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What just happened?
There I was, trying to come up with an opening thought for this column -- an opening, middle, and an end, actually -- so I surfed around a bit as I am wont to do. Having recently updated my Zoozone front page, I decided to stop by and admire my links. (That's what all us tough hypertext guys do, you know, sit around and admire our links: "Hey, didja catch the one on that dude?") So there I am, watching this nice little site download, when all of a sudden I notice an, um, anomaly...

You might as well visit the page...over to the right is a long yellow-gold column cell or sidebar with a Pocho.com graphic (little kid with a big sombrero) at the bottom. To the left of that, in the middle, right under where it says "TAOS" in big yellow-gold letters, is a nifty little weather gizmo that wears an externally-linked image on its face. I'm sure you've seen scads of these. Anyway, when I first selected the bookmark and called up the page, the Pocho.com kid-in-a-sombrero from the sidebar was in the weather gizmo! Very spooky business, that. I blinked a few times and windowshaded the browser once or twice, but the damn thing wouldn't go away until I reloaded with the option key down. (For those of you unfamiliar with ancient Mac OS arcana, this bypasses the browser cache and pulls everything in again directly from the server.)

I've had broken images, corrupted images, missing images, images that were the wrong size, etc., but never an image simultaneously where it belonged and where it wasn't supposed to be! What's going on here?!

8 hours later: Apple to the rescue!
Cupertino didn't do a thing for my haunted browser, but I don't care about that any more. Early Monday morning, you see, Apple.com delivered the news of the high-zoot dual processor 1GHz Power Macintosh G4s. You can read all about them here, but the main thing is that they're big, tough, fast and cost $500 less than the last high-end models: only three grand for all kinds of speed improvements, enough video power to eat an arcade, and an 80Gb hard drive. Eighty danged gigabytes. Let's see, I have a total of 13+GB on two fast SCSI drives on my 8600. Eighty gigs, huh? A person could rule the universe with 80GB, or store it, anyway.

I bought the 8600 so long ago, I can't remember when. (If I weren't so lazy, I'd get up from this chair and dig out the receipt, but you can figure it out.) Long ago I upgraded the sucker to 450MHz with a nice G3 ZIF from XLR8, added USB, new hard drives, and dropped in a total of 448MB of RAM. The 8600 is what used to be touted as an A-V model, with every kind of analog port you could ever want. I especially like the RCA phono jacks for pumping audio to my stereo components, though a simple headphone plug adapter would probably do as well. Not as elegant as phono jacks, though. I've never used the video ports, but at the time of purchase I thought I might. Now it's all digital, so who would mess with 'em, but they're there.

This is a nice machine. It has never broken down, not once. It has never been to a shop of any kind. When I bought it, the idea was that I'd finally have a real Power Macintosh desktop computer that would serve me faithfully for years and years, and it has done so. It's probably worth about $45.00 as a trade-in, so I'll never get rid of it, nor do I want to. But the NEW MODELS are, um, exceedingly attractive... Why, one of those dual GHz jobbies would probably last until the last Enron millionaire is rooted out of his cave and brought to justice ("THAT long?").

All right, all right, there's work to do
I don't need a new anything. What I mostly do is write, right? (See below) Heck, I don't even need 448MB of RAM in my 8600. That doesn't tell the whole story, though (go read Beth Lock's latest column at MyMac.com for insights).

Some things just never make sense. Maybe it's the influence of the full moon, though that doesn't explain why I told my wife 3 years ago, "Sure, I can replace your professor's salary, go ahead and quit!" Or why we sold a perfectly good house surrounded by green fields and woods to end up in a pricey condo with a yard full of gravel. Some things are just meant to BE, like Katy Jane wishing she could pick up a boulder big enough to eliminate all our problems if dropped from a great height ("Honey, what are you doing up there?").

Meanwhile, I've been busy. I've uploaded a GRACK! archive page and put together another self-promotional Web site. The idea is that if enough cross-linked Web pages are out there, the circling data packets will generate a magnetic field strong enough to pull in some dough. I probably haven't achieved critical HTML mass yet, so I'm getting right down to business again as soon as this is uploaded. And don't laugh:

If it worked for Tesla, it'll work for me.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr wants everyone to visit jhfarr.com, the primary Web index for his complete written works. This includes synopses and links to all current and past Internet columns (WebFaust will be archived here) as well as online versions of material that originally appeared in print. (Coming soon, a new print-ready opinion column for syndication...)

GRACK Update List

The new GRACK! Update mailing list is now operational. To receive your own weekly notice of new column postings, just CLICK HERE and send a blank email.

Jan. 21: "iMacs & Webmaster Schadenfreude" Jan. 14: "Was It Only a Week Ago?" Jan. 7: "Useless Column" Dec. 31, '01: "I Want a Refund"

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms.

DESIGN CREDIT: GRACK! byline graphic by Bob Farr.

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