DIE, WORRY, DIE!

We're almost on our way!

As regular readers of this column know, yours truly and Sweetie Pie are about to hit the road for New Mexico after 24 years on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. This presents all kinds of interesting challenges for someone like me, one of them being how to keep doing my job at the same time. (Daggone it, I need that iBook!)

My biggest problem so far is one I didn't know I had until we started this adventure: the "need" to have everything figured out in advance. This engenders worry and stress, especially when the project at hand is too big to wrap your mind around anyway. So whaddaya do?

The first thing is to go ahead and give in completely to worry and fear. That won't help, but at least you'll know the lay of the land. You'll get to experience things like "the joy of home ownership." . . Home ownership: Aaaaghhhh!!!! The stinking corpse of a concept hangs around my neck like a perverse asifidity bag. . . You say you just sold your house for twice what you paid for it and it was only on the market for a few days? Congratulations! But don't get complacent. Don't think this is something you can count on every time. The fact is, nothing has caused me more stress and near-psychosis in all my born days than the need to sell our lovely home in the country. Part of the reason is that the conventional wisdom on this subject "eats it," as all us fine young junior high school boys used to say back in Abilene. The rest has to do with the frustration of dealing with people, realtors in this case, on the other side of the great Web Divide. I'm talking about the dreaded Internet Fakers!

They have a "Web site," all right, the imposters. It's one of those cheap cookie-cutter Windows templates designed for the aesthetically impaired. But are you ready for this? There's no email link*! None! Nada! Nichts! They do at least show an actual picture of our house -- with the wrong price! We've asked them repeatedly over the last 6 weeks through our agent, in writing, and via an apparently ignored email address listed in their newspaper ad to change the bleeping price on the bleeping Web site. And while they're at it, to please add a link for the house-for-sale site I posted myself! ("He wants us to do what? 'Add a link'?? Who does he think we are? Make a note to send a letter to so-and-so next week. . .")

These nice folks haven't got a clue. They obviously don't manage their own site but farm the task out to a distant firm that couldn't care less -- probably a company someone told them about over cocktails and crab cakes at a Rotarians' luncheon. (For less than what they're paying, they could get themselves an iMac, hire a local high-school student, and kick some serious real estate butt!) As an occupational category, dear readers, real estate companies are rather set in their ways, at least on the good ole Eastern Shore. But this is so maddening, so incomprehensibly dumb! It's like putting a wooden telephone on the front desk and saying, "Sure, we have phone service! No moss growing on us, by cracky. . ."

It's like, it's like -- ooohh, it's like. . . [screaming, gurgling, sound of attendants tightening straitjacket]

By the time I figured out that coaxing this crew into the 20th century was like yelling at the weather, I was pretty far gone. I'm even convinced that was why my PowerBook 540c wouldn't boot up this morning. The darned machine just knew not to show its face until I lightened up, which brings us to the second thing: surrendering to the mystery!

The first couple to see our place fell in love with it, even wanted me to leave all of my junk. (Hoo-boy!) And they made a great offer. The only problem was, they were broke! Penniless. Impecunious and dumb to boot: they dragged us and our agent almost all the way to the finish line before revealing that they needed 100 percent FHA financing. Holy Aunt Hanna! 100 percent? How did these innocents make it through the front door? The Federal Housing Administration, needless to say, does not lend money for 70-year-old houses.

The last "buyers" to see the place were a lady and her husband, who had recently had a stroke and couldn't do any work. We have a great piece of property here, but an older home on 2.57 acres is no place for someone who can't do any "work," fergodssakes! I guess they just wanted to come out to the country for a day, you know, just to have a little excursion. Maybe they were curious. They certainly couldn't have been serious.

In these cases you can see that the mystery consists of something like: "Who in the ever-lovin' blue-eyed world will ever buy this place?" We could switch realtors, but considering where we are, that wouldn't change anything. I could sit here, worry, and let my stomach be eaten away with angst, or I can stop trying to "figure it out" and just move forward, which is what we're going to do. God and Nancy Silcox can sell the house!

(Die, worry, die!)

Then there's the 540c: the little bugger now refuses to boot up at all unless I give it maybe a dozen Power Manager resets. Turning it off after that takes us right back to square one, with only a whirring hard drive and a black screen.** This is my backup computer, my road machine, you understand. Maybe it's upset that I'm replacing it with an iBook. Maybe it's hopelessly corrupted. Maybe the guy who told me to save a space on the wall (for banging my head!) was right! But I have decided not to freak out -- no, I am surrendering. It doesn't want to boot up? Fine! Now I can try that OS 8.6 installation hack I read about. Maybe before that I'll just reinstall OS 8.1. But I'm not going to worry! (It's not a crisis, it's an opportunity. Hmmm. Did somone just say "PRAM battery"?)

I have a tangerine iBook on order. Sometime next month, hopefully, a package will arrive at our temporary quarters in New Mexico. I'll take the iBook out, caress its shiny case, and contemplate another mystery: how to pay for it! If the house sells in the meantime, I can feed Mr. VISA and all will be well.

And speaking of temporary quarters, moving, and all the rest, it turns out that sorting and packing a couple decades' worth of accumulated junk is actually quite impossible without knowing what the "permanent" new housing will look like. (Duh! Anyone with half a brain could have seen this one coming, but yours truly. . .) So after agonizing all summer long over this impossible dilemma, I've decided to give up! I can't get my head around it, so screw it. It isn't meant to be solved that way. Instead of taking everything we can cram into both vehicles, we're only going to pack everything we want to take! (Still means two vehicles. . .) We'll have a well-deserved month's vacation, locate a cool place to rent for the rest of the year, and then come back to Maryland for a couple weeks of frenzied packing before the movers show up.

I'm not worrying about the PowerBook, either, because the 8600 will be riding in the back of the pickup under a nice new aluminum cap. I'll just take the whole damn system down to the beautiful Sangre de Christos and set up my office right there in the guest house we've rented for September. The iBook should arrive in time for the final roundtrip to Maryland, and everyone will live happily ever after. . .

Life can drive you crazy if you let it, especially if you're the sort of person who thinks he or she should be able to finesse all the little details. Have you ever stayed up all night reformatting your hard drives and reinstalling software? Hah! I thought so. (Me too!) Well, FUGEDABOWDIT! This existence is too damned short -- and mysterious! -- to worry about.

(Hey, this sidewalk is moving. . .)

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives have links to all past columns and occasional snippets of biographical info.

The Readers Forum is a great place to get a cheeseburger and a milkshake and watch girls! No wait, that's the drive-in at 29th and -- oh never mind. But it is a good place to let it all hang out.

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* They do have something called an "auto-email responder" that's a real hoot. Almost as funny as the home page exhortation to "call us today." (Call them???)

** Is this due to a funky PRAM battery? Drop us an email and lay some info on us, daddy-o!

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February 10, 2012