CIBC Thanksgiving Slideshow

After Martin's party, we rushed home, rested for 30 minutes, and then off to the annual CIBC Thanksgiving banquet. There were over 500 people in attendance and as always, the food was very good. Unfortunately we couldn't eat much because we were still recovering from our food coma at Kincaids. After dinner, the video above was presented to reflect a year's worth of thankfulness. Even in these tough economic times, we are indeed blessed.

In the weeks prior to this, I was sharing with a fellow carpooler that I was up late every night working on a slideshow. He wondered why it took so long and asked what version of Powerpoint I was using. I'm like "riiiight." Sensing my sarcasm, he further says, "You know you can do some really nice things in Powerpoint..." Really? You don't say!

That's one thing I notice most about most peecee users. They think Microsoft is the only way to do things. They use Powerpoint for slideshows, Word for newsletters, and didn't know what a PDF was until Word added the feature. Granted if you've never used Mac OSX, then you won't have any idea what incredible programs come with it (iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Garageband, etc.). Yes, these are already included in OSX. And iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) costs only $99 and will open/convert all your Word/Excel/PPT files and well as export back.

When you buy a cheap peecee and you factor in all the additional productivity and anti-viral software you need to purchase, it'll get rather expensive quickly (while still remaining a cheap peecee).

Below, fittingly is my favorite "I'm a Mac" commercial.



Christmas Newsletters
If any of you are fortunate enough to be on the Christmas list of a certain Fremont family with two girls, you'll know that every year they produce hands down, the most professional looking newsletter. At first glance it had me scratching my head wondering why an amazingly talented designer such as myself can't even come up with something this nice. I mean this family isn't extra special. They're just an average family with average intelligence (stay with me here...). How could they excel in something they have zero training in? That's when they told me they just used a free, pre-existing template included in iWork Pages and voila! Aha! That explains everything!! So this is proof positive that using a Mac can make the average family exceedingly above average (and in my opinion, most special!).



If you're on our mailing list you'll notice our "newsletter" is getting smaller and smaller every year. Actually, I wouldn't even call it a newsletter anymore. It's just a 5x5 piece of paper with some pics and some ramblings. I don't know how you all find so many things to write about that it will fill up both sides of a page when I'm struggling to fill even a 5x5 space. Maybe because we don't travel. Or maybe because we don't do anything fun. Or maybe because we're just raising a bunch of under-achievers... who knows. So don't expect too much from us this year. But my advice to you all: More pictures and less text. Because by the time people are done reading my blog, they'll be too tired to read anything else. Haha!

Until then, I wish you all a safe and Happy Thanksgiving. I'll look forward to your 'upgraded' newsletters and hope to reunite with you in the coming weeks. Let the parties begin!