Shake it like a homeboy

Do you know how to give a Homie Handshake?

I sure don't.

Luckily for us, we can learn how it's done here.

This is what happens when web surfers get cocky

OMG! Somebody crashed the internets! Too funny.

Let the hysteria begin.....

You know - I'm really getting tired of Friday the 13th. Seriously, I don't know how many times I had to hear "Oh my God! It's Friday the 13th! I wonder what horrible thing is going to happen to me today?" I have news for you people. It's just another freaking Friday! OK? There is nothing spooky about it. There is no bad luck associated with it. If you find yourself noticing more bad things happening on this day, it's because you're more focused on everything bad happening that day. So get over it already.

For those that are interested, the next full moon is July 29th. Total weirdness expected that day.

Oh!.... Chicken!... yip yip yip yip yip

I used to love watching Sesame Street as a kid and this little scene here was one of my all time favourites. It's the one where the aliens (?) come down and discover a ringing telephone.

Broadcasters: viewers aren't your enemy

Here's another interesting DRM story. This time it's a valid gripe about public broadcasters not giving the (paying) public what they deserve.

My 6th MacBook Report - Connecting the Camera

Have you ever had one of those days where you made a hard task out of an easy one? Well, that's what happened when I tried to get the MacBook set up to use with my Canon Powershot digital camera.

Since I plan on bringing my MacBook with me to the UK in September (did I mention that yet?), I figured it would be a good idea to get the Canon software installed so I could download photos from the camera to the Mac. I went looking for my software CD and could only find one for Windows. So I looked in all the other places for the Mac software CD - couldn't find it. No problem, I'll just download it off the Canon web site. Except all they had were upgrades to newer software versions. So I decide to call Canon. The nice support person explains that the Mac software I need is right on the CD that came with the camera. As I'm looking at the CD, it dawns on me - I had seen the label where it said 'for Windows' and completely ignored the rest of the label. On the left side of the disc was more writing that said 'for Mac'. Boy do I feel stupid.

Anyway, now that I enjoyed that brush with stupidity, I installed the Mac software, installed the update I got from the Canon site and voila - works very nicely.

Half truths + lobbying = dumb laws

Here's the latest dose of reality about Canadian piracy claims, courtesy of Michael Geist.

Latest meme

- Available: No
- Age: 46
- Annoyance: Screaming children
- Animal: Cat
- Actor: John Lithgow
- Beer: Pass....
- Birthday/Birthplace: May 17 / Montreal
- Best Friends: Darlene
- Body Part on opposite sex: bum...
- Best feeling in the world: Helping
- Blind or Deaf: Blind
- Best weather: dry, breezy and 21C
- Been in Love: yes
- Been bitched out? no
- Been on stage?: yes
- Believe in yourself?: you have to, but it can be tough
- Believe in life on other planets: yes
- Believe in miracles: yes, except they're not really miracles per se
- Believe in Magic: again, magic is a misnomer
- Believe in God: not in the traditional way
- Believe in Satan: no
- Believe in Santa: nope
- Believe in Ghosts/spirits: yes
- Believe in Evolution: yes
- Car: blurple (blue / purple)
- Candy: salt water taffy
- Colour: Blue
- Cried in school: very likely at first
- Chocolate/Vanilla: chocolate
- Chinese/Mexican: Chinese
- Cake or pie: Pie
- Country to visit: Australia
- Day or Night: night
- Dream vehicle: interstellar spacecraft
- Danced: yes
- Dance in the rain?: no
- Do the splits?: nope
- Eggs: every way but poached
- Eyes: blue
- Everyone has: a weakness
- Ever failed a class? not that I can recall
- First crush: M Smart
- Full name: Karl Plesz
- First thoughts waking up: That alarm is quite annoying....
- Food: yes please
- Greatest Fear: drowning
- Giver or taker: equal measure of both
- Goals: go with the flow
- Gum: nah
- Get along with your parents?: mom - yes; dad - not anymore
- Good luck charm: no such thing
- Hair Colour: mostly grey
- Height: 5'9"
- Happy: in general
- Holiday: Christmas
- Health freak?: no
- Hate: unanswered phone ringing
- Ice Cream: oh yeah... oh flavour? anything with coconut
- Instrument: keyboard (but very amateur)
- Jewelry: nothing (well, except watch)
- Kids: step daughter - 30
- Kickboxing or karate: neither
- Keep a journal?: blog
- Longest Car Ride: Kingston to Calgary
- Love: yes
- Letter: Z
- Laughed so hard you cried: yes
- Love at first sight: it's possible
LAST PERSON WHO...
1. Slept in a bed beside you? Darlene
2. Saw you cry? Darlene
3. Went to the movies with you? Darlene
4. You went to the mall with? Darlene
5. You went to dinner with? Darlene
6. You talked to on the phone? Phil
7. Made you laugh? Darlene
8. Text: text?
9. Hugged you: Darlene
10. Cuddled with: Darlene
- Milk flavor: chocolate
- Movie: Blade Runner
- Mooned anyone?: no
- Marriage: yes, 1989
- Motion sickness? never
- McD's or BK: neither - Wendy's
- Number of Siblings: 2
- Number of Piercings: 0
- Number: 3
- Overused Phrases: absolutely
- One wish: joy
- One phobia: heights
- Place you'd like to live: Portland OR
- Perfect Pizza: thin crust; lots of sauce, pepperoni; green peppers; extra cheese
- Pepsi/Coke: CocaCola
- Quail: huh?
- Reason to cry: no more ice cream
- Reality T.V.: Idol
- Roll your tongue in a circle? yes
- Song: Godless by Dandy Warhols
- Shoe size: 11.5
- Salad Dressing: 1000 Island
- Sushi: Yuck
- Skipped school: yes
- Slept outside: yes
- Seen a dead body?: funeral
- Smoked?: yes, not anymore
- Skinny dipped? no
- Shower Daily?: yes, sometimes even a bath too
- Sing well?: used to, now - not as much
- In the shower? no
- Swear?: holy fuck yes, but I try to curb it
- Stuffed Animals?: yeah
- Single/Group dates: n/a
- Strawberries/Blueberries Raspberries: Raspberries
- Scientists need to invent: way to capture energy from sun in space and send to surface
- Super Heroes?: Spidey
- Time for bed: as late as I can
- Thunderstorms: awesome
- TV: the odd show
- Touch your tongue to your nose?: no
- Unpredictable: as much as I can
- Vegetable you hate: squash
- Vegetable you love: beets
- Vacation spot: anywhere with surf
- Weakness: ticklish
- When you grow up: grow up...... that's a good one
- Which one of your friends acts the most like you: I doubt anyone
- Who makes you laugh the most: Robin Williams
- Worst feeling: being sick
- Wanted to be a model?: no
- Where do we go when we die: the place where we decide how to come back
- Worst weather: hurricane
-X-Rays: I'm sorry what was the question?
-Year it is now: 2007
-Yellow: is a safe colour on a car
- Zoo animal: monkey
- Zodiac sign: Taurus

Paging viewers of the TV program Canadian Idol

Is it just me, or is the host of Canadian Idol - Ben Mulroney getting on your nerves? Last night he was in particularly annoying form as he tried to ingratiate himself with all the female competitors. But he really came off like some sort of desperate guy with insecurity issues as he tried to show off his multi-lingual talents or acting like one of the home-boys. I have nothing personal against Ben, but I really think CTV messed up thinking he was a suitable host for the show. He's certainly capable, but he just tries too damned hard to be funny or clever - of which he is neither.

I tried to think of who I would pick to host the show. I'm still thinking.

Karl's own wayback machine

If you've only been a reader of my blog for a few months or so, you really ought to delve into the archives over there on the right of the page. They go back to the end of July 2004. I've been skimming through them and there's some real gems in there. With over 3300 posts and counting, there's gotta be something to pique your interest........

Time for our banks to secure our money

I just don't get it. The banks make so much money from us, it's criminal. They even charge us to access our own money, especially if we use someone else's ATM machine.

We are issued plastic cards that are virtually currency, insomuch that they give us complete access to our bank account balances and our credit potential. Yet the security these cards are afforded is laughable. Card skimming continues to this day unabated. Although I've noticed that stores in Canada tend to look at the signature on credit card purchases and compare it to the signature on the card, I've heard that in the US, most merchants don't even bother anymore.

I think our banks owe us a much better security posture that would make it near impossible for credit card and bank card fraud to take place. They certainly have the money to develop something. Now that chips are to embedded into the next generation of credit cards, enabling proximity sensing (no swiping) of the card to pay for merchandise (which I've heard may also lead to no signature required), the monetary transaction becomes even more impersonal, opening the door for easier defrauding of stolen account cards.

Do we keep taking this from our banks? How long would it take the public to take our government to task if it was discovered that $20 bills could easily be copied? So why do banks get a free ride?

Clever commercial

A wonderfully brilliant commercial from Europe. I won't tell you what it's about (and try not to look at the title on YouTube so as not to give it away).

Best unit of measure read on a blog this year...

"Metric assload"

It was used here, to describe the sheer numbers of artists that jammed with Spinal Tap during their reunion concert at Live Earth (speak of the devil...) at Wembley.

Metric assload. I am so working that into a conversation this week.......

Was it all just a big concert?

I'm just curious..... did anyone pay any attention to Live Earth a few days ago? Do any of my readers know what it was about? Did anyone care? I'm sensing a lot of apathy.

[update] Here's how apathetic I am..... I had to majorly (yes, that's a word) edit this post because I originally referred to it as Earth Day...

The Moose story

So if you're a fan of improvisational comedy, you might want to check out the Loose Moose theatre. I've already mentioned going there for Friday night Theatre Sports, but last night I had a chance to check out the Gorilla Improv show which happens every Saturday. Now that I've had a chance to see both formats, I can report the difference between the two.

The Friday night gig is basically 2 parts - the first part showcases the newer improv players and the latter the more experienced crew. In each part, teams are formed and compete against each other in short scenes. Sometimes the players not on a team judge the acts and sometimes the audience gets to judge. It's fast paced and perfectly suited to those with short attention spans. The only drawback is that the scenes don't get to develop into anything substantial since they're so pressed for time. But it's a fun romp and often an audience member even gets to play in some way. Trivia: Loose Moose is the birthplace of Theatre Sports.

The Saturday night gig is a little more structured - 5 improv players, each taking their turn directing the others in scenes of their own creation. So each director gets to create the set, pick the players, define the roles, describe the premise, and set the rules. The rules and players can even change mid scene. Each improv director gets scored for their creation by the audience. Last night, each person got to direct 3 times and perform up to 12 times in various scenes.
Since the 5 had the night to themselves, it felt like each scene got to develop a little bit more. It was great fun. Not better - just different.

Soon, Friday nights will be the venue for Micetro Improv instead of the Theatre Sports. I'll tell you what that's all about after it starts.

Quiz: Name the (pixelized) person pictured, an alumni of Loose Moose who went on to star in an awesome comedy troupe.

If I had my own radio station - Alan Parsons

If I had to pick a band that defies classification, this might be it. Except that it even defies the meaning of band, because it's more of a project. The Alan Parsons Project. If you think that name sounds familiar, it might be because you've heard it mentioned in the company of legendary Pink Floyd. You see, Alan Parsons was the sound engineer who presided over their infamous Dark Side of The Moon album. Parsons also worked with the Beatles and Wings. Although I'd like to say, "But enough about his work with other artists", Alan Parsons did just that - the Project had a continually changing collection of vocalists and session musicians appearing on each album. Each album had a theme.

1975's Tales of Mystery and Imagination was loosely based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I never quite got into that album (having never truly gotten into Poe), but the next, I Robot in 1977, was right up my alley. This time the theme was the Isaac Asimov sci-fi Robot series and I can certainly identify with that. No, this isn't music so much as it is drama. You won't find anything worthy of pop radio here. But you will find some great art-rock in all its splendour. I Robot is the lead track. It has an infectious groove to it. There are some dramatic ballads including Some Other Time and Don't Let It Show. But the best tune on this particular album is I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You. It almost has an R&B feel to it. I very hard to get it out of your head.

The next album, Pyramid, was unforgettable in my books. But Eve in 1979, was much better. This time, the theme is women's overpowering effect on men. Although it didn't even ping the pop radar, this is a haunting concept album worthy of a listen. The standout track is Damned If I Do.

1980's The Turn of a Friendly Card is the first time most people heard of Alan Parsons. It produced a huge radio ballad, Time. 1982 brought Eye in the Sky - another great album in my opinion, offering some excellent tracks like the self titled Eye in the Sky, which is led into by the powerful opening track Sirius. Psychobabble and Mammagamma are other standouts. The theme The them here was (can you guess?) of an Orwellian nature.

There were a few more albums since, but they just didn't measure up. In 2004, Alan Parsons introduced A Valid Path, a true return to form for this artist. The opening track, Return to Tunguska, a dark, ethereal piece, could almost be a new Pink Floyd release, which is coincidental, because David Gilmour supplies some of his guitar work on this album as a guest. This is what Floyd and Delerium would sound like if they ever came together. I know - what a weird thought. L'arc en Ciel is another favourite of mine from this latest work from Alan Parsons.

Good Wife Guide 2007

Waaaay back in October 2005, I posted about a supposed Good Wife Guide that had been found in a 1955 edition of Housekeeping Monthly.

Here is a more up-to-date version (which I was originally hosting on my web space, but decided to put it on the blog instead):

• Consider going out for dinner. This is a contingency plan of course, in case your husband or kids don’t have a meal taken care of by dinner time. Be sure to leave subtle hints around the kitchen identifying your favourite meals. Never hint that you might be willing to make dinner yourself – the rest of your family have to be concerned about your needs. If you’re going to actually cook, let it be a surprise, but never give them the impression this is going to be a regular occurrence.
• Look tired and haggard. If you’ve had an easy day, sneak in some jumping jacks for a few minutes to get sweaty and dishevelled. Do not touch up your make-up, or brush your hair. You have to look worse than anyone else.
• Be aggressive in starting and maintaining a conversation. His (or the kids’) mundane day is the last thing you want to hear about, so don’t let up for a second. With practise, they won’t even think about boring you with their day, they’ll just resign themselves to listening to you.
• Maintain a to-do list for the family. If the list drops below a dozen items, the family will start fantasizing about the possibility of finishing what’s on it. Never let this happen.
• If you have to compete with the family to use your tub for a quiet soak, just stock the most feminine, aromatic products you can find all around the tub. This may not work if you have girls, so be sure to add some used razors (with the hairs still on them).
• Train your family to minimize all noise. A family should be seen - not heard. [gasp] What am I saying? They shouldn’t even be seen if that’s possible….
• Never seem happy to see your family. This promotes dependence, noise, and leads to them asking for favours. They need to want to be doing you favours. Don’t act unhappy, just play it cool.
• Greet them with a look that will leave them completely unsure of your mood or intentions. An unpredictable woman is a force to be reckoned with.
• Make the evening yours. If he comes home late, don’t wait. If he goes out to dinner or other places of entertainment with business associates [wink], this is the perfect time to order Spago’s (or any favourite local high-end eatery) to be delivered by taxi.
• Your goal: To make sure your home is a palace of peace, order, and tranquillity where you can renew yourself in body and spirit. You are the queen.
• If he doesn’t notice your new hair-do or colour, you know what you have to do. No sex for 2 weeks.
• If any family member starts whining about laundry not getting done, simply wave your hand with a powerful Jedi motion and exclaim, “There is no maid”.
• Under no circumstances should any family member accompany you shopping. This is not the time to be interrupted every 30 seconds or feel guilty watching what you spend while hubby is pacing around the store trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing in the ‘petites’ section of Le Chateau (or Hot Topic in the US). Cell phones were designed to call the family back together after you’re finished shopping.
• Let your husband know that his chances of getting lucky are not directly related to the size of your lingerie collection. You bought it to feel good about yourself – not for him.
• A good wife always knows what she wants.

Picture by Mrs Reed.

My 5th MacBook Report - It's the GUI... Stupid

One of the things I am noticing about my new MacBook is that almost all of my difficulties with figuring out how to do something are because of my Windows bias. That is to say, that I am so used to the convoluted way some things are done in Windows, that I have come to expect tasks to be unintuitive. Which of course, on the Mac, they are not.

Case in point: I wondered how to get program icons onto the dock (and stay there). I figured out that when you open a program after finding it in the applications folder and double-clicking it, it appears on the dock while the program is running. But I expected the task of making the program stay on the dock to be convoluted and therefore went looking for the convoluted method. I did find one, but as it turns out, there's actually a rather simple way. You just drag the icon onto the dock with the program closed. That's it. Do you want to rearrange the order of the icons on your dock? Just drag them into your preferred order. One thing I like about the dock is that they managed to (from a Windows perspective) roll the task bar and quick launch bar into one seamless entity. How do you tell which programs are open? Easy - they have little triangles next to them. I know it can be argued that Windows isn't exactly 'hard', it's just different. This may be true, but I seem to be noticing that on a Mac, there always seem to be fewer steps needed to get a particular task done.

Another feature I thought was cool (especially for users new to Mac) - if you have no idea where a system setting you need is located within the system preferences window, you can just type a key word in the window's search field and as you get more specific (or choose an offered choice from a list), the system preferences option you need becomes highlighted (see image). Very smart.

Spotlight is Mac's search feature to find stuff on the whole system. Typing something in Spot light will search (on the fly) all your folders, files, applications, utilities, inside documents, email, it's like having Google Desktop.... but without Google Desktop.

Exposé is yet another feature of great design. Although you can tab through open applications and select the one you want, sometimes you want to see all of your open programs at the same time. In Windows, this would be time consuming to manually resize all the existing windows. But in Mac, Exposé makes it as simple as pressing the F9 key. It automatically (temporarily) resizes the program windows so they all fit with no overlap. When you click on a program window in this mode, it comes to the forefront and all windows go back to their original size.

Sometimes improv is nuts!

The Improv Theatre Sports at Loose Moose last night were something else. Darlene and I got to see some new faces on stage again along with the familiar ones. The crowd was much larger this time, which adds a different dynamic. 3 rows were filled with students from what looked like an international exchange thing. I thought that would tone the adult references down. I was wrong. Not that the players went out of their way to ramp things up to adult level, they just couldn't help it. Some serious wardrobe malfunctions didn't help matters either. Let's just say that one actor wore a costume that was so tight, it revealed more about him than he would have liked.

Snooze rulez

My latest motivation poster.

Be sure to see one before you die

It's been 12 years since I attended the Calgary Stampede Parade, so I thought it was time. I bought a hat, charged up my camcorder batteries, filled my travel mug with coffee and headed out. I was waffling over whether to take the bus downtown or try my luck at the C-Train. I gambled on the train. I got to Dalhousie at the end of the NW line around 7:30am and it was beyond full. Undaunted, I drove to the next station, Brentwood, where there was still parking left. It's a trade-off though - you get parking, but the trains are already full when they arrive from the first stop. Once I got downtown, I had to figure out a good place to stand, because the streets were already lined with thousands of spectators. I managed to luck in at 6th St and 6th Ave., not too far from the beginning of the parade route.

My spot wasn't a bad one, but this person next to me brought a big balloon along because she was meeting other people. The balloon must have been filled with fake helium, because it kept floating down and either hitting everyone in the head and face or getting in our way. Since I was trying to record the parade, this got irritating very fast. I knew people were giving her the look of death, because I could hear her apologizing over and over. Other than that, it was great. The sun went behind a building by 9:00am, so we didn't bake.

The parade was decent, the crowd was loud enough and now all I have to do is edit the footage and put a DVD together to send home to my family to taunt them for not coming down....... [waving] "Hi family.....!" [waving stops]

Squishee!

Don't know if you heard, but 12 7-Eleven stores around the world are converted to Kwik-E-Marts for the month of July. This Flickr page displays some photos from the one in Mountainview.

They're quite shocking.....

From the makers of the dramatic chipmunk (well, not really - but it sounded good), we bring you..... the shocking cats.

Warning, the thing loops indefinitely, with quickly-to-get-annoying music. So beware.

Behold - my first hat

It's the kind of thing I swore would never happen. But the chrome dome is not as resistant to the rays of the sun as it used to be and since I plan on spending some time watching the Calgary Stampede Parade tomorrow morning, I figured I had better get a hat. I felt the traditional cowboy hat was too cliche, so I got me an Aussie hat. So there you have it. I am now officially an old man in a hat.

My 4th MacBook Report - Blogging Tools & Radar

The next thing I wanted to do was see how difficult it would be to duplicate my typical day-to-day tasks that I had grown used to in Windows. One thing I do pretty much daily (as if I have to tell you) is blog. This requires a browser (check - Firefox); and the ability to quickly edit and resize photos. That part used to be done in Windows by a nifty program called Irfanview. The preview program in Mac didn't seem to have a re-size feature, but it had everything else. But the re-size thing is a show stopper for me, so Preview was not going to fill the bill. iPhoto? Sure. But how to do it? The feature is kinda hidden. You open your picture in iPhoto, then in the File menu, choose Export. First you choose the format you want (jpg etc.), then scale the image to the size (in pixels) that you want and choose export. Not exactly efficient, but it'll do.

Although Windows now has this capability courtesy of Yahoo, Mac comes with widgets on a dock item called Dashboard. At first I thought... [yawn]. But then I found out you can get a widget for Mac that identifies all wireless networks in your vicinity (very helpful on a Mac), then tells you their name (SSID), signal strength, channel and whether they're open (insecure) or not. Very cool! It's called Airport Radar and it can be gotten here.

Swear Jar

Best Bud commercial ever! If you are bothered by swearing - even bleeped-out swearing, you might want to avoid this. But it is very funny.

Be sure to notice the guy on the right side of the board room table cheering the presenter on as he continues to swear like a trooper.

Allison: I don't know why - but the girl at the photocopier reminded me of you.

Photo I.D. required on delivery

When you order pizza from Winnipeg's Porno Pizza, you get a little something extra with your pizza. Which might be a clever way to sneak a porn movie into your house, were it not for the glaring illuminated sign on top of their delivery cars.

With pizza combination names like Missionary Position, The beaver and Hawaii 5 "ho", this could be the ultimate stag party food.

Thanks to BoingBoing for this magnificent find.

My 3rd MacBook Report - Productivity for Free

I finally got my wireless network access functioning on my MacBook. It wasn't too difficult. I just had to create a new network connection for the AirPort, select my access point by its SSID and select the correct security protocol being used. The thing that might throw some people off is that it calls for a WEP password, where some programs refer to it as a WEP key. No matter - it works like a charm.

For my next trick, I thought I'd investigate my productivity software options. The MacBook comes with a trial (naturally) of Microsoft Office for Mac. Whatever...... I felt it was time to give OpenOffice a chance on this machine and wave buh-bye to Office - which, once the trial runs out will cost money. I found out that OpenOffice requires the X11 interface to be installed first. I came to realize that X11 is included on the DVD that came with the laptop. I just went through the Optional Software route on the disc and found X11, then installed it. Next, I went to OpenOffice and prepared to download the program for Mac (X11).

Luckily, they make a set of installation instructions available for download. I recommend you do that because X11 has to be configured a certain way for OpenOffice to work properly. Then I downloaded the software (there are a few choices based on what version of Mac OS X you have and whether your Mac has an Intel processor or not) and installed it per the instructions. Voila! OpenOffice YO! One thing to note here is that OpenOffice actually runs as an application inside X11. But you only have to drag and drop the OpenOffice icon from your applications folder to the dock and you're ready to run it. X11 will open for it automatically. A little daunting, but you just have to trust it. So that does it - Office for Mac can be gone now. One less unnecessary program to buy.

Happy Birthday America...

I tried to find a picture that sums up American Independence Day.......

Did I do alright? It's American. It has a slight military flavour. Peace sign. Jessica Simpson.....

My 2nd MacBook Report

When you turn on your MacBook for the first time, you will be asked a few geographical related questions to set up for your location, language etc. I was not successful in configuring my Airport card to connect to my D-Link wireless access point (the default settings are basic), but that's likely due to the kind of configuration I have on the access point right now. I switched to regular old wired Ethernet connection - it connected without a hitch.

The next thing that happens is the Mac checks online to see what updates to the OS and installed software are available and offers to download and install them (this task can be scheduled automatically).

Because this is a unique, new OS, there are a lot of settings to discover and learn so you can decide how you want things set up. I decided to get some advice in that arena by going to myfirstmac.com on this particular page: 5 things to do after starting up your first Mac. I did move my Dock to the right side of the screen and added right-clicking ability to the track pad. While I was setting up the track pad options, I discovered that scrolling up and down a page can be accomplished by placing two fingers on the track pad at once.

The next thing I did was download and (try to) install Firefox. I thought this would be relatively simple, and it would be if you knew what you were doing. Of course the internet was a great help. When you download Firefox, it comes as a [.dmg] file. It's an image file. What you're supposed to do with this file is double-click it, then drag the Firefox icon into your applications folder. Then you can unmount the image and delete it. I did not know that, so I struggled with that for a little.

The User Interface (UI) is fairly intuitive, but it is a major departure from the familiar Windows UI and that makes for a puzzling experience. Fortunately, places like Mac 101 make it a little easier to swallow and is a place I will spend a lot of time for the next few days if not weeks.