 ©1999-1999 ICFTP What're you, kidding? |
25 April 1999 10:43 am (actually, it’s a bit later than that)
Hey, good morning. It’s a bright and HOT sunday morning here at 2005. Nobody’s on the porch except Cleo, and Miles and Athena are creeping from car to car seeking shade. Ha, they think it’s hot now... perhaps they’ll become inside cats again before too long?
Don’t know really why I sat down to write, other than I like doing it. Isn’t that supposed to be reason enough? I think so. I’ve been thinking about doing this exact thing, writing purely for pleasure, for years now. Guess the slow steady search for a writing instrument paid off. Thought it would be the Portable at first, but had too many problems getting it truly portable. Found a hard drive for it quickly enough, and cheaply enough, but it had to be an external. Not only is the drive bay in the Portable for 2.5” drives, but the SCSI bus is a non-standard low-power consumption system. Couldn’t find one cheaply enough to fit the bill. Even so, I could’ve gone floppy-based, run a stripped down version of 7.1 or 6.0.8... but I don’t have a battery that will last, and new ones are $75. So it’s pretty much an oddly-shaped desktop computer. I like the keyboard, though, and I’ve got no problem with the trackball. It’s certainly better than the trackpads on current Powerbooks, as far as input devices go.
Erector Set
Erector Set came in and recorded on Saturday, and much fun was had by all. These guys are great... and they show up with really good scotch..
Ray works his magic at the Mackie...
Mike, Lady Catherine and Jay... uh... well... they drink beer. Talked to Jay about Austin, turned him on to Koerner, Ray & Glover. Cool guy, good drummer. Mike plays bass.
We made an album cover! Digital cameras rock. Have I said that before?
Damn, the monitor keeps flickering on this SE/30. Wonder if it’s the proximity of the laser printer, even when it’s not turned on? Hope turning it on once wasn’t enough to fuck the CRT. Can I get this one de-gaussed? Hmmm. Let’s move the printer and see.
Don’t know that it did any good, but the printer is now in my bedroom, looking squat and ugly. It needs to be up on a desk, surrounded by other cool stuff. (note: apparently it did some good, monitor has stopped flickering -T)
Back to the quest for a writing instrument: Next up was a keyboard for the Newton. Found one easily enough, $50, looked brand new. Disappointing, though. The keys have a lot of resistance, and very little feedback. Layout’s not bad, but it’s too damn hard to press the keys. Typing on it is a workout, not fun for long. The display’s not bad, but not great either. Didn’t do much writing on that one. Liked the EMate, though! Could’ve worked on that one. But it’s only 25mhz. SLOW compared to the MP2000. Dammit. Anyway, didn’t wanna buy a big, slow Newton, no matter how good the keyboard was.
At this point, I’d pretty much thought that I didn’t really want to write. If I really wanted to write, the reasoning went, it wouldn’t matter if all I had was a blunt pencil. For a while, I just felt kind of blah about the whole prospect.
Ordered an SE/30. When I opened it, pulled it out of the ghost poo, cut the bubble-wrap with the postal stickers off, and finally got a look at it, I was amazed. It was in better condition than my PowerMac, showing a small amount of wear, but otherwise a pristine platinum early Mac, familiar shape in paler plastics with ‘modern’ looking vents cut into the front and a new, wider and lower keyboard.
That keyboard caught my eye immediately. I turned it over in my hands, enjoying the well-made feel, tapping a few keys to see how they responded. Putting it down on JB’s desk, I typed the familiar test sequence “That White Guy was here but now he’s gone, he left his name to carry on...” It felt great! Could type way fast, and my fingers seemed to know where to go if I gave them even the most general of instructions.
It had System 7.5.3 installed, and I haven’t had any reason to change that. It was a very fast computer for its time, a 25mhz 68030 with a math coprocessor, and it does what I want it to with plenty of snap. I did, however, delete the version of Microsoft Works that came with it, replacing that cludgy and crash-prone package with ClarisWorks. Much better!
One day about this time, Becky came across the hall and found me. Her parents had given her a new, wider desk to sit her PC on, and she wanted to know if I wanted the old, hutch-style thing her computer had been on. I followed her into her apartment to get a look at the thing. She had a dark-grained pressboard hutch sitting in her dining room, only about two and a half feet wide, with a slanted platform for the keyboard that opened up above a storage space. Shelf above and shelf below, and it was exactly what a small Mac SE/30 wanted to sit on. We carried it over into my apartment, and I put it next to my bookshelf near my bedroom, and that’s where I sit now. As I write this, my hands rest on a green pad below the keyboard. My coffee sits on a leather coaster, from Bienville Photography, to the left of the computer, and to the right sits the mouse on a mousepad that matches the green wrist rest below. On the shelf above me, Lilu is lying stretched out, cleaning herself and flinging dust down upon the keyboard. Great. But she’s adorable, sitting above me and completing this very comforting picture. Koerner, Ray & Glover are providing the soundtrack, telling stories of their own with voice, boot and twelve-string guitar.
And I’m just here, writing because it feels good.
26 April 1999:
So now Tanya's got folks saying "You're doing WHAT for a guy you're not even DATING?", you should read what she's been posting on her site. She's basically doing the same thing with her site that I'm doing. Interesting, for me at least, to read about this from her perspective.
28 April 1999:
Oh man, great fun last night. I'll tell ya about it in a bit, but it was washable crayola markers, topless people and many cries of "I want another tattoo!" Lots of Wild Turkey 101, too. I think we were all revving up for Derby Day. It was porch people, just the folks that live in the house, but it was all of us, all in the same room. The girls all wore pretty bras and we drew all over each other and great fun was had by all.
Christy has a new offering for us. Wasn't too easy for me to read. It's a rather strong brew... reading what other people are thinking about what I'm almost always thinking about these days... things are speeding up, looming in the headlights, becomming inevitable, becoming real. It sometimes feels like too much, when I read it, too much to be telling people. But whatever, if you don't wanna read it, don't. But it is real. It's what's going on. You guys can share a little in the effort to withstand all this crap, lend us your strength just by reading and recognizing.
On a MUCH better note, Derby Day is on Saturday! Annual party given by Chris Olsen and Helen Savage-Olsen (Rob's dad and stepmom) on the day of the Kentucky Derby. Gonna take a camera, I'll tell ya'll all about it.