As September comes to an end, bidding a farewell to Summer (easily my least favorite season of the year), we find that not a great deal is currently going on.
The big thing is that on Saturday, I bought one of Apple's new G4 PowerBooks with the 1.0 Ghz processor. I'm learning its ins and outs, and so far, I'm very pleased with it -- although the CD burner does act a bit quirky for writes, but that doesn't surprise me very much, and it's not a big deal since I prefer to use USB keys in any event. The old iBook is acting up quite a bit and was never a very hot performer in the first place, so I'm glad I'll be putting it into mothballs soon (once I've confirmed that all my documents and so on copied over properly). The processor on my iBook is a 500 Mhz G3, and that's not really cut out for OS X. For example, sometimes when I was chatting, I'd receive a message, get the "message received" sound, then get the colored spinning ball indicating that the Mac was working, and it could take four or five seconds for the message to appear. Unacceptable. With the PowerBook, it's instantaneous. Yummy. :-)
I've got the stock 256 megs of RAM right now, and according to the diagnostics and tests I've been running 256 is probably adequate, but even so, I think I'm probably going to boost it to 512 just for comfort. I also want to buy a nicer carrying case than the ratty one I have right now.
I've been having that same problem with my USB key on the PowerBook as I did on the iBook, which leads me to believe there's something odd about the key that just doesn't get along with OS X (it works fine under Windows). Maybe I'll try booting into OS 9.2 on the iBook this evening and try it under that OS, see what happens. Regardless, my next key is going to be a 2.0, rather than the current 1.1 that I'm using. We'll see whether that makes any difference.
I'm learning quite a bit about Mac architecture as a result of fooling around with the PowerBook, such as booting into Open Firmware and logging in as "root". Big fun.
In keeping with my tradition, I have named it after a ship. The PowerBook is called the "Hieronymous Bosch", after an airship from the David Gerrold novel, "A Rage for Revenge". (He, in turn, named the airship after a 19th century fantasy/SF artist.)
Not sure what I'm going to do with the iBook -- it's having a lot of hardware problems, and I don't know whether I'm going to try to sell it or perhaps take it apart and try to fix it myself. No need to decide just yet, since I want to take several more days to make sure that the migration "took".
Posted by Zathras at September 30, 2003 11:22 AMAh - nice, calm, Zanthras' blog. A place where everyone knows your name.
Why do you hate Summer? I love it! I wish it would never end sometimes. . . I just get so BLEAH when summer turns into fall. Just gets soooo cold, y'know?
Posted by: Shaw at September 30, 2003 09:12 PMWhy does everyone always put that "n" in my handle? Weird. It's Zathras, guys, not Zanthras. :-) Zanthras sounds like a prescription medication for depression. "Side effects of Zanthras include..."
I hate Summer because: 1) I don't like a lot of daylight -- it hurts my eyes and interferes with my rest. 2) It's too damn hot -- I prefer a cooler temperature (my favorite outdoor temperature is about 50 degrees). 3) TV shows are all in reruns, although that's not such a big deal. :-) 4) Denise can't visit me here in Summer, as we found out this past July. The air quality here can get *very* bad in the Summer... it's bothersome for me, but potentially life-threatening for Denise (I don't know how great the risk really is, but it does exist).
Autumn is far and away my favorite season. The foliage is beautiful, and I like to go for walks in the woods, which is a lot more pleasant in Autumn than Summer because it's too cold for the bugs to bother you, but not cold enough to require anything much more than a windbreaker or a sweater. If you walk in the woods in the Summer, you get sweaty and dirty, and the insects swarm you. Yuck.
Posted by: Zathras at October 1, 2003 09:53 AMand on the fifth try I've FINALLY got some time to finish this post $!$!$!$!## (as long as a friend doesnt come over or IM me or phone me or the $!#!# puter crashes - now do you see why i hit yer blog a lot? everyone interrupts me before I can hit SEND $!$!$%!%%#$@)
ok - what was I writing here...k - yea, i dunno wtf I keep writing Zanthras' - I mean, Zathras' is like on your blog about 20 times (and this window) - I think Zanthras is some sort of medicine....anyway, I'll be more careful, Zathras'.
Well, the air quality (of course) depends on where you live. I do remember that part of the country (the mid-atlantic region including D.C. and Baltimore) having some real bad air quality. The hot asphalt fumes from the road mixed with the heat and the auto emissions = BLEAH.
I think we should all move to vt. Even in Brattleboro, on main street, during the summer, the air quality was wonderful. I really dig that town for some reason.
In the fall it can get bleah, like it is now. It's cold and moist and you feel like you're trapped inside a tuna fish sandwhich. Not a fun place to be, esp. if yer trapped between the lettuce and the tomato.
Anyway, I finally got to finish this comment. better press post bfr s
Posted by: Shaw at October 1, 2003 11:02 PM