from sunday… (sunday?)…

How much does MY life suck? I’m on the train, on the way in to work, and it’s SUNDAY. Yeah… I know. There is some kind of new-freshman-orientation thing today, and my department chair is out of town or something, so he asked me to fill in for him. Yeeha. So I get to try to explain the science program to a bunch of incoming students, and I’m not sure I really understand it myself. Anyway, I have to be on campus from 1:00 until 3:00-ish, I would guess. Luckily my wife has a birthday party to busy herself and the kids with, or I’m sure she’d be freaking out. Weekends are too precious to throw away a day.

So, here I sit with the Clunkmaster laptop… hopefully Monday will be the last day I have to lug this thing around. I checked on the status of my iLemon online, and they turned it around and shipped it the same day, so it’s on its way back. Who knows if they actually FIXED anything… they don’t tell you THAT in the status report, it just says… “Begin Repair” and then “Packed for Shipping”. Ummm… I think you missed a fucking step!

In the meantime, I’ve been exorcising my buildup of Anti-Apple sentiment by fucking around with the old Macs in my house. I put my old 700MB HD from my 6100 into the 9500 my daughter uses and poked around with it a little bit… all my old files are still there… my thesis programs and all my old software. I need to get that stuff onto a CD-ROM so that I can access it from my iBook. And speaking of CD-ROMs, the Mac 9500 runs too damned slow for my daughter to play some of her games, so I’ve been poking around on eBay for a faster internal SCSI CD drive. So far, I won TWO! (My mom needs a new one also.) Both 12x… one internal, one external… one $17.00 and the other $16.50… that’s WITH shipping. Seems pretty fair. Anything for an excuse to poke around inside an old Mac! I still have a bid outstanding on another… and of course, while poking around on eBay, I put about 15 items on my “watch” list that I REALLY don’t need, but if nobody bids on them, I’m gonna grab them up. Mostly old SCSI Hard drives… 1GB – 4GB. I might need them for these old Macs in the basement. I just need to decide what I’m doing with them. Here is my current Mac suituation…

1) My iBook. New machine. Use it daily. Love it when it’s working, which is seldom.

2) Mac 9500/G3. Older machine upgraded to a 200Mhz G3 chip. Lots of RAM. (160 Megs?) Got this one from the old school’s “yard sale” and added a second HD. Just bought a 12x CD for it from eBay. This is my daughter’s computer, so all it really needs to be able to do is play “Putt Putt” and “Dora the Explorer” without hanging up too often. Before I got my hands on this one, my daughter used to use my…

3) Mac Performa 6116. My grad school computer. Rock solid machine. Never had a problem. Upgraded the 700Mb hard drive to a whole gig, but the 66MHz chip is a bit too slow to make it worth doing much with nowadays. May just cannibalize the HD and put it in the…

4) Other Mac 9500/G3. Identical to the machine my daughter uses, but only has a single 2GB hard drive and a bit less RAM. Another of the machines I got in my bulk yard-sale buy, (5 computers and three monitors for $40) along with the 9500 I gave to my Mom for Xmas, and the…

5) Mac 8500/G3/AV. Another old machine with a G3 upgrade card. (The old school must have just gone nuts buying G3 cards for every fucking machine they had.) I’d get rid of this one if it wasn’t for the AV card that gives the thing video and S-video in and out capabilities. Tried to put the AV card in one of the 9500’s but it doesn’t fit. Seems like I should be able to use it to capture video and stuff, but I don’t really know how, or what software I’d use. (Although I think I have a really old version of Adobe Premiere somewhere.) If I was going to sell one flat-out, it would be this one, I guess. Someone would at LEAST pay $30 for it just for the G3 card, I would think. But there is no WAY I’m ever gonna sell the…

6) Mac Classic! One of the last of the little-grey-Macs with the 9” black-and-white screen. It’s got 4 Mb of RAM, a 40 Mb hard drive, and an 8 MHz processor! I paid TWO DOLLARS for this one at the yard sale! The fact that this machine even still works is a testament to how fucking cool Macs once were. The fact that I downloaded MacDraw 2.0 and a few other old programs from the Net on my iBook, burned it to a CD, put the CD in the 9500, AppleTalked the Classic to the 9500 then transferred the programs to it AND got them to run is a testament to how much attention Apple pays to forward-and-backward compatibility. (By the way, I can still run MacDraw 2.0 on my iBook!!) Anyway, I don’t know what I’m gonna DO with it, but it is just too cute for words. If nothing else, I’ll put in on a shelf in my office and use it for a clock. (Via the original AfterDark “clock” module!)

So… there you go. Six Macs. Is that sick? It is… I know, but hell… at least it’s cheaper than fixing up old vintage piece-of-shit cars.. and it takes up less space. (There are no Macs up on concrete blocks in my front yard… although…that would make a funny picture.) Anybody out there got any old Mac gear you want to get rid of?? I’m especially fond of gear that is “free to a good home!” Like I said… I wish I had a project in mind… something to DO with all of these slightly outdated computing power. I’d set up a little computer cluster in the corner of my office… AppleTalk all these babies together, and set them up to crunch data 24/7.

There’s this chick sitting across the aisle from me on the train who is kinda cute… that is… until I noticed the “print” on her scarf is actually the words “I (heart) Jesus” written over and over again. Aaah! Run away! Run FAR away!

Jeez, I didn’t plan to spend this whole train ride rhapsodizing about my Macs. (Get it? Macs? “Rhapsody”? If you do, you are the highest order of geek!) But it was fun. However, it still amazes me that 20-some people actually read this crap every day. (When I can actually POST it, that is… which I haven’t been able to do since WEDNESDAY.) Isn’t there anything on TV?

Ok…well… I have to go pretend to do something productive now.

It’s a beautiful day, by the way. I think Spring may REALLY be here this time. No more freak fucking snowstorms…. I hope? Perhaps the Canadians are safe for a few more years.

Dr. Dave