Cat Besmirches Mac Once Too Often, Rejoins Friends at Pound

Everything is continuing to be smooth and easy with the iMac.

Tom’s brother Paul is a huge Apple aficionado, so Tom asked me if we had been bonding lately. We have indeed been on the phone for at least an hour this week.

Using an external hard drive, I moved all of my files to the Mac, ditto my email and address book. I’d thought the email was going to be difficult because it was coming from Outlook Express 5 on a Windows 98 machine, and I spent quite some time culling detailed procedures from the web and psychologically preparing to lose it all, since I would rather lose it than print all of it out.

However, it turned out to be just as easy as anything else. I dragged the messages to the external hard drive and then into newly created personal folders in Entourage in the Mac, and all the messages were readable.

My one teensy problem is Microsoft Word files that I email myself from work. The ones I brought over from my PC open fine, but ones I mail to myself won’t open, because my version of Word at work is 2007 and the version of Word on the Mac is 2004.

I called Microsoft and immediately was connected to someone who, oddly, did not seem to be in India and who told me I had three free cases coming. (Once you run out of free cases, support costs $30; I’m not sure whether that’s per call or per case.) Under his direction, I downloaded and installed a converter, but it still didn’t work.

He said the ultimate solution would be to go to Office 2008 early next year, which will open both Word 2004 and Word 2007 files. I said the version of Office I have is, alas, not upgradable. He said they have a special offer right now where they will send you Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac for the price of shipping ($6.99!) if you send them the receipt and proof of purchase for Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, if you happened to purchase it between November 1, 2007, and January 14, 2008, which I did.

So—I hope you’re sitting down—I’m very up on Microsoft right now. I can’t keep it in any longer: Microsoft’s support is excellent! (And available until 9 PM weeknights, whereas AppleCare is only until 6 PM.)

I also decided to get a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard, which I use at home and at work and like very much, but that put me in a crunch in regard to USB ports—the Mac keyboard has a USB port on it, into which you can plug your mouse, but the Microsoft keyboard doesn’t, so the mouse needs to be plugged into the back of the computer now, or somewhere.

I called my mother to find out what to do about that.

“This call isn’t free,” she warned me.

“How much?”

“Fifty,” she said, in the even tones of a Mafia hit man, daring me to object.

“Fifty dollars?! Microsoft’s support only costs thirty dollars!”

Later she said, “We’re having a special today. Usually support costs fifty dollars, but today it’s seventy-five.”

She told me to get a hub, which I have done. This gives you several more USB ports. I also bowed to her relentless pressure and bought a thumb drive. “This will be handy if you want to get any stuff off someone else’s computer,” she said.

“I don’t want to get any stuff off anyone else’s computer,” I said.

“I don’t like the way this conversation is going,” she said. Mind you, this is someone who wears her thumb drive on a lanyard around her neck at all times.

So, everything is going great. My original plan was never to leave the house again, now that I have a nice thing on which to watch DVDs, but then I realized what this really means is that I’ll have more time for bike rides and doing things with people, since I won’t be spending so much time taking the bus to and from the movies.

I like watching previews and movies on the big screen, but it is time-consuming, and I’m kind of over people talking and text messaging during the movie (yes, we can all see your little light) and kicking the back of my seat.

Hammett is eating his watered-down wet food and, bless his heart, eating his daily glucosamine pill voluntarily, and, if you must know, peeing copiously and apparently without strain, so I hope his next urinalysis will show an improvement in urine concentration.

He is also coming to enjoy chasing a ball, and even leaping into the air now and then. Naturally, his preferred play time is right at bedtime, which means he’s all hyped up when I’m trying to get to sleep.

Also—and here he is courting a one-way trip back to the SPCA, I’m afraid—he keeps rubbing his snout on the Mac’s monitor. I think he is fascinated with its glossy reflectiveness, as am I.