Good morning, friends! It’s your Captain speaking. Did you know just the subtle differences in a Mac and PC are enough to drive a man to drinkin’ — not this man, natural, just in general. I was a PC from the start. At home as a kid, our first was a PACKARD BELL (Ah the days of playing solitaire while waiting for the internet to connect via dial-up), worked with PC’s all through high school, college, my first job at the radio station.. everything ran from a PC and I worked with them all. Dells, HP’s, ASUS, VAIO, Aspires, Spectre, etc. I was a pretty content user, relatively no complaints. Estimated time on PC’s: 1995-2010. In 2010 my friends and co-workers at the time Branden Sharp and Brock Girard convinced me to get a MacBook Pro and both, with force, pried the sticky buttom’d BlackBerry phone from the death grip of my bare hands and made me get an iPhone.Thanks guys.

No regrets. I switched my brands of Kool-Aid, and in a matter of one year hooked an IV up and opened the nozzle full blast (not really sure that’s a thing with IVs but hopefully you get the picture.) I spent the next 19 years upgrading phones, laptops, iPads, eventually the watch, AirPods, got mad at my XBOX, etc etc… Apple had it all, including my debit card number
Then in 2020 something strange happened. It was 2020. I was let go of my job, my MacBook crashed, dogs and cats died, it rained every day, and I broke something… probably, I can’t remember. Point is, it rained, it poured, and I was jobless and essentially computerless, and my hopes of purchasing a shiny new MacBook were looking hopeless. In saves the day, of course, my beautiful wife Lindsay, offering a shiny new HP Spectre (pretty rose gold one too)… A PC. Beggars can’t be chooser is what I’ve always heard, so I welcome the gift with open arms! Hence starting my RE-training of using a PC vs using a Mac which brings me to the point of this (probably) extremely long run-on sentence: the subtle differences in a Mac and PC are enough to drive a man to drinkin’ — not this man, just in general. Things like where the close window button is positioned, simple copy/paste key commands, placement of file folders, the list is lengthy, and honesty I think they do it on purpose so n cases where people must go back and forth between and Mac and a PC, life isn’t easy…But, back to my new PC, all in all, I’m happy to report that in my 15 year absence from using one that vast improvements were made to what I would once call a pile of garbage. (I now know that “pile of garage” is actually the correct phrase to use when describing a DELL PC, pretty much from the time they came off the assembly til they went bankrupted or bought out or…please tell me there are no more DELLs???  Anyway, last week I was able to once again purchase a shiny new MacBook Pro and I was like a kid at Christmas. It’s shiny and new and fast…and even smells good, oddly enough! It’s great to be back, but I will not abandon the HP where I am actually typing this log now! There’s room for both, it just took me 30 years to realize that, well, that and Microsoft easing up on their suck factor. Ya, they’re still the “gaming beast” and I get that I’m just not a gamer. But, this guy will love both a Mac and a PC equally.

……ish

As is the case every week, “things to do” are heating up and filling up calendars fast. I suggest you start marking your calendars so not to miss the fun. This email should help with that. Now, as many of you know my mantra, chant, battle cry, whatever you want to call it is…  “Loving Fort Smith Out Loud”–it’s more than just words, and I can confidently say that I truly DO love Fort Smith, and who can argue that I don’t do that OUT LOUD. But to be clear, I love ALL of Fort Smith. Do I put a lot of time, effort, and energy in the Downtown area? Yes. I live close to Downtown, I work Downtown, I do many of my extracurricular activities Downtown….so, it would stand to reason that I would talk about Downtown a lot… I will continue to do so. But I know of the great things happening all over our city. I know of the incredible growth that the Chaffee Crossing area is experiencing and I couldn’t be more excited!! Another place for THINGS TO DO to live and breath! PERFECT! The Entertainment District at Chaffee Crossing will really become a destination this summer and fall and I can’t wait to start sharing some of the events and activities they have planned….cuz, um, there’s a lot! (…maybe even some POPup CORNhole????…more on that later!) I love that our City has bookends, from Chaffee to the Arkansas River, and all those little places in-between…we live in an incredible area. The people, the places, the things….to do…it’s enough to make a feller smile, and that’s sure what I like to do. So, lets do that. First, smile. Come on…there ya go. Now, go make someone else smile, or just do something nice for someone. Doesn’t that feel good? Have a great weekend – if you love Fort Smith, join me in loving ALL of Fort Smith Out Loud!!!!!

(Link to TTDIFS eNewsletter, April 9, 2021)