PowerBook 520c

Today I've been playing some PowerBook, and have given some thought to exactly what I want to do with some of my older computers, because it was pointed out to me that I've got ten of them in the office right now, and another three in my room -- and that's not counting the two that I still haven't received in the mail.

One of my favorites of the old PowerBooks, purely for it's high specs, is a PowerBook 520c. Unfortunately it's hinge isn't in such great condition, and I need to consider whether or not I am going to repair it. I should repair it because I would like to have a nice fast 68k PowerBook around. I will probably take the hinges from the PowerBook 520c, and then sell the 520c later on.

At some point I will probably re-do the software installation on this particular 520c, it's running someone else's install of 7.5, with some software licensed to the university. I think it was used by a faculty member or a graduate student of French, in the department of modern languages. I should like to put my own installation of System 7.1 or Mac OS 7.6 on it, along with my own selection of software.

State of the MLA.

I am a moderator on an internet discussion forum called the 68k Mac Liberation Army. It was founded in 2001 or 2002 by a few people with a bit more than an average interest in older 68k [motorola processor] based Macintoshes. I joined sometime in 2002 or 2003, and in late 2007, I became a moderator.

I had another post scheduled for today, but I think this is a bit more pressing and important than a post about how far away summer seems to be.

The following is something I have posted in the moderators-only section of the board. It's modified for public consumption, because the original post is a bit more abrasive.

Over the past few weeks, I've seen more than seven instances of "f***" in the Lounge on the forum, specifically from two users. [I'm sure my audience is mature enough to handle a bit of profanity, but I'm not putting it here, simply because I think it's rude and in poor taste to be so coarse on-line. I know, it's "just the Internet" but I consider the Internet not to be completely informal, but rather, to be a freakishly formal collection of everything. ever. So I find it important to communicate as effectively and cleanly as possible.]

Do we [The moderators and administrators.] have an exact policy on how we deal with things like this? I know in the past when I've tried to edit out some profanity, it was edited back in -- but it was my understanding ever since I joined like six years ago that this was a family friendly forum.

I'll admit I've had my fair share of bad days, and therefore one or two profanity-filled lounge posts (in 2003 though!) but I think the way the forum is getting these days is downright ridiculous.

It's gotten to the point where I don't want to read the new threads in the Lounge because they either seem pointless, completely overdone, or something that simply can't under any circumstances end well.

Is anyone else bugged by this? Wasn't there once some time when the MLA didn't receive seven f***s each weekend, and when our self-governing capabilities were basically in place and activated.

Is there some secret of zen moderation that I'm not aware of that'll cause the whole thing to balance out and the 68kMLA to once again become "happy" if we just let it run it's course?

Almost more importantly, is there something we can or should be doing to sort of guide the community back into having the expectation of needing to behave properly? I'm all for the idea that the occasional rude word isn't going to kill any of us, but I think it paves the way for the mindset that posts composed entirely in profanities is an acceptable mode of communication, and that's a dangerous way to go because that's when I start unashamedly deleting posts out of the middle of threads.

I know that the IRC and the forum are basically distinct and separate entities, but when the IRC channel gets out of control, I typically shut that shenanigans down. I lock down the channel with +m [+m is a mode where only the operator (irc word for moderator) of the channel can speak.] and lay down the law. I've had to do it a few times, but ever since laying down the law a few times and banning a few of the very worst behaved people, the channel has been keeping itself mostly pretty well behaved.

To put it shortly, the IRC channel is now on better behavior than the lounge on the forum, which mainly goes to show how bad I think the lounge has gotten.

So what is the state of the 68kMLA, and what, if anything, will we do about it?

PowerBook 520 and 520C

I know this is kind of a copy of my post on the 68kMLA Forum but I just thought I'd let everyone know that I picked up a few more PowerBooks. I just thought I might let everyone know about my recent actual liberation, from NAU's surplus store, two members of the 500 series of PowerBooks.

These are immense machines, they're bigger, thicker, more rounded, and have in general what feels like more horsepower than the PowerBook 180. Although I think much of this is just a result of becoming a bit too complicated, because they both have hinge problems of varying difficulties, and while the PowerBook 180 has some battery life, neither of these machines, despite having two nice-looking batteries each, has any life in the batteries. These seem to suffer almost from too much engineering, like a modern version of the Mac Portable, where if you don't maintain them "just so" they would be difficult to keep going, especially as mobile computers. It makes me wonder what sort of maintenance or treatment would be necessary to keep one of these machines running properly.

Anyway, configs!
The 520: 20 megs of ram, 120-ish meg hdd.
The 520c: 36 megs of ram, 1000-ish meg hdd. Global Village Modem.

Both are running system 7.5, and both are (other than the hinges and batteries) fully working. Which really surprised me, for $10-for-both from a university surplus sales store.

Once I get home for the summer I'm probably going to reformat them a bit and put clean installs of some older software on them. I might try to find the 520/520c original install discs and drop 7.1 on them, not completely sure yet. My other project with these machines will be to fix the hinge a bit on the 520c, and to see if I can't get any life at all out of the batteries. I may also try to source a second power adapter, because right now both 520s are sharing the same adapter.

Another interesting tidbit: These machines still had user data on them, research from the French department on this campus, I believe. It's all French stuff though, I don't even know if any of it was typed in English, so it's not terribly interesting to look at, or read.

I'm pretty excited about these machines and the 180, it's nice to be able to have some 68k power with me here at the university. This summer, I intend to try to find some more of my software and accessories for PowerBooks. I'm sure I've got an HDI30 adapter, and I'll probably bring back the external scsi hard disc, and-slash-or the USB floppy drive.

PowerBook Updates

Well, I've officially received the first of two packages I've got coming from one of my online friends in the east. This particular package, which I suppose I consider to be the more important of the two, at least immediately, contained PowerBook related paraphernalia.

The first item of interest is a PowerBook 180. It's got a cool 16-color grayscale display, 14 megabytes of memory, and a 120 megabyte hard disc drive. The keyboard is very typable, and the trackball is great. I like the trackball almost as much as I like the TrackPoint on my ThinkPads. I can't wait to get some of my older System 7 era software loaded onto it, although that probably won't happen until summer when I go home for a bit.

The other, almost more important item, is the power adapter from a PowerBook 3400c. It's going to be used on my PowerBook G3, which can still achieve a 5 hour battery life, when it's got a power supply hooked up to it.

The timing on the G3's new adapter could not have been better, either. I'm going to be using it as my main mobile computer again for about a month or two while I coordinate backing up all of my data, finding the installers to all of my applications, then reformatting the hard disc of my ThinkPad R61i. It might be worth using another blog post to cover this, but the R61i's been having a few little issues lately, as a result mostly of my recent "upgrade" to Windows Vista Ultimate. I'm going to do a bit more research on the issue and decide whether it's worth it to try to use the same Vista Ultimate install media, or if I should reinstall the machine's bundled Home Premium, and look into doing AnytimeUpgrade.

More on the ThinkPad later though.

Dating Photography

Yes, I know it's not timely. Ohwell.

As per a thread on the 68kMLA Forum about the total cost of owning a computer, I'm currently merely dating photography. In order to extend our relationship to marriage, I need to go and meet photography's parents: the darkroom. Not only, of course, have I been in the darkroom for nearly three years now, but I'm fairly certain that photography just doesn't care if I meet her parents. Also, I'm apparently not fit to even be allowed to view the 68kMLA forum, because of my affinity with things like "getting my schoolwork done" which can't be done on something with a 68k processor. Well, let me just say, rude newbies. I'm not worthy, really. Luckily though, Photography and I have talked it out and we're fairly comfortable with our open relationship, I'm also dating German, Megan, CIS, and History.

Ohh! So that's what I forgot to do!

Well, it's happened again. Monday, I was struck down by the gods of massive headaches, yesterday I ran errands with Meaghan, got pancakes with Megan, and then updated UTV62.com. And this morning... Well this morning, I'm finally addressing Monday morning's task of posting a blog entry.

I'm not going to lie, I do have others already written, but I feel like this is a good time to give a bit of a general update, instead of a canned blog post about photo management or whatever. So here it goes.

In the world of Megan and I, it's been sickness abound as Megan is currently battling the flu, and prior to that, with almost no break whatsoever, was battling "Something completely unrelated" (but almost as bad, it seems.) As a result of that, I was commanded to get the Flu shot, so Meaghan and I did that before her midterm yesterday.

Classes are going pretty well,I'm mildly depressed about my CIS120 because I keep forgetting to check WebCT Vista, therefore keep missing assignments. This weekend, I intend to power through all of the Word tutorials so I can rock the Word exam, just like I excelled at the Excel exam. Photography is going well, we've got a cool shooting assignment coming up in the studio, which I hope to work on this Friday. The shooting assignment is exciting because this'll be the first assignment where we actually start working on something destined for "delivery to a client" which will be JPEG files ready for the web. Other than that, German is going well, learning new stuff all the time is a pretty nice change, and the things that are review are definitely helpful, as reviews go.

In other news, I'm apparently merely dating photography, as per a thread on the 68kMLA forum about the total cost of owning a computer. I will expound upon this issue significantly in an upcoming blog post.

Work is going fairly well for me too. I come in, take calls, and when I am not completely struck down by an epic headache, I leave work quite happy. The two overnights haven't killed me yet, but it always seems like people want to come visit me from Kingman right before or after one or both of them.

So that's my two-days-late, and probably poorly written blog post!

Macintosh LC520 Liberation

I have had a bit of an opportunity to use the LC520 for any amount of time, and after a bit of writing about it, pondering it, and doing some research and reading the documentation, I’ve decided to a) write an actual blog entry about it and b) write a blog entry using this interesting machine. So here it is, a blog entry that I am writing on a Mac LC520, using a cool old word processor called MacWritePro 1.5v3, which is only about a year newer than the 520 itself.


My particular example of the LC520 comes in a stock 5/80 configuration, which means it has 5 megabytes of memory, and an 80 megabyte hard disc. Think about that for a second. Five megabytes of system memory. And the thing was expandable to a total of 36MB. An 80 meg disk too, maybe it’s only me, but I think that that’s amazing. Add to that, the fact that after installing the operating system (Mac System 7.1), two word processing apps, a popular graphics application and a popular desktop publishing application, the disk still has nearly 48 megabytes left over for user data.

Although the ratio isn’t the best one ever, this is including the fact that “user data” was a whole lot smaller in 1993 (when the machine was manufactured) anywa, and the fact that I’ve got awful disk space management skills. So if I were to go through and delete things like sample docs, extensions I’ll never use, and actually optimise everything, (including removal of one of the two word processors), I would probably end up with about 20 to 30 megs used, which is much closer to the ratio of my modern computers.

It’s a usable machine overall, words appear on the screen as I type them, the whole thing boots to a desktop and allows me to launch and use applications. As a whole, it’s a great little system really, the 14 inch Trinitron display surpasses most modern CRT and some LCD displays in text readability, the built-in stereo speakers produce reasonably nice sound, and in fact, I think the only downside of this system is that the keyboard leaves a little something to be desired, but I chose this one (as opposed to an AEKII, which I could’ve gotten) for the authenticity.

I may at some point bring this machine to the university. It’s good for writing, and since it’s floppy drive works, it is easy enough to transfer such little bits of data (as documents and screenshots) back and forth between the two machines. Even if I don’t bring it to the university, I do have it here and it is set up on my desk here at dad’s house, in the spot my iMac used to have.

Getting Things Done

On this luckiest of days, it occurs to me that this summer has been wasted mostly on trivialities, little things that don't matter much in the long run. That's fine with me, but I feel as though I should do something that I feel will have some kind of lasting effect.

More importantly, I've been thinking about the status of the 68kMLA, and the 68k User Base. What I've noticed is that the users of older 68k and PowerPC machines are really just that -- users. We've got very few mega-hobbyists who do programming on them, and get deep into the hardware and architecture of the machines. The 68kMLA/PPCMLA on their own aren't very conducive to those discussions, and most of the people around wouldn't be interested if it were there.

So I feel like I should do something for the retro Mac community -- but what? Should I be writing software? Lobbying for the simplification of websites? I personally don't think that either of those is a very great idea, but I do believe that there are things I can do to help the community.

One of the things I've tried to do before is work on a database of software titles for Macs. This is important for a lot of reasons. It gives me something to do, for starters, and I think it's a fairly important contribution to the community. Especially if I could find information on things such as intro and discontinuation dates on various pieces of software, plus prices to help indicate to people just how much software actually cost.

We'll see though. I'm working on setting up a spot on my own website where potentially, a few people will be able to post information as they get it, but with any information-gathering project, it's not just something we'll be able to do and say "oh cool, done now." It's something that we'll have to work on, pretty much for a long time, I don't think that archiving all of the information about 68k Macs, even just about the software, will ever be done.

Another thing that was pointed out was the fact that the information about Apple's systems is really inconsistent, not only between Apple's website, but given the fact that there were a certain, well-known range of models released, I find it less important to release yet-another specs database.

Anyway, maybe one day I'll start on my Software Titles database, but for now I'm just going to write blog entries about how I think I should. Plus, I'm not entirely sure how I'll coordinate it yet.

100th post.

I've been sitting here for a few weeks, since I saw that my blog postcount was in the 90s, and I've been thinking about what I should make my 100th post about.

At first I was thinking of doing something about Megan, but I had second thoughts about that because I was unsure of whether or not I really wanted to do anything epic and long about that whole situation.

I was also thinking of doing something computer related, but that would involve me finding something pretty much epic to write about.

I was thinking about doing a reflection on my Freshman year of college, and while that's a pretty good idea, I don't know what I'd say - I've been recording my thoughts on it all year, and I will probably be able to do an even better overview in the next few weeks when it's actually all over. (Thank Goodness, too!)

I could also write about the 68kMLA and its downtime. It came back up today, and I still haven't added it back to my bookmarks bar. I also haven't completely decided whether or not I want to make my hiatus "official." I am fairly certain I am going to do so, however.

I also could write about my struggles in finding something to do this summer - the Summer RA job fell through, so I am definitely going to go home to Kingman. I am unsure about the video thing though, there was also talk about a pool job, and I'm sure there are other opportunities for employment over the summer.

Of course, it looks like instead, my 100th post is actually about the things my 100th post is not about. The only thing I haven't written about is how the 100th post is not about my experimental film.

Apparently I am old enough, or I seem enough like an old coot to be called grandpa on the Internet. I was having a discussion in #68kmla on FreeNode about web browsers and Mac OS 9, and somebody actually called me grandpa. Needless to say, I was quite surprised. It wasn't as offensive as it was surprising, and it certainly made me realize that as far as computers and technology go, I have been around for a lot of it.

I even vividly remember in November or December 1999, being in a CompUSA with my parents pointing out the various pieces of Apple software that would be cool as christmas gifts. Mac OS 9 was new then, and surely enough, Mac OS 9 and AppleWorks 5 were under the Christmas tree that year.

[cory5412] IE5 and wamcom can be okay, I've just had a lot of bad luck over the years.
[patrickool93] Ok Grand pa. back to bed ;)
[multifinder17] lol @ Patrickool93

Hiatus from the 68kMLA

Some of you might know that I've been an active member of the 68kMLA online community... almost forever. I'm working to change that, or at the very least, reduce my own urge to visit that community. I am officially announcing here that I am on hiatus from the 68kMLA.

Suffice it to say that I have been frustrated with the changes in the general attitude of that community, and basically, I've come to the conclusion that it's is pathetic for me to place so much importance in an online community. It's great that I'm committed to something, but that community has proven time and again that I really need to find something better to do with the majority of the time I spend at my computer.

So what am I to do?

I think I may start by blogging more often, a lot of stuff happens in my life that I'm just sure the whole world needs/wants to know about. (Yeah - as if.) It is also a good process of self documentation, and I am sure there is something about my actual writing skills it will help.

I also might actually work more on my experimental film, whatever it is and whenever I actually intend to do something about it. I really want to get some stuff done for that so I can have an actual product, something I can say "I made this and it's not just random recordings, and it's not for NAULive"

I could also work on my classes more, I've got loads of work for a lot of my classes I need to do, and not being at the 68kMLA would definitely be a good inspiration to actually do work.

Well, we'll see how long my hiatus from the 68kMLA lasts. I may force myself to stay gone long enough to actually do the experimental film.

Thoughts on HDV.

Hey Everybody! This is actually something I wrote as a forum post, and then liked, so here it is on my blog. If you'd like to follow the discussion, click here.

This evening I was reviewing the procedure for getting video from my sony handycam (video8) onto the computer, and usable by a nonlinear editing system such as Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express. One of the things I discovered is that FCE/FCP doesn't like plain mpeg4 DVD rips, so my procedure for using (any analogue video source with a composite or svideo output really) Video8 now includes using Quicktime Player to convert the .mp4 file to a .dv file.

My main concern with this is that it has become a bit of a time consuming process to prepare my video for final cut, and that the filespace advantage of using a ripped DVD file (which is about 700megs/hour) versus a .DV file (which is about 13 gigs per hour) is now gone, without any of the actual quality advantages of having imported from a real DV camera.

I've been looking at newer camcorders, and what I've seen is that while DV (and digi8 too, if I were going to go that way...) is become less expensive, so are DVD cams, hard disc cams, as well as HDV cams.

DVD cams are interesting because they seem to promise nice, DV quality, but they don't use tape. However, I've noticed that those don't mix well with the iMac. Plus, that only eliminates one (admittedly the least fun) part of the current process.

MiniDV cams are attractive because they are inexpensive (bhphotovideo.com has one for $199) but I am concerned that this format (along with all other things standard def) may be a bad investment (at least to buy new) because of the growing popularity of all things high-definition.

Hard Disc camcorders are significantly more expensive, one of the cheapest ones around is $430 and this is still standard definition. Unfortunately what I've learned is that the current hard disc camcorders are extremely difficult to use with Macintosh video software, and they're even difficult to use with PC software, but very slightly less so. The idea is good, but it's still not been executed properly I think. Add to that, these units are still standard def, which could mean in the long run, it'll be a bad investment.

This brings me to HDV. I've noticed that there is now at least one HDV camcorder for under $1000, the Canon HV-10 for $800, and the Sony HDR-HC5 for $999. Canon's upcoming HV-20 is also going to be available soon, for $1099.

This format seems to be the future, it uses MiniDV tapes (though higher-grade "HDV" tapes are available, which supposedly improve the quality of the format significantly), and it can record 1080i or 720p (I bet it can record 1080p but the low end cameras don't do that apparently.)

My question is whether or not it seems like HDV is really worth it yet, especially for those of us who might already have access to other high def equipment, if some hypothetical person is interested in getting a camcorder sometime within the next few years.

Naturally, there are not really any HD-capable disc burners within a reasonable price range yet, but for displaying HD works on the TV, there's always the component video output on the camera, and there isn't anything saying that bluray or hddvd burners won't come down in cost in the coming years.

Another thing that may be worthy of noting is that HDV is the same data rate as DV, so in the end (storage-wise) if I record an hour of video with my handycam and put it on the computer (after converting to the .dv file), and an hour of video with an HDV cam and put it on my computer, they take up about the same amount of space. (at least this is my understanding, it may or may not be correct.)

I think if I were to adopt HDV today, I'd go for the Canon HV10, it's a smaller size than the Sony offering, as well as being better in a few ways even than its upcoming big sibling, the HV20. The HV10 has the ability to record analogue audio/video from its line-in port to a DV tape, for example. In fact, just about the only down-side to the HV10 is its lack of a microphone port, but that isn't that big of a deal for me, considering I only first started using an off-cam microphone a few weeks ago. Plus, another advantage I've got is that I'd still have the old handycam hanging around if I needed to make recordings using the microphone.

I like the idea of the extra video quality that HDV offers, especially if I intend to do some sort of independent or experimental film at some point in the future, but I am unsure if it's really worth it right now, especially given the fact I've already got the Handycam... well, handy.

Action News Update!

Heya Everybody! I have news about a variety of things. Firstly, classes start tomorrow, and I am insanely happy about it. Tomorrow, I have GER102 and PHO281 - those were two of my favorite subjects in high school, so I'm interested in what I will think of them at the university level.

Nextly, I have a laptop so old that it is considered to be quite epic. It is an old Toshiba Satellite 486 laptop with 4 megabytes of ram, and a disproportionately large 2 gigabyte hard disc. It will dual-boot Windows 3.1 and IBM's OS/2 Warp 3. I hope to use it for word processing and other retro things. In fact, I may get the CaGNoWriMo group to use it so that we're all writing using the same computer, so that there isn't any issue if some of us use Macs or PCs or whatever. Plus, I bet this thing would withstand being dropped or tossed in case of clumsiness or frustration. Plus, backups onto a modern computer would not be very difficult using floppy discs.

In other news, Brandy and I want to get CraGNoWriMo started by the beginning of February, so we hope that anybody who is going to participate will be able to make it to an Introductory meeting sometime soon. This way, we'll be able to hammer out some of the details, and get going on the upcoming novel. With luck, each of us will be able to have a few characters, and have a lot of say in the overall feel of the novel, we were even thinking of having a very liberal amount of time available to work on your segment, and with luck, with that amount of time, we'll be able to have two full rotations of the novel. That'll be great.

Also, I'm working on moviemaking projects, and probably a lot of other things. Anyway - Happy Tuesday!

2006-Cory5412 vs. 1993-Cory5412 & 2019-Cory5412

Epic Time Battle!

I am intentionally depriving myself of sleep, therefore anybody who is insane enough to read these (I [heart] you Megan!) is now going to be subjected to some sort of rant about technology. (You have permission not to read this if you don't want to, Megan!) Of course, those folks in my English 105 class will know that my premise, (sleep deprivation) does not imply my conclusion (tech rant). Of course, I mentioned the sleep deprivation, right? That means that I don't care. [insert smile face here]

So what will I rant about today? Recently, at the vintage technology internet forum that I visit, the 68k Mac Liberation Army, a member posted an interesting PDF file. It was a 107 megabyte scan he made of an Apple Product Catalog from Fall of 1993. Thirteen years ago, the 68-page catalog of 68k Macintoshes was hot off the presses, and if we had lived back then, with unlimited funds, it was decided that every one of us would have a Mac Quadra 650 with the 16" Macintosh Color Display, a LaserWriter 630 Pro, with the 500-sheet feeder of course, along with every other little goodie we could get our grubby little liberator paws on.

I see a problem with this, however. My issue is that almost nobody provided a reasonable dream setup. My own setup was actually a Quadra 610 with one or two bits of software, the inexpensive monitor, as well as the cheap laser printer. Additionally an even more realistic setup that I cited, was a Mac Color Classic, and one of Apple's inkjet printers, paired with just one software package, an integrated piece of kit that can nearly do it all. As an added bonus, the cheaper computer and printer had carrying cases available for them, and they were within my arbitrarily defined budget of "just a few dollars more than whatever I want."

This leads into something else though. One thing I've noticed is that when it comes to older technology, it is extremely tempting to simply not look at the lower end machines. It is not every day when I hear somebody talking about how awesome it was that they were able to pick up a Mac LC and a 12" color display from the school. In fact, I have even heard some people talk with disdain about older low end machines, as opposed to the not-really-much-faster high end variant.

I do understand the argument that in 1993, there was a massive difference between a 25MHz 68LC040 and a 33MHz 68040 processor, let alone a 16MHz 68030. However, I think that that difference equates today to a distribution like this. the 16MHz 68030 would be about equivalent to a 1.5GHz Intel Core-Solo processor. The 25MHz 68LC040 would equate to a 1.83GHz Core1Duo, and the 33MHz monster powerhouse would equate to a 2.16GHz Core2Duo
microprocessor.

The funny thing is that in 2019 then another thirteen years have passed, and a retro technology enthusiast's group has formed and is discussing these things... the actual difference between a 1.5GHz single-core chip and a 2.16Ghz dual-core chip will be so negligible, that the 2019-Cory5412 is unlikely to claim that there is any practical speed difference at all.

Good god, do I want to slap the 2019-Cory5412! However, 2019-Cory5412 certainly brings up a good point about the aging of technology, and the 2006-Cory5412 is saying similar things.\

Of course... I don't think my rant is necessarily tech-based, I think it's now a rant of excessiveness. Quick everybody, I'm going to run out and get a 3.0GHz Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram, four 750 gigabyte hard discs, two 16x SuperDrives, and I'm going to fill it with four of the nVidia GeFORCE 7300GT cards, then I am going to buy four 30" monitors, and four 23" monitors for it. I just know that 2019-Cory5412 will have one of those, but 2006-Cory5412 will certainly have something closer to a 17" iMac Core2Duo, 2.16GHz, 1 or 2 gig, 250gig.

I am certain that for that, 2019-Cory5412 will laugh at 2006-Cory5412, but who cares, because 1993-Cory5412 would have ended up with a used Mac Plus and, if he was lucky enough to get a laser printer at all, one of the original LaserWriters, or a LaserWriter II of some sort. He would have enjoyed it until its death (in 2003, I bet. There's a reason I don't want to be 1993-Cory5412.)

I [heart] my Dell OptiPlex GX110 and my 500MHz Apple PowerBook G3 "Pismo." As an aside, I probably have another tech-related blog entry somewhere, but this will do for now. It proves that I am definitely going to stick to polyphasic sleeping this time. (Yay! +10 points for reference to polyphasic sleep in this blog post.)