I visit Low End Mac frequently, because I have so many — a Quadra 650, a Power Computing PowerBase 200, a G3 250 MHz “Wall Street” PowerBook, a PowerBook Duo 2300c, a G3 500MHz “Pismo” ‘PowerBook, a G3 800 iBook, a G4 450MHz “Sawtooth” Power Mac (upgraded in all directions save a better video card), and the black 2.0 GHz Intel Dual Core MacBook that blew up on me last week in mid-edit. The high-end Mac, just shy of 3 years old.
Anyone with this much old crap cluttering up the vicinity needs backup, and plenty of it. I have enough ancient machinery to start up a newspaper, if I were interested in filing Chapter 11 by St. Patrick’s Day. And it’s nice to have multiple redundancy systems in case something gets sideways come deadline time. I recall a story, perhaps a bit of writerly folklore, that the famously prolific Isaac Asimov kept three IBM Selectrics on hand because he feared one croaking on him in mid-novel.
I’m clearly no Asimov for a variety of reasons, most of them literary and scientific, but especially because my backups are not identical. When the high end crumbles, I start sliding down a slippery technological slope. It’s like a bad “Star Trek” episode: “Engage auxiliary power … switch to manual override … fuck it, where are the oars?”
As we speak I’m working on the dual-boot G3 iBook, which I upgraded to OS X 10.4.11 as soon as the MacBook croaked so I could use Flash 10 and a webcam and a whole mess of other nonsense that has little or nothing to do with writing columns or drawing cartoons.
The thing has that adhesive stink much discussed in Apple forums, its LCD display is non-awesome and the keyboard sucks — maybe one of the worst Apple has ever inflicted on its long-suffering fanboys — and Twitter drags on it like a three-legged dog with a butt full of buckshot. I’d switch to the Pismo, which has an excellent keyboard, but it’s three years farther behind the technological curve, even more video-challenged and sports an LCD that is starting to look like an art-class watercolor of a laptop screen as painted by a glaucoma patient with a head full of medicinal ditch weed.
If I were a good American I’d dash right on over to the Apple store, buy me a brand-new MacBook and use the old one for backup, when and if it returns from the Apple depot. I confess to having lust in my heart.
But I have no bucks in my bank account, and an early-riser of a wife who knows where the guns are, so I’ll forgo showing Steve Jobs my stimulus package in hopes that it will remain attached to my body.
Mad Blog Media 
Since you mentioned St Paddy’s Day: an idiot-proof dinner for March 17th.
http://buglenotes.com/groups/12th-man-training-table/forum/topic/68
The MacBook I’m typing this on had better last another five years. I figure by then, we’ll be back to papyrus and stylus days.
I have a great recipe for clay tablets that take a take a scribe mark well and dry quickly. You can send them to Velonews in Boulder via mule or donkey (assuming they’re still in Boulder and not in an unpronounceable suburb of Bombay by now). Definitely more reliable and might even be quicker.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to try my best with my Dell running Gatesware XP. I wish you luck as you no doubt wish me the same. We mutually need it.
“and sports an LCD that is starting to look like an art-class watercolor of a laptop screen as painted by a glaucoma patient with a head full of medicinal ditch weed.”
Dude, you’re on fire today. I recommend giving us more.
Patrick, You need to upgrade!! I have about 40 years experience in computers and I don’t recommend upgrading unless you can’t get to where you need to be.. Start saving your pennies for Steve J.
Charley
Did I see you walking in Palmer Park today? White T-shirt with the sleeves cut off? Peering up through the woods at a MTBer you heard on the singletrack next to the dirt road you were walking on? If that was you, that was me. I almost stopped, but I couldn’t tell if it was you or not through the trees.
Such a beautiful day.
Steve, thanks. Even a blind dog finds a Milk-Bone now and then.
Charley, I hear you. I’ve been making do for years, technologically speaking, and my patience is starting to fray. When I was just writing, editing and drawing cartoons, pretty much any old Mac would do — I still run Photoshop 4 on three machines and Word 2001 SE on two. But this website business demands a tad more horsepower. Come the Giro I need to be running at least two big-ass monitors, if not two actual computers, to keep track of this and that. For the Tour I may need three. The office will look like the bridge of the Enterprise, only with more empty Romulan ale growlers.
And Joey, yeah, that may have been me — were you wearing USA Cycling kit? I was gonna go for a ride, but then decided on a longish run-hike, since I’ve been looking like an albino Morlock lately, or maybe Elric of Melnibone without the badass blade. Hard to get any vitamin D to the scalp when it’s under a Giro. I get any whiter with this hairdo, the Aryan Nations will try to recruit me for their PR department.
Yep, I was wearing the old red, white, and blue spidey-suit, or at least the jersey portion. I should have trusted my initial instinct and stopped to say hello.