Signs & Wonders Blog

For almost eighteen years, I’ve owned an Apple MacBook Pro. This laptop has helped me create newsletters, music, and videos for my ministry. My current Mac is almost four years old. I’m desiring to upgrade to a newer one soon. It has showed signs of wearing down. For example, the Touch Bar occasionally flickers like a strobe light. Usually, I look forward to doing software updates on my electronic devices. They are supposed to improve performance, but that doesn’t always happen. A few months ago, the Music app stopped working on my iPad after updating the iOS. So I brought it to the Apple Store. A Genius Bar employee suggested resetting my iPad. That didn’t fix the problem. I still had to reinstall all my deleted files and applications. The Music app finally worked following another update a week later. Over two weeks ago, Apple released a new macOS called Sonoma 14.4. After installing that on my MacBook, a spinning wheel cursor (also referred to as a beach ball or “the wheel of dea...

In my late teens, I developed a serious interest in computers. That was stimulated by my high school library having an Apple II where students could run educational programs stored on floppy disks. Soon I took a computer programming course. Occasionally, I played games plus created a few of my own.  In college, I was initially a computer science major before drifting into music. I used an early MacIntosh in one of my electronic music classes. Years later when using computers on the job or at the library, they were usually PCs. Then in 2006, a friend gave me my first MacBook Pro. I’m now on my fourth one. Apple aficionados will advise computer shoppers to “get a Mac.” When people ask me what kind they should buy, I give this answer: If all you want is a computer to browse the Internet and type simple documents, a PC should suffice. It will cost less money. However, if you want to get into music and video production, then I would recommend a Mac. Applications for those purposes (G...

As a boy growing up in the 1970s, I preferred watching older cartoons on TV because they were funnier and had better animation. Most of the newer cartoons then were lifeless by comparison. During the late 1980s, animators seemed to run low on ideas. Miniaturized versions of established characters came out like “Muppet Babies”, “The Flintstone Kids”, and “A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.” By the 2000s, all the major networks ceased airing cartoons on Saturday morning. A few were still seen during prime time such as “The Simpsons.” Occasionally, reboots of classic cartoons have been released. Earlier this week, the streaming service HBO Max announced it will show new “Looney Tunes" cartoons except the characters won’t have guns. A sample posted on YouTube shows Elmer Fudd chasing after Bugs Bunny with a scythe. One man tweeted: “Elmer Fudd without his gun, is like Yosemite Sam without a mustache.” This appears to be an attempt by left-leaning producers to undermine support for the Sec...