a few props

there are two things i want to tell everyone about, because they rock outright.

1. Bicycle Tutor: bicycletutor.com has free videos on how to fix almost everything on your bike. Which makes you realize it's not that hard. Which gives you the power & confidence to be self-sufficient with your transportation. Which rocks outright.

2. Open source software: I always feel like a schmuck when a friend drops $200 on Microsoft Office, or $900 on Adobe Creative Suite. Because, you know what? Microsoft Office has a nearly perfect, free drop in replacement: Open Office (if you're on a Mac, I recommend the NeoOffice branch). There's a word processor which has almost every Word feature, including file compatibility. There's a spreadsheet which equals Excel, a presentation program like Powerpoint, drawing like whatever MS's drawing program is... Really. Just try it. It's basically 99% compatible, & I bet you won't need Microsoft at all. Really!

And as for Adobe: while it's not as powerful or amazing as Photoshop, the Gimp (yep, really) is a pretty good image editor. I'd guess, unless you're a professional photographer, that it does what you need. As for Illustrator, you might wanna try out Inkscape, which I now actually prefer.

Now I know, you can probably find ways of getting all this stuff for free. Me, I prefer to use stuff that is SUPPOSED to be free, meaning it won't eat my computer if it finds out how I got it, I'll be able to update it to the latest version anytime, and it's developed by people who want to make the best software they can, rather than selling you more unnecessary features.