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God loves New Mexico
Sunday was (is, as this is being written) a very remarkable day. I don't really know how to put this, but -- well, I'll just blurt it out: it's been raining since early afternoon. The menu bar clock says 9:28 p.m. and it's still drizzling. DRIZZLING! I haven't experienced anything like that for several years, and neither has anyone else living in this part of the world. Why, the sidewalk is actually wet instead of just spotted with raindrops. I think I'll do a little dance.

I'm sure the Almighty loves wherever you live, too, so don't feel slighted. But we were beginning to wonder in these parts. The feds were already talking about closing down the national forest again, just like two years ago. That time they did it just before Memorial Day weekend, when hordes of visiting bikers were expected to camp in the woods and be naughty. This year they've already nixed campfires, and the state has forbidden open burning of any kind, anywhere. That better not apply to the chimenea I just bought (shhh!).

Anyway, maybe things will ease up a bit now. I went outside a while ago and actually stepped in mud! Maybe the grass will come up thick out on the mesa and Wizard and Wooly Bear will have something to eat besides hay trucked in from Colorado. Wait a minute, I'm getting a little ahead of myself here...

Doesn't everybody have one?
This simple tale really starts with a guy named Wiz (no relation to Wizard). I doubt he was baptized thusly, but this is the West and you don't quibble about such things.* Wiz is a graphics pro who lives next door. He put together an advertisement for a lady who wanted a Web site, and since Wiz hates HTML, he sent her to me. The Web site deal went off smoothly enough, but it also turned out that she needed some help with a Mac system she'd bought on a local radio flea market show. I asked her what model it was and which operating system it was running, but she didn't know. Hmm. She needed help, all right, and maybe the helper would too. Wary but willing, I set up the appointment and told her I'd call for directions before I drove out.

Giving directions in this part of the world is an art, or needs to be, because an odd fact of life in Taos County is that the authorities rarely provide street signs. If you live on a certain road and want anyone to find you, you paint your own sign and tack it to a fencepost. That's just the way it is. My client's house was on Lobo Road, a delightful address to be sure, and not too hard to find once I'd navigated to the designated crossroad and pretended four-tenths of a road had ticked off on my broken odometer. As it turned out, some artistic soul had painted a very nice blue & white "Lobo Road" sign on an old board that hung at a 45-degree angle on (what else?) an old fencepost, so off I went.

The road was gravel, the landscape sagebrush, and the views were spectacular -- mountains rising up to 13,000 feet on my left and an 80-mile distant horizon falling away to the west on my right. She'd said hers was the fourth or fifth or something-such house on the left, but I never pay attention to simple things like that when I have a number, which I did. Unfortunately, the house didn't. After deciding I'd gone too far and missed the place, I turned around and pulled into the driveway of what looked like an exotic animal breeder's compound next to a sturdy wire-fenced enclosure occupied by two big freaking llamas. Not the Tibetan kind, you understand (they only have one "L"), but the Andean variety. I was happy to stop and ask directions at the smallish house beyond the corral, just so I could get a closer look at the beasts. But guess what? -- my client opened the door! This was the right place after all, but she had never mentioned the llamas when giving directions. (Do YOU have llamas in your front yard?! )

First rule: do no harm!
The visit was satisfactory, I suppose, but I'm just not cut out for this sort of thing. I don't have the killer instinct, you see, plus I'm not really that brilliant when it comes to other people's Macs. What I mean is, I know where everything is on mine. In this lady's newly constructed living room, however, was a Power Mac 7200 system. In pieces! She'd moved it that morning from the kitchen table to a low shelf by the stairs. I had to hook everything up and sit on the floor to type. The Mac had 50-some megabytes of RAM, the original 601 processor, and chugged along on OS 8.1. (Easy does it, John.)

I figured out a few things anyway.She'd complained about slow Web sites, and no wonder: the thing connected at 26,400bps. I played around with modem scripts for a few minutes and then realized she'd been sold a 28.8K modem. I suggested she download the Opera browser ("What's a browser?") and offered to be on the lookout for a used 56K modem, since she was short of cash. Everything else about the system was in fairly good shape, except that there were so many icons on the desktop, it was impossible to find anything, plus the printer didn't work. I organized the debris into logical piles o' files and made new folders for the stuff. Triple menu flashing, ack! I turned that off, set the date and time, showed her how to rebuild the desktop, then went to work on the wonking big Epson printer, arguably worth more than the 7200 and its tiny ancient Mac monitor. "I bought the whole thing on 'Trash and Treasures' and got a really good deal," she offered. (Don't ask how much, don't ask how much!)

The printer? Well, all I can say is, the day that printer icons bear the same name as what's painted on the thing they stand for will be a glorious one indeed. I wasted half an hour diddling with floppies and searching for something that was there all along, just because no sane person would have guessed there was any relationship between the two. In the end, I got the mighty Epson to clatter, whine, and push blank sheets of paper out, but the actual printing will have to wait for another day (I figure the print heads are hopelessly clogged).

Llama ear sign-off
I felt bad because I had taken so long with the printer, so I knocked $15 off the bill. What I'm proud of is that I never said anything disparaging about the 7200 or urged her to buy a used iMac. If she had come to me before she'd forked over the cash, well... As it is, the 6-year-old Power Mac will do everything she needs it to do, especially with a faster modem, and that's that.

On the way out, I got some great pictures and learned the llamas' names. My client also mentioned that "you can tell by their ears whether they're happy or upset," but neglected to specify which was which. I decided not to get too close to Wizard, though --

If he's (she's?) anything like Hobbes the Wonder Cat, that look means trouble.

("Grack!")

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr invites you all to take a look at Zoozone, Fotofeed, and JHFarr.com. Other than those and Applelinks, what else is there?

* In junior high school in Abilene, Texas, my best buddy was named J.B. Leonard. J.B. stood for Jim Bob. No "James Robert" on that boy's birth certificate, either. (Yee-haw!)

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Apr. 1: "April Drool" Mar. 25: "Tuzas on the Curb" Mar. 18: "Holy Ghostbeak" Mar. 11: "Lord of the Turkeys" Mar. 4: "The Heart of the Matter" Feb. 25: "New Stuff: Browsers, Servers, etc." Feb. 18: "Mascot Lore & More" Feb. 11: "Killer Email & Wiccan PotLuck" Feb. 4: "Meanies, Guerillas, & Subscription Copycats" Jan. 28: "Full Moon Frenzy, w/ PowerMacs" Jan. 21: "iMacs & Webmaster Schadenfreude" Jan. 14: "Was It Only a Week Ago?" Jan. 7: "Useless Column" Dec. 31, '01: "I Want a Refund"

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