Land of Oz

Remember When?

Do you ever wonder what your high school crush is doing right now?

Do you ever think about what wet, slimy rock your favorite high school bully is slithering under right now?

Did you ever have your word processor and data files on one floppy disk?

Do you think your first car is still on the road?

Does your house still have the little table/seat combo that held your dial phone?

Do you remember eating at Macdonalds when it didn't have tables and chairs?

Do you remember how cool cigarette commercials were?

What ever happened to ABC's "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" on Sundays?

Did you ever use the tube tester in the drug store?

When you played pinball was 10,000 considered a high score?

Remember when Cracker Jack toys were actually toys?

And cereal boxes really contained stuff you could play with?

Was there a time when none of your toys had batteries?

Did you ever have a record player that used actual metal needles?

Remember when you signed out a book at the library and could look at the card and sign the names of all those who signed it out earlier?

Do you recall sleeping on the little deck below the rear window in your parent's car?

Have you ever used a tire iron on a tire?

Did you ever drive a vehicle with a starter pedal instead of a key start or that used a six volt battery?

Labels: oldies

Agrestic Living is Good

From a Times story: "The Times of London asked readers to vote for the word they most felt should be spared from oblivion and attracted more than 11,000 votes in a week. The word embrangle (to confuse or entangle) won with 1,434 votes, while fubsy (short and stout) came in a distant second." After describing some of the abandoned words that are still used in some places, they said, "Apparently, one man's linguistic recrement (waste, refuse) is another man's treasure."

Here for your pleasure is the list. I've highlighted my favorites:

• Abstergent: Cleansing



• Agrestic: Rural



• Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration



• Caducity: Perishableness



• Caliginosity: Dimness



• Compossible: Possible in coexistence with something else



• Embrangle: To confuse or entangle



• Exuviate: To shed



• Fatidical: Prophetic



• Fubsy: Squat



• Griseous: Somewhat grey



• Malison: A curse



• Mansuetude: Gentleness



• Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman



• Niddering: Cowardly



• Nitid: Bright



• Olid: Foul-smelling



• Oppugnant: Combative



• Periapt: An amulet



• Recrement: Refuse (waste - not as in to decline)



• Roborant: Tending to fortify



• Skirr: A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight



• Vaticinate: Prophesy



• Vilipend: To treat with contempt

Labels: oldies, reading

Detroitblog

Here is a very cool collection of essays on Detroit. It explores and displays what's left of the glorious past of Detroit. At the same time, it emphasizes what is happening now. This guy has a way with words and pictures to show what's left of what once was. Boarded up wrecks still show flashes of old-time elegance among the winos and drug addicts. This guy brings it to life. It must have been quite amazing to wander the streets of prewar Detroit. For all our accomplishments and advances of today, those days of the 19-teens had some cultural significance that is a major loss.

Like most cities, especially those of the midwest, much of Detroit is collapsing upon itself. What was once known as MoTown and was at one time the center of automotive excellence is now a festering expanse of abandoned and dying neighborhoods and retail areas. Sure, I know there are new developments going on, but much of Detroit looks like the aftermath of a war. A couple of times when I've had to drive there, I made a wrong turn or looked out while motoring down the expressway and have seen buildings and people that are boarded up and have given up. Flint and Saginaw are part and parcel of that metropolitan disease of abandonment to crime and apathy. It is really sad to see just how far Michigan has fallen.

Labels: gripes, michigan, oldies

Favre

Say it ain't so, Joe...
What a revolting change of affairs. Last year he retired like a hero - the old grizzled iron-man of football from a storied team. Now he's sounding just like any other whining, multi-millionaire, spoiled sports person. Waaa - they won't let me play; Waaa - they won't let me not play; Waaa, I wanna take my ball home.

Damn, Brett; why couldn't you have just faded away like the hero you were? Why do you have to do this crap? Why couldn't you just settle down to catfish hunting back in Mississippi, or open up a Brazil-based beer distributorship in Green Bay? Noooo. You have to play the spoiled prima-donna now. I can't begin to tell you how disappointed I am.

Labels: gripes, oldies

Codgerdom

I've officially hit codgerdom. Here's just a few of the many things happening to this old guy in the last few days to prove it:

Clothes

This weekend I picked up a pair of pants on sale at the local grocery store for $15.95 and actually like them. In my defense, they are Dickies bluejeans, but still; from a grocery store?

Internet

Both google and yahoo have changed their home page to a new and improved version that I hate. Google just pushed it without a hint. Bam - new and crappy page full of text. What happened to minimalist google? At least yahoo let me know it was coming and allowed me to keep my old version. This week the old was gone and I'm stuck with the new. Why do things that work well have to attempt to become new and improved; What's wrong with old and good?

Driving

I'm now one of those hunched over the wheel drivers doing just at or under the speed limit, droning along in the right hand lane, complaining about speeders and cell phone users passing me. And if you're the lady who passed me last week yakking on your cell phone with one hand and gesturing at the caller with your other, will you shut up and put at least one hand on the steering wheel?

The Fourth

I actually looked forward to a nice, peaceful and quiet Fourth of July. And I actually got it. Our neighborhood was abnormally quiet over the Fourth. I doubt I heard twenty illegal fireworks go off for the whole weekend - unlike the warzone I last lived in.

Music

Not only don't I recognize the music on award shows any more, I don't even recognize the artists any more. And the music I used to drive my parents crazy with? It's now elevator music.

Video

I mention Pong or Asteroids to the guys at work and no one knows what I'm talking about. I have no desire to watch TV on a 2 inch screen. I can remember fiddling with the horizontal and vertical hold knobs trying to get my picture to settle down.

Communications

Don't bother calling me on your cell phone to ask if I've read the email you sent ten minutes ago. I'm so old I may not check my email for a day or more. And all I want a cell phone to do, is phone. I don't need pictures, MP3s, cameras, silly-ass ring tones or designer colors. Why can't I just get a cell phone that has clear sound and is easy to dial?

Clothes

Yep - me too. Sorry about that, but I really think wearing your pants down around your knees like they are full of poop and need emptying is pretty stupid. I have no idea if it's gang related or not, but it sure looks dumb.

Body Modification

See above. If you want to stick holes in yourself and fill them full of bits of metal, plastic and bone, fine. But don't expect to serve me dinner with a stud in your mouth. I'll go elsewhere - and I have. If you want to talk to me with a ballbearing in your tongue, you'd better be ready for me to spend more time staring at tongue than listening to your message. Same with tats. You may think a blue flower on your butt is sexy, but I think it looks stupid now and in twenty years, it'll look like a wrinkled old weed or worse. Narrow-minded? Probably, but that's the way it goes.

Labels: gripes, oldies

Cars I've Owned

I just saw an Andy Rooney video about his visit to the International Car Show and was struck by the fact that he said he owned about 13 cars. That caused me to think about just how many cars I've owned. Some memorable and some not so memorable.

• 1963? VW Convertible - I should note that this wasn't really owned by me. I paid for it, but never got the title and sold it back for the same price. Also, there was no body except for the front seats and windshield. But it did run.
• 1971 Chevy Nova - My first real car bought new. It was Silver with an added black stripe had a 3 speed floor shifter, black vinyl interior and a 307 V-8. Later had air shocks, glass packs, fire extinguisher on the hump, chrome reverse wheels and wide tires in the back.
• 1969 Opel GT - Silver and looked like a baby 'vette. Handled like a dream. Added a switch to turn off the brake lights. Brakes needed replacement often.
• 1972? VW Fastback (lemon) - had leaky fuel injection. Was bought during the fuel crisis in the 1974. Coasted it into the VW lot to trade in on the Thing.
• 1970? Chevy Nova - emergency replacement. Pieces (mirrors, windows, etc.) literally would fall off while driving down the road. Didn't own too long.
• 1975 VW Thing. Great car. Owned it for 10 years with one engine replacement in England. Originally cream, later painted olive drab. Top replaced. Stupidly traded it in on my Cavalier.
• 1985 Chevy Cavalier. Second great car. Bright yellow with manual and no A/C. Owned it for 10 years and never-ever had a problem. At the time I sold it, it still had everything original except for muffler and tires, hoses and belts. Same brakes, spark plugs, no accidents, etc. Power steering was just starting to act up. Two months after I sold it, the new owner wrecked it.
• 1995 Chevy S10 Pickup (lemon). Nothing but trouble from the day I bought it. Cruise control, speakers, radio, and lights, were some of the problems the dealer had to fix. Totalled it after about six months in Fresno, California.
• 1996 Saturn SW-2 Wagon. Dark blue-green. Not a bad car, but nothing great. Basic transportation that slowly started to fall apart after four years.
• 2001 VW New Beetle. Another bright yellow car. Turbocharged engine and manual transmission (as have they all been). Lots of minor troubles and a dealer that is the pits have made this a less that fantastic experience. But, overall, not a bad ride. Good mileage and fun to drive.

So, there you have it. Ten cars in thirty-eight years. Two of those cars covered twenty years and two other cars have covered over ten. There's been four Volkswagens, four Chevies, an Opel and a Saturn.

Labels: driving, oldies

Extinction

Why do we get so upset when a critter approaches extinction these days? Whether it's something like a big, ugly condor, or a cutsey-wootsie panda or even a virtually unknown green-gilled aquatic whatsis, my question is - so what?

Let's face it, extinction is just a normal part of life. We'd be in a heck-of-a mess if the dinosaurs hadn't mostly gone extinct. If you're going to get all upset over a carrier pigeon, why not get upset over the trilobite - granted there's about a 250 million year gap there, but extinct is extinct. The main thing that the panda and koala have today is that they are cute. Look at the panda who was either dumb enough or unlucky enough to only focus on one food source - bamboo. That isn't a way to succeed. I'm sure homo sapiens will be eventually following the dodo, wooly mammoth, and snow leopard. Especially since we're evolving to focus on one food source - fast food.

Sure, it's a little sad the masked face of the bamboo-eating panda or the cute furry little snow leopard will probably soon be gone, but that's life. They weren't good enough to survive - they goofed someplace. Either geographically or physiologically, they didn't have what it took to survive. And to be honest, as we approach 7 billion humans on this planet, it wouldn't hurt if some of us started to go extinct; like home robber and homo assaultist, and homo rapist. (And not to change the subject, but why does the idea of a eating a furry canine bring up so much disgust - when eating a feathered chicken bothers hardly any at all.)

Labels: gripes, oldies

Gary Gygax

Wow, talk about feeling old. I don't know how many of know of this 69 year-old guy, but he was the originator of Dungeons and Dragons back in 1974. That was back in the pre-PC days when all the games were played with pencil, paper, lots of reference books, and of course, the ever-present multisided dice.

I never got too much into the D&D side of the house, but spent most of my time playing board war games from places like SPI, Avalon Hill and the upstart Steve Jackson Games. We had a wargaming club, the Wichita Warhawks, at McConnell AFB in Kansas in the late 70s. We even had monetary support from the USAF Morale, Welfare and Recreation funds. Some of us played historical simulations recreating China Farm, Chariot or Chickamauga, but there was always a bunch in the back rattling dice with one guy hiding behind a three-ring binder full of notes and maps.

In the very early eighties one of my first programming projects was a game in the style of D&D called the Tunnels of Avercy hence the domain name of my woodworking site. It was written in BASIC and let you explore an underground dungeon full of monsters and treasures. I published the source code to a BBS (remember those?) many moons ago and wonder if the code still might be floating around out there - I've long since lost it.

I guess that one of the first signs of getting is seeing icons from your early adulthood fading away. RIP Mr. Gygax. You brought a lot of pleasure and companionship to a lot of lonely and strange geeks and nerds.

Labels: celebs, computers, oldies

Online Video

I guess it's my oldfashionedist feelings again, but I am far from convinced over how cool online video is supposed to be. I use the Internet mostly for news and I do read pretty quick, so am probably outside the comfort zone of those pushing video.

I find that by the time I get a video player (assuming it's the among the ones I have) to launch, then wait for the video to stream into the buffer, then watch the 15-30 second commercial, then finally get to see the little teeny compressed video, I could have read an in depth written story containing five times the info.

I've also noticed that most of the videos that play - even youtube, with which I will admit to wasting time once a month or so, are so compressed that they begin to take on the blocky picture resolution of the original Atari TV video games. Some of the stuff on BBC News is so compressed and so small, I'm guessing it would transmit over dial with no problem.

And all this isn't because I'm on some weeny Internet connection. I consistently clock out at around 4.5 - 5.5 MBPS via speakeasy.net which is advertised at 6 MBPS (which no one should really expect to get). I'm usually running on an iMac or fairly new PC with XP. So it's not like I'm running a CP/M based TRS Model 4P over a dialup modem (which I once did). And with all that speed and technology, most online videos still suck.

Labels: computers, gripes, oldies

I'm sorry... grovel, grovel

BBC News: Man, what did China threaten Mattel with? I'll accept a certain amount of blame by Mattel for specifying the junk they accepted, but to tell the Chinese we're so sorry your crap is crap is beyond me.

I'm sure somewhere there is something that the Chinese can make well. In all honesty, if it's something made in the last few centuries I haven't run across it yet. The law of averages will make an occasional item in a product run good no matter how shoddily it's made. Sooner or later enough mistakes will acrue on one item to where it exceeds the rather crappy specs that, yes, the US buyers make.

I don't completely blame the Chinese mind you. If we didn't buy so much of there crap, they wouldn't make it. As long as stores like Harbor Freight and WalMart offer crap that people will joyfully line up and buy, the Chinese - and any other country - will make it to sell to us.

If the public would go to WalMart and say, "I don't care that your crap is %10 lower in price than the crap across the street, I'm not buying it anymore," then actually go across the street and pay more, then lead laden teething rings and wrenches that last half-a-job would be a thing of the past.

I have power and hand tools that were made in the USofA that date back 20-30 years and are still working just fine. I also have a significant amount of tools - with the same labels (listening Craftsman and Stanley?) - that I've bought over that last few years and are sitting broke in a box of crap on a shelf. And I don't even want to explore the no-name stuff I've been foolish enough to buy and discard almost immediately over the last few years. Like the 7 piece drill set I bought for $15 and have since replaced with a $45 set that works oh, so much better.


So we, and yes I include myself, have to quit accepting the crap and garbage that stores are offering today. Is saving %25 on a product worth it if that product only lasts half as long? We need to get a little pride in what we'll accept and realize it worth the time to wait and save for something better. So, Mattel, quite apologizing for the American acceptance of crap. After all, if we didn't buy the crap, you guys wouldn't sell the crap, and China wouldn't produce the crap.

Labels: gripes, oldies

Old Stuff

I spent an interesting afternoon today at an old time tractor show. This year was pretty cool since they had several steam traction engines running around. They'd spend some time running a sawmill then run around the show for awhile. Big, noisy, greasy hulking brutes. Very cool.

What I couldn't help but wonder at was while looking over the assorted collection of tractors and related equipment dating back to the turn of the previous century was how open and simple everything was. Manufacturers back then expected you to look out for yourselves. If you couldn't keep you fingers out of the gears, then you probably didn't really need them. There were tappets and valve trains sitting out in the open right on the operators platform. While I'm not saying no safety in mind was right, we certainly have gone overboard.

I'm trying to imagine a lawyer back in 1923 trying to sue a tractor company because some farmer got burned on firebox. Can you see anyone even thinking about suing a restaurant because the coffee was too hot back in 1933? I think there was more than a little Darwinian selection going on back then. If you were too stupid to survive, you didn't. Now if you're too stupid you can hire a lawyer to make you rich.

Labels: gripes, oldies

Disappointment

Did you hear the latest from NASA - drunk astronauts in space. Some more heroes take a dive. Dog fighting quarterbacks, drug injecting bike riders and baseball players and game fixing basketball refs.

You know when I first read and thought about this I was pretty disappointed. Then as I started to type, I came to the realization that nothing has really changed except the media reporting of this stuff. First I thought how disappointed I was that an astronaut would be drunk before flying - and then thought about Chuck Yeager who almost missed his Mach 1 test flight because he hurt himself the night before while drinking.

The Babe, who Bonds is usually negatively compared to, wasn't exactly a church mouse either. From what I understand, he wouldn't pass up a bourbon or a babe if offered. And does anyone really think that ref was the first to fix, or try to fix, a game? Back around 200 a.d. or so, Dikon, the son of Kallibrotos, was bribed to change his nationality. And let's face it, most stock car racers - in fact just plain automobile racers - probably wouldn't know how to race according to the book.

So, actually nothing has really changed, just our perception of it. We seem to think everyone needs to be perfect now. Back in the Civil War and World Wars we had generals who womanized and drank. Soldiers fought and cussed and carried on and the world continued. How many bomber crews in England do you think might have had a wee nip or two before taking off - after all, their chances of making through their tour was about zilch.

Labels: celebs, gripes, oldies

Suspicions

TORONTO (Reuters) A Canadian contractor is looking for donations to fund a funeral after finding a mummified baby in the wall of a Toronto home. ... Newspaper wrapped around the baby was dated September 15, 1925, ... "This is being treated as suspicious death at this time," said police spokeswoman Wendy Drummond.

Suspicious?? You think? Thank goodness for the highly trained Toronto police. If it had been me, I would've just figured the kid grabbed a newspaper for a blanket and wandered into the wall and got lost.

Labels: crime, oldies

Libraries

Ah, home away from home. This article about the Vatican's Library reminded me again about how comfortable I feel in libraries.I have been a user - indeed almost an addict - of libraries for almost as long as I can remember. I'd go the New Buffalo Public Library back home when I was a kid and wander the shelves looking for a new adventure. I still occasionally have dreams that seem to take place in a landscape reminiscent of that place (now long since moved).

Throughout my 22 years in the USAF the base library was always a familiar place to spend time. At a few places I volunteered to work in them - notably Shemya AFS, Alaska and Osan AB, Korea. Even Khobar Towers in Saudi had a small loaning library where I went through a lot of paperbacks.

I even have a room in my house now that's dedicated to my own library.Most volumes have been bought used, some have been bought new and some just kind of showed up. There's only a couple that have never been read,and there are many that have been re-read - some numerous times. I guess in some ways I am addicted to books. There are books and magazines in literally every room of the house in just about every nook and cranny -thankfully I have a wife who doesn't get too upset about them.

There was one paragraph in the Vatican library story that really caught my eye:

I asked him why stacks of old card indexes still fill one of the reading rooms when the library catalogue has been transferred to a digital database.

"We shall never destroy them because scholars often prefer to use the old library cards, and they are a permanent record which we can always use to check possible mistakes in the database," he explained.

This is the part that really bugs me about libraries modernizing. Wandering through card catalogs let me discover many books I'd never have found otherwise. You riffled through the cards looking for swords and then find yourself getting sidetracked by sugar and swing bands and syndicates and if you were off by one drawer or another maybe ribs and rifles. The online stuff is so much more streamlined and clean and loses a lot of the chances for random discoveries.

Labels: military, oldies

History

One of my favorite shows on TV is back for its summer season, History Detectives. Its about some researchers who meet someone with an artifact (has ranged from cannons to belt buckles to 3D projection screens) and they try to find out the real history of that artifact. It's really interesting.

This week they talked with some lady with a story (and medallion) about her great grandfather who supposedly had received a medal made of metal from the Liberty Bell. It turns out that it was probably true, but that wasn't what struck me. What struck me was when the lady showed the researcher a photo of her ancestor. It got me to thinking that I'll be lucky to be able to look at photos I took a few years ago.

I've ranted about this before, but the digital age is really going to hurt history. I still use my original digital camera, a Toshiba PDR-M1. It takes nice photos but the storage it uses is just about obsolete. It uses a SmartCard with a 3.5" floppy adapter. I've started the change over to a Mac and the Mac has neither a 3.5" floppy, nor is there any software available to support the adapter if I added a drive.

In this case, I can still access the old photos since I kept them backed up on CDs - but for how long? First, the CDs will degrade to the point where I can't read them. Second, eventually there won't be CD readers to be had, and if you doubt that, try to find an 8-track player, a reel-to-reel recorder or a 5.25" floppy drive these days. All of which I've used for archival storage in the past. (OK, in my case it was an Exatron Stringy Floppy instead of the 8-track, but you get my drift.)

I was also thinking about when my cubicle neighbor brought in photos - digitally taken and ink jet printed - of his new kid. Those prints may last a few years and hopefully, he'll keep his digital storage updated. But where his folks can pull a photo out of an old shoe box and look it and remember, in 40 years he'll be lucky to have an old computer still around that will read those photos he took.

How well are your digital mementos stored?

Labels: oldies, tech

Apple vrs. Atari

Yes, Atari. Today I called Apple tech support about my hard drive problem and after many minutes of following directions, we came to the conclusion that the hard drive was indeed busted. By the way, today I learned what "recycle the power management system" means. After I asked for clarification, I found out it meant to unplug the computer!

So I make an appointment online (using my Windows computer by the way) with the Apple Genius bar in Troy, Michigan. Eighty-six point two miles later I'm at the Somerset Mall looking for a parking place. They plugged in the computer and guess what - the hard drive is toast. So, in 7 - 10 days (and another 172.4 round trip) I should have my iMac back.

And where does Atari come in? Back around 1987 I bought my first hard drive. A Supra 20 MB drive for around $300 (I looked at a 500GB Lacie designer external drive at the Apple store for about the same price). After about 8-9 years it took several minutes to warm up and start but still run. That's the worse problem I've ever had with a hard drive since 1989 until my 5 week old Apple iMac.

Labels: apple, computers, oldies, tech

Retro

I just ran across a pretty cool (and expensive) web site the other day. Retro Thing. It's a web site about old and cool stuff. What really caught my eye was something called the Radiomann Tube Radio Kit. For those of you who don't know, a tube is a hot glass thing that burns your fingers and amplifies signals. It's similar to a very retro transistor or one little part of a retro integrated circuit.

I can remember taking a handful of tubes out of our black and white television and hauling them down to the drugstore where a very cool tube tester console sat. We'd put the tubes in the appropriate socket and set a knob or two and watch the tube glow. I think there was a meter that would then show whether the tube was bad, poor or good. You'd replace the bad ones with a new one - they had them in the bottom of the console and take them back home and replace it. Surprisingly enough this often did fix the TV problem.

Anyway, I saw this radio kit and Hammacher Schlemmer had them on sale for $60. Half price. Oh well, out came the credit card and soon I had an order acknowledgement back in email. That was Monday night and this afternoon, the package was on my porch floor!

I'm a little surprised as to the quality of this thing. The case is maybe 1/2" nicely finished cherry with neatly mounted components on the top. It's not so much a kit as it is an experiment platform. The only parts you need to assemble is to plug one of two coils and the tube. Everything is already put together. It does need 8 AA batteries - after all, you need to heat that tube up - but other than that it's ready to go. The manual is thin, but high quality glossy color. It's written in Germany, translated in America and printed in China. I'm still trying to find the country of origin for the radio kit itself.

Very cool and I'm looking forward to plugging it in, adding an antenna and listen into Fibber McGee and Molly or maybe the Green Hornet.

Labels: oldies, tech

Teeny TVs

My age is catching up to me. I can in no way, shape or form imagine trying to watch TV on something this small. Not only that, but the luddite that I am (even considering the PCs, laptops, video games, cell phones, MP3 players, and PDAs I use every day) a lot of today's culture has passed me by.

I usually watch the first 15 - 20 minutes of Jay Leno, and found that in the last couple of months that I've been paying attention, I don't even recognize the music acts that play on that show.

Saturday Night Live - which at one time I would throughly enjoy the likes of Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Jan Curtin - has passed me by and now leaves me befuddled and confused.

I seem to be totally immune to the "pleasures" of reality shows and couldn't name two American Idle participants to save my ass. And I have no desire to swap my wife, my house or my nanny.

My ancient MP3 player - all 256MB of it - plays mostly radio shows from the 30s and 40s and probably couldn't fit an iTune video, let alone play it.

I have a pair of raggedy rabbit ears (which I just found out are coming back into style) sitting on top of my cableless and dishless TV.

I find a coffee table top full of remotes (we had to buy a new table just to fit the remotes) neither exciting or useful. Sometimes I just wish I could walk up to my TV and turn the channel.

My teeny-little cell phone spends almost as much time lost as it does found. I remember when the phone had its own table and was tethered to the wall so it didn't get lost. And don't bother sending me a text message on it, because a snail mail letter will probably arrive before I figure out how to read the text message you just sent.

Labels: oldies, tech

1984 & Mac

Remember a long time ago when Apple hammered away at Big Brother? When Apple tried to target itself as one who fought for the little guy? Whew - are those days gone. Think about this year so far. Apple put the legal hammer to a few web sites that were reporting (too accurately it seems) on upcoming Apple stuff. And of course the courts backed Apple and said that Web reporters don't get no stinking protection.

Now Apple's going after the printed word. Seems like some author had some words about Jobs that Apple has taken affront at. I have no idea what this is all about since I'm not a big Apple fan, and haven't followed this much. While Apple has had a lot of neat stuff in their development, I've always felt they were too pricey. I remember back when I bought my first computer - a TRS-80 Model 1. I priced the Apples and they were way much pricier. The color availability wasn't enough to counter the 40 character screen - especially at the price they wanted. Remember this was back when my Model 1 with 16K of RAM and a cassette player for bulk memory was almost $900. Which brings up another deja vu moment of my first printer - a Quick Printer II that printed 32 characters across on aluminum foil and could be had for the cheap price of $250.

Anyway, it seems that Apple is making sure that -- well, I'm not really sure what Apple is making sure of. I plug along now with a Dell PC and an iRiver MP3 player and don't seem to be missing much by not having an Apple - computer, music player or otherwise.

2fers: TRS-80 Model 1 and Dell

Labels: apple, computers, oldies, tech