[X4U] Save my marriage!

[Ted Burton]

At 6:28 AM -0800 on 12/13/05, Jim Robertson spoke about [X4U] Save my 
marriage! thusly:

>Yesterday I enlisted my wife's vote, since this was turning out to 
>be a pretty expensive present, and I didn't want to screw it up. 
>Before I knew it we were looking at a $5,000 plus "Designer 1" 
>machine that I must admit was INCREDIBLY impressive.
>
>So, why is this REMOTELY related to the Mac? Two reasons:
>1. I surprised myself with my concerns that Christine might throw 
>herself into this hobby; since it's Christmastime it's probably OK 
>to cast this in terms of the parable Jesus told about criticizing 
>one's neighbor because of the "mote" (I think that's something tiny) 
>in his eye, while neglecting the beam in one's own eye. (I guess we 
>can put computers and sewing machines in the same room).

How many ways can I call you my brother, Jim. I am married to a 
fabriholic, and our basement looks like an overstocked fabric store. 
Of course, as addictions go , sewing quilting and all that sort of 
stuff still works in the 60's when bicycles don''t look so good any 
more except to the physical fitness freaks. And it does less physical 
harm and less family harm than heroin or methamphetamines. Repetitive 
stress problems can arise.

Our machines are Bernina -- which are slightly less expensive than 
solid gold sculptures of the same configuration. We have succeeded in 
linking one to an eMac, though in the end the college's laptop 
(Wintel) has come home for such uses.

The sewing machine in question also has an Ethernet socket and is 
connected to the home network.  Its been hard to install stuff that 
way, though, as the spouse is not big on MacOS X, and I am not big on 
Windoze.  This is quite a sewing machine, though I still can't figure 
out how to get it to brew the morning coffee for us.

If you can find a manufacturer's rep who is savvy enough to actually 
speak to use of a Mac, great. I have found many simply have been 
given a mantra to say their whatsit does not support Mac .... when 
they actually have no technical knowledge one way or the other, and 
the person who told them that had no understanding of the Mac, and 
that they are dead wrong. Sort of like the sites I've found (like 
State Farm) which works best with Internet Explorer and Netscape, 
they say, but looks best in Safari. And my beloved Knights of 
Columbus' site told me their officer's forms section did not work 
with a Mac, but I told Safari to pretend to be MSIE and the site 
promptly worked fine.