Category: Computer

A failure to differentiate

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Putting a label or some kind of mark on one of them would have been much too simple. No, the best way to tell the difference between the two outwardly identical computers was to put the one that didn’t work away. If you’re just keeping something for parts, you don’t need to keep it handy. Leave the one that works out on the floor of the family room – where it’s easy to get at.

What’s that? The one left out on the floor now doesn’t work either? Well that’s rotten luck. Might as well open them both up and pull anything that might be useful before we throw them out. I know, I know… but Cheryl will sooner sprout gills and run off with a handsome young tuna than allow us to keep two broken computers with no practical value.

Hold on a second… did we put the broken computer in storage because we didn’t need to get at it, or did we put the working one in storage so it wouldn’t get damaged on the family room floor? Holy identity crisis Batman, I don’t know which is which!

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It turns out the rumors of my iMac’s demise were greatly exaggerated. All of my server software was still installed and operational.

Sure, I haven’t turned it on since I discovered it in working order (a week ago) – but we’re all breathing a little easier around these parts knowing that it’s ready when we need it. Except Cheryl… she’s just lost her reason to throw away a couple of computers.

HA HA! Foiled again!

R.I.P. my bondi blue buddy

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Yesterday marked the passing of my original, 1998 vintage, rev. B, bondi blue iMac. I was firing it back up to serve as a back up server, so I could bring the iBook off-line for some heavy duty servicing. Alas, my old buddy went down in an unspectacular snap, crackle and pop within thirty seconds of powering it up.

It seems like it was only yesterday I was ankle tackling a fellow post-Thanksgiving shopper to get one of the last promotional iMacs on the Comp USA shelf (they were giving away a free printer, scanner, Imation Superdrive, AND 13 inch color TV with the purchase of an iMac**).

As few of you as there are, I’d hate to lose one of you to server maintenance. Now that my little buddy is gone, I’m lost in a sea of uncertainty. What will I do now?!?

**After mail-in rebates. Note: the color TV was not exclusive to iMac sales… they were giving one away with any PC purchase.

Sometimes there’s a reason, and other times there’s a plug

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During my week-long sojourn in sickness there was this peek in the week when my temperature had a few too many integers added in. (I loose two points for ending a sentence with a preposition… would it kill me to come up with another throw away noun?) During this time of confusion, lethargy, and yes… pain, you’d think someone would have had the decency to put the poor creature down. No wait, strike that. The confusion part hasn’t quite worn off (yet). During this time (yada yada yada)… I didn’t check my email.

“For crying out loud, you mean to tell me all this carrying on is about email?”

Yes.

“Are we going to keep pretending this is a conversation with someone else?”

No.

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

Please, not now.

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Every now and again there is a place for division. Everything below the above line is quite serious. To recap, that’s: above the line = not serious, below the line = serious. Please enjoy the rest of your reading experience. (The Staff)

Yes, email. Three days of previously unchecked email produced a little under 300 pieces of junk mail, as sorted by my trusty Mac. Ten pieces of email escaped my filter, and indeed were legit. Three days, approximately 300 pieces of email, and 97 percent of it was total crap (pardon my english). There’s nothing new here, junk email is as ubiquitous as that envelope of coupons I get from Val-Pak every week (or at least, that’s who it was the last time I paid it enough attention to read the envelope… sometime back in ’68 I think it was, right after my first tour in ‘Nam). No, what I was interested in was how my email strategy was working out. I have one address, through my ISP, that I use essentially as a throw away address. I protect it as much as I can, but when I need to provide an address to an organization or a company I’m doing business with – that’s the one I use. Then there’s my precious. My one address I get from my favorite computer company that no one gets but my friends and family. And last, there’s a dummy email address I set up with my ISP. I’ve never used it. I’ve never given it to anyone. I set up new computers in my house and I forget I have it. As expected, my throw away address brings in a lot of the junk. Also as expected, my precious generates very little junk mail (only 3 of the 300, in fact). No, the real corker is that my dummy address generates almost the same number of junk messages as the throw away address. I haven’t mentioned Cheryl’s address. She’s got a precious address from my favorite computer company too… that she treats like a cheap whore. Before we had THE (email) TALK, she gave that thing to anything with an IP address. We’re talkin all kinds of bad email mojo man. You know what? Even Cheryl’s address gets less junk (like one half) than my dummy address from my ISP, that as you may recall – I’ve NEVER USED.

It all boils down to this: it’s just one more reason you need to get a Mac… or not, so long as it’s not so many of you that you spoil my good thing I’ve got going on.

UPDATE – 9.1 on a 20th Anniversary Mac

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Friends, Romans, Countrymen… lend me your ears. We’re not in Rome, you say? A curse on you who mock my fit of whimsy!

When last I spoke of my bite of Apple lore, I was smote with glee over nine point oh four.

But you had to know that I wouldn’t be satisfied with half measures, didn’t you? This week I went whole hog and pushed the TAM to its official software limit – Mac OS 9.1. Alas, this is not a story chucked full of manna, honey, or candied Apples. Truth be told, it’s not a hell-of-a lot different than 9.04.

The next stop on the TAM tinkering tour is a removal of the thus far unused network card, plugged into the sole PCI slot, in favor of a used (re: free) USB card. With no available (re: authorized) network connection for my beloved TAM at the office, and with a Palm OS device that can do double duty as a USB flash drive, a USB card is my ticket to file transfer bliss.

OOOOH… File Transfer!

Twentieth anniversary of January 10, 1986 (a date which has no particular significance)

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But speaking of twentieth anniversaries, I thought I’d let you all know that I’ve successfully installed and booted OS 9.0.4 on the Twentieth Anniversary Mac at my office. I made a brief search through my disgustingly well organized software archive at home, and came up with my old version of iTunes (version 2) that plays nicely with OS 9 (sans OS 8 hack). I was positively glowing with glee, until a fellow state employee stopped by on a walkabout. Without greeting, he walks up to my side, leans over, looks at the front of the TAM, walks around my desk, takes a close look at the back, closely inspects the FM antenna sprouting from it’s hind quarters, and says “interesting,” before walking out.

You know how some folks say “interesting” with a tone and manner that suggests condescension? Has he no respect for his elders? Reduce, reuse and recycle man!

Turn the heck around and run the other way

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In the context of a computer repair manual, a procedure is described as “pretty difficult,” you should pretty much assume that this procedure is not for you – unless you make a living doing this kind of thing.

I’ve cracked the case on a computer or two in my day, but I’m strictly a novice. That’s why I had no business pulling the innards out of my recently obtained Twentieth Anniversary Mac.

The TAM is built like a laptop computer… space is at a premium, and you have to take lots of things out to get at some things. One such thing that requires major surgery is access to the built in speakers. You see, one of the speakers was suffering from distracting static. This apparently was a common problem on the TAM. Fortunately, the problem was well documented… and the fix was long ago worked out. I just had to take the whole thing apart, disconnect the speaker from the motherboard and clean the connection with a pencil eraser.

The bad news is I am a nervous wreak. The good news is I’m listening to a static free, Bose Acoustimas sound system on a slightly used TAM.

Now I’ve just got to upgrade the OS to 8.6, track down that hacked version of iTunes that runs on 8.6 (I’d swear I’ve got it around here somewhere), delete the new tuner apps and extensions that come w/ 8.6 (that cause volume control problems on the TAM), reinstall the old versions of the tuner apps from OS 7.6.1, track down the driver software for an old 32 bit Macsense PCI ethernet card, install it, and transfer a subset of my music collection to the 2GB HD on the TAM.

No sweat.

Cheryl does an about-face

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About 38 hours ago my wife wanted nothing to do with another old computer. In fact, I had to agree to dispose of my vintage, 1994 Macintosh Performa 577, to make room for my prized new addition to our little Mac Museum.

About 17 hours ago my wife walked into our family room and noticed the TV was on… on the computer screen. “How did you do that?” she asked. “Elementary, my dear Cheryl,” I replied, “behold… a computer with a television and FM tuner built-in.”

About 16 hours ago my wife walked into our family room and noticed music and diaphragm curling base… coming from this same computer. “Don’t tell me that’s coming from the computer too?” she asked. “Indubitably, my dear Cheryl,” I replied, “behold… a computer with a built-in Bose sound system, rounded out with a powered sub-woofer.”

About 15 hours ago my wife asked me the unfathomable, just two hours prior… “You aren’t really going to take that to work with you, are you? I think we ought to keep it here for the kids to use.”

Yeah, sure… for the kids to use….

Twentieth Century Mac

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My wife thinks I’ve finally lost my mind. My wife’s friend since high school agrees. Me? My heart is pitter-pattering like freshman invited to the senior prom. I got my hands on a piece of Macintosh Lore… a genuine Twentieth Anniversary Mac.

To the average layperson the Twentieth Anniversary Mac (TAM) is nothing but an eight-year-old computer. Weighing in with a 250MHz, 603e PPC processor w/ 32MB RAM, 2GB hard drive, 4x CD ROM, 800 x 600 12.1″ LCD, and a TV/FM tuner… the TAM is no longer state of the art. That, as they say, is not the point. It was released in May of 1997 and retailed for $7499. Apple made around 12,000 TAMs. That is partially the point.

Imagine you really wanted something as a child… say a really expensive toy… but as a child it was unattainable. As an adult, wouldn’t you be a little curious to see what you were missing if someone gave you that toy for free?

It may be eight years later, but I still like to play.

Sleeping with the enemy

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“Cats and dogs, living together, mass-hysteria!”
– Bill Murray, Ghostbusters

97.5% of the folks out there who bought a PC this year won’t care one whiff about this – but what do they know anyway? First, there was the Macintosh. Then, there was Wintel. Now (or in 2006 anyway) there is Macintel. This is just like finding out Darth Vader was Luke’s father. There’s a great disturbance in the force.

Sure, the sun will rise in the morning, but what will it be shining on – the bastard child of good and evil? After years of toiling in a Betamax wilderness, will Apple find greater success with a less elegant, but more common and cheaper VHS? We few – we merry enlightened few – what will happen to us? Will Rosetta be more rose or rube? Will my next computer purchase bring a wave of necessary software upgrades? Maybe Luke will unmask Vader in the end and find out he can be saved – that the goodness in him can prevail.

Another PC project

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Not that I need any external pressure to fool around with my PowerBook, but I was feeling it from two different directions this weekend. First there was the peer pressure. That’s right friends; peer pressure isn’t just for adolescence anymore. It’s just as relevant to a 34 year old computer nerd as it is for a 16 year old dermatologist’s patient. It seems that a friend of ours aspired to digitizing his entire music collection. Yes, many moons ago I too aspired to digitizing my music, but only a selection of my music – that portion that I actually listened to on a semi-regular basis.

I know, it seems so naive now, but you know what they say about hindsight.

The second, but considerably less important pressure came from our families’ general lack of space. A large CD collection takes up a lot of it, a digitized collection, not so much. Twenty hours of my live later (but who’s counting), I’m sitting in my office listening to music I haven’t bothered with in ten years. Yes, iPod. Don’t you? If you don’t you really should.