Vegan Momma

A few days ago I noticed something peculiar about my MacBook Pro. It wasn’t setting flush on my desktop. Curious I picked it up and looked to see whether there was someone on the table to cause the rocking. No, I put my notebook back on the table. I continued to type. Hmm, it’s still rocking. What gives? I picked it up again, nothing. Again, I proceeded to type more rocking. I gritted me teeth and lifted up the computer but this time something told me to look at the battery. Aha! There’s the culprit. My battery was swollen. I instantly removed it.

The batteries in the MacBook Pro were made by Sony. Some of Dell’s batteries were also made by Sony, and they had a recall on them.
Tuesday I called AppleCare and relayed my problem. The tech told me I a new battery was on the way. I received it yesterday. It took less than 24 hours to reach me. That’s good customer service. I called DHL to pick up the old battery and they were at my house within two hours. Sweet! No, I didn’t have to pay a dime for the battery.

Let’s get back to why the day the Magsafe adapter wasn’t my friend. Tuesday evening I was putting the finishing touches on a few articles. Remember my MacBook doesn’t have the battery in it anymore. My computer is plugged up to an outlet. I’m happy with the articles I’ve said what I wanted and doing some minor tweaking to make them just right but, yeah there’s always a but. My daughter decides to run past me at that moment. Thanks to the MagSafe power connector on my MacBook it’s yanked out of its socket. However since the swollen battery was removed my work was lost. The magsafe power connector uses a magnetic connection instead of a physical one. It someone trips over the cord, or in my daughters cause, walk directly in its path your computer won’t be flying behind them. It’s a very cool feature. Tuesday it worked too well.

Yes I had to write three articles again thankfully I remembered a lot of what I wrote, but my goodness was that a nightmare. There is a silver lining I actually like the rewritten articles more than the originals.If you want to see what a swollen battery looks like you can take a peek on my website
The Mac Diva. I’ve posted pictures of my MacBook Pro swollen battery.

Question: I know I’m not the only one that has had computer nightmares share your experiences.

[tags]MacBook Pro swollen battery[/tags]

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Aiyana and her cousins

I included this picture because these were some of my daughter’s hang out partners while we were in South Carolina. They are sisters and live with their parents in Atlanta, Georgia. The majority of the relatives that were in South Carolina this Thanksgiving holiday were from out of town. Many of my aunts and uncles are from Florida. These are my mothers relatives. There are sixteen brothers and sisters total and fifteen of them are alive. One of the triplets died a few weeks after he was born.

Our holiday ended with a bang last evening. My uncle’s birthday was celebrated. He’s a great man and will gives himself unconditionally to his loved ones. It was a large turnout and lasted well into the evening. We left early since we would headed out this morning 2:00 a.m. Thirteen of my aunts and uncles were able to attend the event. Of course many of their children and grandchildren were in attendance also. It was a huge turnout.

Many that normally would not have been able to attend did so because this Thanksgiving was special. We were honoring a great man. I respect him because he lives by my motto which is Think of Others First. It’s a motto I try to live by every second of my days. Imagine if everyone thought of others first. The world would be a better place, wouldn’t it?

Shabba Ranks /Patra: Family AffairI’m including this video Family Affair with Shabba Ranks and Patra.The song is included at the end of the presentation the video (when the credits start rolling) that I’m currently working on for my family. I did a “quick & dirty” version while I was there it was about ten minutes of footage my relatives liked it and wanted me to do more so I taped last evenings event. One of my relatives wants me to edit a few of her videos and she will pay me. I thought that was very cool.The video I showed was completed in iMovie which is part of the iLife software package. It’s made by Apple.My skills improved soon after I purchased iLife and I found I needed more so iMovie and use Final Cut Express HD almost exclusively. I purchased mine directly from the Apple Store since I’m able to take advantage of their student discount. I’m back in college working on my Masters in Traditional Naturopathy. I’m still maintaining my A+ average by the way.

I used iMovie to showcase the video simply because a lot of my family members uses Mac’s. I wanted them to see how easy it is to create a movie using iMovie. A few of them bought the software application after seeing my video. My daughter Aiyana mainly uses iMovie now. She’s four years old. She’s amazing on the computer. If you want something easy and still want to wow your family/friends iMovie has enough cool features to do that.

The main computer I use is a 17″ MacBook Pro. Final Cut Express HD gives me a lot more freedom and with the exception of a few features I can do everything that Apple Final Cut Studio offers for a lot less. The music I use comes directly from iTunes. I have a lot of songs in iTunes about 2,000 total most of them I didn’t purchase from the Apple Store although I did spend around $90 via iTunes. I love music.

Thus far Final Cut Express HD is the best video editing software I’ve worked with and I’ve worked with a few. Anyway, As the end credits roll Family Affair is playing in the background. The intro will feature the song Tomorrow by the Winans. I chose that video because of the way our family gathering started out. Anyway this video should be finished by this weekend at that time I’ll be burning a lot of DVD’s and sending it off to my family.

I’m putting everything that I taped last week on this video. I use a High Definition camcorder. I’ll be breaking up the video by including chapters in doing so you will be able to access where you want to go directly from the main menu. This way you can easily skip past the parts that don’t interest you. A few of my relatives are quite long winded on the video. Can you imagine what that was like taping the entire thing? ;-) Yes there will even be credits at the end. In all the dvd will be about two hours.

I enjoyed being away and taking a much needed break from the computer I’m also happy to be back online and of course I’ve missed my blogging buddies/readers

Question: Did you take photos or video of your Thanksgiving.

[tags]family, bonding, thanksgiving holiday, family affair[/tags]

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In my last post WordPress Issues: Slow Loading Times I talked about how slow Vegan Momma was taking to load.

You know what I dislike experiencing on a website? Slow loading webpages! That will cause me to leave your website. It drives me nuts. On average people stay on Vegan Momma for seven minutes. I try to make it a place that people enjoy. Guess what? It wasn’t a pleasure to be on here yesterday because my page was taking too long to load.

Slow Loading Website

Yesterday morning through late afternoon it took a little over a minute to load my page. If a person was on a computer that was slow I imagine it would take a lot longer. I knew it wasn’t my connection I checked. I use DSL. I also knew it wasn’t my computer. My computers are extremely fast. I have a 17″ MacBook Pro, a MacPro, and a HP dv6000t. Guess what? They were all taking their sweet time. Call me spoiled but I have gotten used to fast loading webpages.

My web host Lunar Pages pointed me to a tool that Pingdom has. Nope you don’t have to pay for it. It’s free. This morning as I was testing out my website using the tool I decided to take a few screenshots

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This is a sponsored post.

I love games! When I started playing games several years ago, I mainly played pc games. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I purchased a Xbox I was pulled into the world of console gaming. I was hooked. I didn’t look at my computer for years. When the Xbox 360 was available, I purchased that and bought more games.

Gaming is my chance to unwind and completely immerse myself in game play. Last year I purchased a 17” MacBook Pro and to be honest I didn’t think I would have a lot of selections when it came to gaming.

According to the magazine Mac|Life if you are a Mac owner who happens to loves mac games. It’s our time more companies are starting to realize that Mac owners love gaming also. No surprise there. I’m starting to see more games offered to Mac users. Of course, I’m excited, and I am eagerly awaiting for some upcoming titles. I moved back to playing some games on my Apple Mac computer.

I was given the opportunity to review a gaming website I leaped at the chance. I’ve played games from WinterWolves before, and I really enjoy what they have to offer. In this review, I’m going to focus on one TV Station Manager. The boss, Jack Norton, has hired you to turn the television station around. The television station isn’t doing that well. It’s up to you to turn things around.

You are in control of a local TV station. You control everything. You pick which ads will be played, tv shows, movies, etc. You choose the time they will be paid. You are in charge of purchasing for the tv station. Guess what? As with regular television each program on TV Station Manager has a target audience. Having this information available is excellent since you can choose appropriate times for the advertisements and shows to be aired.

If your not happy with the shows available you can create your own in the Production Studio. You are able to choose your one programs and yes that means you can choose the actors you want to star in the feature. If you like games that are task oriented you will have plenty to keep you busy for hours.

Winter Wolves.com have a nice selection of pc games to choose from for the Mac and Windows operating systems. The beauty is you can try them out for free. I tried out a few games on this website and they all gave me at least 60 minutes of gameplay. This was enough time to give me a feel for the game.

The great thing about it is that when you play the games from Winter Wolves you don’t have to worry about ads popping up during game play that includes the demo, and once you purchase the game you can download it on multiple computers. I can download mac games without worrying about unnecessary ads. I’m loving that immensely.

What are you waiting for? Log onto Winterwolves.com and check out their selection of games. The great thing is you will be able to try them out before you buy. Enjoy!

[tags]Mac games, free trials, winterwolves.com, Virtual Villagers[/tags]

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I’ve been meaning to give this application a whirl, but I kept forgetting what it was called. Thankfully there was a pleasant sized advertisement for MacScan in the recent MacLife magazine. If you’ve thought I’ve been writing a lot about Apple/Macs lately you’re right. I have. I truly love my Mac’s.  Perhaps I’m a Mac Diva?   No, I’m not there yet, am I?

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