rssHalf of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. - T.S. Eliot
Computer
2006, November 01
A Mac Anniversary
Today is the 15th anniversary of my first Mac, a Classic.
In October 1991, I was assigned an essay for a bird study class at the University of Washington in Seattle. My daughter, who had been to college recently and knew about current trends on campus, asked me how I was going to write it. I told her, the way I always have, pen and paper then type it out.
She said, No, no. Lets go down to the computer lab and I will show you how to use the Mac.
Now, I had used a few computers before, at work, without feeling anything about them. But the minute I touched that Mac keyboard, I knew I had to have one. So on November 1, 1991, I walked out of the computer store in Ballard (Seattle) with a printer and a new Mac Classic. It had a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM (the maximum).
I did the paper, then went on to bigger and better things. I bought a modem and was able to hook into the University network, took free classes in Pine, the Unix mail program developed at the UW. By January I was on Compuserve and by June I was a member of the Berkeley Mac Users Group. I was learning about shareware, operating systems, and a lot about Microsoft Word 4, probably the best version they made. This meant learning about fonts, style sheets, layouts.
I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and start thinking about what I was working on and of course I had to get up and get going. Sleep went by the wayside for a long time.
Besides Word 4, I was learning Quicken, a small page layout program from Aldus (remember them?), Music Prose from Coda, FileMaker, the Mac operating system and odds and ends of shareware. All of this on a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM. It was amazing what that little computer could do.
I loved that little Mac, and how it changed my life. For the first time, I felt I was part of a community. Neither my family of origin or being married had ever given me that same sense of connection.
Here is a great little picture of the Classic with OS X running - sure, sure. Wouldn't that have been something?
2006, October 21
New DeskTop Picture
DeskTop picture from AstroPic of the Day
Here is my latest DeskTop picture for the G5.
2006, July 09
Kernel Panic revisited
After the reformat and install, the panics have gone away.
The problem seemed to be asking iTunes to do too many things at once. Now I ask iTunes to do only one task at a time and the system is again working without a glitch.
2006, June 25
Kernel Panic
The first kernel panic in OS X yesterday, another today.
I have experienced my first kernel panic on OS X, once yesterday and once today. A very scary thing, the first time that gray shade comes down over the monitor screen, then the black dialog box appears with “You must restart your computer now, hold down the power button for several seconds” in four languages.
Both times I was working in iTunes, renaming files. The first time the iPod was connected, so I thought maybe there was a hardware problem, but the second time it wasn’t. Both times I sent the undecipherable report to Apple. Only they know what is going on. And they might not.
So I don’t know what the problem is. So now to housekeeping. Back up. Reformat. Fresh system, fresh software, rebuild the files. Put no unnecessary stuff on the drive.
This will keep me busy for about 2 days, plus. So even the posts that were rolling around in my head aren’t going to see the light of day for longer than I thought.
I hope that this problem, whatever it is, will be solved. This is the first time I have had any problem with OS X. Though I have noticed that iTunes crashes a lot.
Well, to work, now I have a to-do list. A long one.
