MACS, WOMANHOOD, & THE GUADALAJARA GRILL

The wife was away, but I persevered.

I may have been lonesome and semi-starving, but my overall energy level was high. The stimuli were coming in fast and furious, like a nestful of hornets shot out of a cannon. Somehow I had to suck up the stings along with the excitement and show what I was made of. A manly man can do no less, and at least I wasn't bored.

Everything was happening at once: I had to shore up my Internet situation, find an iBook, reserve a room and a plane for Macworld San Francisco, arrange to have a piano delivered, and negotiate the terms of a review with XLR8 so I could keep a certain G3 upgrade, heh-heh. On top of that, it was supposed to snow on Monday, and in the middle everything I had to drive to Santa Fe to pick up Katy Jane!

First the job, which was paramount:

After last week's episode with a funky "upstream provider," I had decided I needed a backup ISP. LaPlaza was a cool outfit, run by a hotshot Unix/Windows geek and longtime email buddy, but I needed more (just in case). I rang up TaosNet and made arrangements to finally meet Unix-savvy Mac guy and co-owner Jim Tucker.

Jim was everthing I thought he would be. He signed me up with a 50-hour basic user account, halved the setup fee, and before I knew it, I was jhfarr@newmex.com. There may be a cooler email address somewhere in the world, but I doubt it. (Pass the posoles,will ya?) Jim also volunteered the surprising information that I wasn't the only Macintosh pro living in my little mountain valley -- just down a little road that I passed every day lived a Mac user and Internet consultant who just happened to be spending the week at the Comdex show in Las Vegas! Gee whiz. Moreover, according to Jim there were lots of Mac users in northern New Mexico. "Something to do with all the artists," he said.

Well, I never.

Who'da thought? There was even an authorized Apple dealer in this town of maybe 6,000 souls, though the store sold mostly PCs. There was at least one high-zoot Web design firm (a Mac shop), a couple more Macintosh consultants, a Mac-published weekly newspaper, and "The Horse Fly," a monthly journal of politics and culture cranked out on a fine new G3. Both local ISPs were Mac-friendly, and even our "landlady" was a Mac person, using her new iMac to run her South American art and antiques business. Yeah, man. Had I landed in the right place or what?

Perusing my emails that night, I came across a long string of messages from the La Plaza "tech-team" mailing list, wherein a succession of apparent PC-users were bewailing the difficulty of using this or that search engine. Feeling dangerously cocky after my meeting with Jim, I replied to the list: "Mac OS. Sherlock. It queries all the search engines for you." In approximately 45 seconds came the flame: "What the hell is this? Does Macintosh have its own Web now??" Ooops!

Yes, of course I should have known better, but no one can say I've gotten where I am (?) by being sensible. Accordingly, I proceeded to explain what Sherlock was and what it could do: "Oh, you mean like 'Find on the Internet' in the Windows Start menu." Uh-oh: fightin' words! If I'd been in a bar, I'd be wiping beer (or worse) off my face.

I invited the insolent Philistine to visit any current PowerMac user and see for himself, then slipped away quietly to the La Plaza site and temporarily unsubscribed! I had better things to do than exchange insults with PC punks, and if I read any more of those messages, well. . .

Was it something in the air? What was going on?? The other concerns were falling into place with a speed and ease that belied how much they were going to cost, but at least I was making progress. Or was I?

After months of waiting for a tangerine iBook, changing my shipping address with MacZone four times and finally canceling my order in a fit of frustration, I found myself writing daily news stories about how everyone but me was having a wonderful time playing with their new toys. The damn things were everywhere except in my hot little hands! I was getting email from New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK, telling me all about stores bulging with iBooks. New Zealand, mind you. And that was the last straw!

I went to the iBook Zone once more, and -- lo and behold -- there was the phone number of a store in Greenville, North Carolina that supposedly had iBooks in stock. (POUNCE!) On the verbal assurance that they did indeed have one tangerine iBook and AirPort base station left, I gave a perfect stranger my credit card number and the rest is history, or will be if anything shows up! (Cross that sucker off the list, anyway.)

The Macworld reservations were even easier. Mr. VISA was still hungry, so I fed him a double room for four nights and roundtrip tickets for two from Albuquerque to San Francisco. It only cost a little more than a whole months salary, but what the hell: three down!

(I was rolling now. . .)

The next day I learned that my wife's Baldwin studio upright was on its way to New Mexico for the bargain rate of $700, and the truck driver wanted to know if he could get a semi in to where I was living. Come again? A semi?? [chortle] The thought was mildly entertaining: up to the gate, sure. Down the rocky lane, probably. Across the wooden bridge, maybe, but then -- "No way in hell," I told the man. No problem, of course. Mountain Moving & Storage would haul it out here from town for $80 an hour. (Let's see: an hour to load up and get out here, half an hour to unload and set up, another hour to get back to town and park the truck, etc. ¡Caramba! Maybe there was still some slack in the savings account. Four down, anyway.}

Pant, pant, pant. . .

I'll spare you the details of what had to be done in order for me to take delivery of, install, and keep the nifty MACH Carrier ZIF upgrade from XLR8. (Watch for the review!) Suffice it to say that barter and cash are involved, and St. Peter may just swing the gate shut when he sees me coming. Five down and one to go!

Finally, after a 12-day absence, my favorite cowgirl was scheduled to fly nto the Santa Fe Municipal Airport at sunset on Thursday. Oboy! All I had to do was get there, right?

Coming from the north down to Santa Fe, the route follows the Rio Grande River through a long canyon for a good part of the way. The sometimes-winding two lane road is a joy to drive unless you're stuck behind one of those ridiculous RVs crawling up a big hill, and eventually I was. Whoa! The local solution to this dilemma is to cross the yellow line and pass at the summit or else wait for a downhill stretch where the sign says "Pass with Care," at which point half a dozen frustrated drivers pull out all at once and fly down the mountain in a snarling high-speed swarm. At first I was too preoccupied with rolling my eyes and cursing to join in, but a few miles later I gave it a whirl and discovered it was great fun! (The best part was watching the panic-stricken drivers coming up the hill bolt for the shoulder in a huge cloud of dust. . .)

Santa Fe itself was a revelation, though not the kind the Chamber of Commerce is trying to promote. Because I didn't have the sense to take the exit aptly marked "Santa Fe Relief Route," my trip to the airport was a baptism in Southwestern suburban hell as bad as anything back East. (Don't let those pictures in the fancy magazines fool you! Somewhere in Santa Fe is a lovely neighborhood where people polish their Porsches, wear silly clothes, and serve unpronounceable hors d'oeuvres, but it ain't between Española and the airport, no sirree.)

The airport itself looks like a remnant of a WWII Army Air Corps base, and I half expected to see a squadron of P-38s on the fight line. (There was a Lockheed Constellation with USAF markings!). Inside the terminal building was a closed bar and grill and not a single vending machine. My traffic-shattered psyche, further ravaged by the discovery that I had forgotten to bring a mug with my thermos of coffee, was miraculously restored by the sight of my sweetie-pie exiting the United Express turbo-prop from Denver. We picked up her luggage (outside!) from a cart pulled by a garden tractor, lucked into the southern terminus of the "relief route," and high-tailed it back north to Taos county in the dark.

This time going through the canyon, not only was there an RV lumbering along in front of about a dozen cars, but in front of him was a clattering diesel pickup pulling the largest and heaviest trailer I've ever seen: 40 mph, 35, 30, 25. . . Eventually the caravan reached a longish straightaway, but not before one speed-starved suicidal maniac passed three cars and the dallying duo by cresting a hill in the left-hand lane! (In the dark, remember.) Pandemonium ensued as the wildest passing party I've seen north of Mexico hurried to get around before the next curve. Way cool! However, we of course waited until a few miles farther along when another opportunity presented itself, and I hope you know why. (Hint: it wasn't because I didn't think I could nail the bastards!)

I really do love women, a certain one more than all the rest, and being radically hungry I especially liked it when she pulled out a twenty at the northside Guadalajara Grill to spring for a pork chimichanga, beef enchiladas, and a couple of Mexican beers. The waiter delivered our orders in less than two minutes and our plates were cleaned off in ten. (Delicious!) It was muy frio walking back to the car and 15 degrees by the time we got home, but I didn't care.

(Now do you know why I didn't pass??)

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.

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February 10, 2012