cents, but depending, it might be worth more like 50.00 and some change. Isn't it strange that we find ourselves wanting to cover up our little precious and hiding the fact that it's a MBP because it's such a hot commodity? I totally agree and will probably also check into something more like an adhesive type cover, but I just find it rather amusing.
  15. TheMacMommy

    Punk Mac

    wow! that's awesome! how did you do that? What other colors can it be? Can you do purple?