OK, one more good news item

OK, one other positive thing happened on Friday, though it's dwarfed by the importance of what's happening with the PEOPLE in my life. Nonetheless, we need to count our blessings whenever/wherever we find them, so here I am announcing that the piece of tech I invested in arrived today.

I want to learn to write apps for iOS (iPhone and iPad, in other words). Specifically, I want to write ACCESSIBLE apps that will be useful to the people I know. In order to do that, I need some training. I have 15 years of background in IT, especially on the programmer/analyst side, so I know my way around writing code. However, what I need to learn (and in the case of C, refresh my memory on) the languages that are used to write iOS apps.

So I enrolled in two online courses (a two-for-one deal)... only to discover, after I started watching the videos, that I needed a Mac in order to do some of the work. Moreover, Apple has not released a SDK (developer's kit) for Windows, so if I'm going to be writing iOS apps, I need to use a Mac.

So, what to do? New Macs are way out of my price range at this time. So hello, eBay. I found an early version of the Macbook Air that I could afford. It hasn't got some of the improvements and features that the newer Macbook Airs have; I know this because I was making use of my cousin's MBA when the rest of the family was in the treatment room with Aunt Rita at the specialist's office in May. The room was tiny, and couldn't fit the doctor, several interns, my aunt, my parents, my cousin, and me. So I was elected to wait in the waiting room with everyone's belongings. My cousin let me use his computer while I waited, and it happened to be a newer-model 13" Macbook Air. But I'll do without the extra bells and whistles of the newer models because, as I said, my wallet has limited impact these days. I have to balance need with rationality.

Anyway, my machine arrived on Friday, so I spent some time setting it up with Xcode, so I can start creating those C programs.