Editorial - Macrimination 
Just Like Starting Over
By Steve Sobek - Contributing Editor
Hello. My name is Steve. I am an addict.
A Mac addict, that is.
Some might think I'm poking fun at a real disease -- addiction --
with this column. I assure you, I'm not.
I haven't written Macrimination in awhile. Mainly, it's been because
of personal and family responsibilities. But I also realized that I was
spending way too much time in front of that lovely Mac of mine. I
wasn't always doing anything, either. Sometimes, I found myself opening
windows and closing them, changing the view (list, icon, etc.) and
aimlessly wandering my hard drive.
Now, don't get me wrong, when it comes to addictions, there are worse
ones to have, I believe. But I also thought it was time to disconnect a
bit, so I did.
But I knew I couldn't stay away forever. When I came back, I did have
a new perspective that enabled me to realize some things. For instance,
I had been wondering where all of my money went and why I was having
such a tough time financially.
Answer: It was sitting on my desk, of course. I had plowed insane
amounts of money (at least, by my standards) into my G4, its monitor and
programs and peripherals. So I started cleaning house. I've wanted to be
mobile, so I sold the tower and the studio display on eBay and bought a
used TiBook. I came out ahead in the transaction and got some of that
cash back that I had dumped into the Money Pit. I've also found a bit of
that excitement that I had when I got my first Mac -- from an unexpected
source.
While my old computer is in the mail to its new home, and my new one
is on its way to me, I've found myself without a computer.
Well, almost...
A friend gave me a PowerBook 520 awhile back because she knew she
wouldn't get that much selling it. "It'll have a better home with you,"
she said. I had taken to using it as a journal before bed sometimes, but
other than that, it ran OS 7.1 and had a 33 Mhz processor, so I didn't
think very much of using it as a computer.
But since I knew I was going to be waiting for the TiBook for awhile,
I downloaded OS 7.5 and, using my USB floppy drive, made 25 floppies of
the OS and Open Transport. With an ethernet adapter that I picked up
ages ago, I've connected the "Blackbird" PowerBook to my cable modem,
and it works fine (even if I had to turn off Java in Netscape 3 and the
pictures on Web pages look cartoonish on the grayscale screen). I'm
writing this column in Word 5.1. I still find myself going for the dock
sometimes, but other than that, it's been a very enjoyable
experience.
It just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay
the same. Just like the Beatles went back to their "roots" to make "Let
it Be," we all must go back to our beginnings now and then and remember
what it was that got us excited about all of this stuff in the first
place.
Now that I'm back in the saddle, next week we'll talk about a subject
that's on everyone's minds right now: the iTunes Music Store for
Windows.
Steve Sobek is a journalist and Webmaster of United Mac. Reach him at ssobek@stevesobek.net.
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