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ANYWHERE BUT THE FLOOR
Never Bet Against a Sure
thing, Even If It Is Alive
April 16,
2001
Well, no damn
wonder!
BUT DIANE DOES IT
My wife's oldest and best friend is a delightful
lady named Diane. Diane works for a college, actually the
"College Relations Department," which sounds like something
a lot more exciting than it is. (Then again, what do those
kids know? I've had lots more sex than they have.)
Among other things, Diane is what a local Web guru likes to
call a "Quark driver." She's a desktop publishing whiz, in
other words, and puts in long day after day designing and
assembling every manner of publication for the college
public relations people. Diane hates her job, for reasons
that have more to do with the idiotic demands of a typical
institutional bureaucracy than with the actual nuts and
bolts of what she does. In that regard, she hardly has
reason to complain: being both a valued employee and a
lifelong charmer, Diane always gets the latest Power
Macintosh desktop and a monitor big enough to house half a
dozen illegal aliens.
The thing is, she never really puts it on top of her
desk. She probably doesn't care one way or the other, but I
suppose there just isn't ever room on top of desk.
You can always go visit her in her office, crawl underneath
the overhanging monitor, and find the latest, fastest Mac
humming away on the floor. I always thought, "Gee, doesn't
that thing suck up all kinds of dust and crap sitting
there?" But such things don't matter to IT people with a
decent budget. Each year whatever's there gets sent to
wherever such things go, and a new one takes its place.
I never used to put my 8600 on the floor! The very
idea... Then we moved to northern New Mexico, and for some
reason we've spent most of that time living in an 800-900
square foot adobe "cottage." Actually, that amount of
footage qualifies as a quarter-million dollar starter home
in this part of the world, but never mind: space is tight.
Back in Maryland, I had tons of room, extra tables for
scanners and other gear. All I have here is a set of narrow
built-in shelves full of other junk and my trusty "computer
table," really just a glued-together slab of cheap pine and
a couple of metal "sawhorse" legs from Hechingers, Home
Depot, or some such emporium. No drawers, no other shelves.
So...
I TRIED IT, I LIKED IT
Bang, down on the floor it went. The first thing
I liked was all the ROOM I had. Ahhhh. . . The second thing
I liked was that it was quieter, fan-wise. Not so hard
drive-wise: after I installed a big high-speed SCSI drive in
the no-no position above the power supply where the orginal
drive used to be (MacGurus said it was OK!), the
clickety-clack shot right up at me through the top of the
case. Bappety-bappety-bap. I could keep the sound turned
down and still tell when emails came in, just from the drive
working. But overall, no, it didn't whine and wheeze as
much. There still wasn't room for the scanner up on my
"desk," though. I put it on a wooden crate underneath the
table, off to the left, where I only kick it once or twice a
day.
But I had concerns. We heat with a wood stove (dust),
have a cat (hair), and live in New Mexico (DUST!). When I
first took a Dustbuster to the intake slots on the side of
the 8600's case after about a week down below, the longest
and strangest dust bunnies -- make that dust serpents --
came squirming out. The combination of cat hairs and some of
the raunchiest dust in the lower 48 made for a new kind of
life form, very possibly sentient thanks to extended close
contact with all that digital information. If I'd been
Captain Picard, I'd have had to leave them alone and buy a
new computer then and there. ("No, we can't get just rid of
it, we might start a space war.")
So yes, there was dust. I quickly got in the habit of
vacuuming around the computer almost daily, but there was
little I could do about the ever-growing mat of intertwined
hair, dust serpents, dead flies, stink beetles, and spider
webs that covered more and more of the cable jungle under
the sofa my table backed up to. Some things are best left
undisturbed. Sure, when I hooked everything up, I promised
myself ("THIS time, for sure") I'd bundle everything neatly
or at least hang the cables so they didn't get tangled up in
my feet. As usual, the convenience of shoving it all off
into the dark won out. Out of sight, etc. etc.
WISDOM OF THE ORIENT
Things moved along swimmingly. Seasons came and
went. At one point I uncabled the sucker, hosed it off
(almost!), and cracked 'er open on top of the dining room
table, just to see how much had been sucked in. A
LOT, obviously, though most of it didn't seem to be
doing any harm. The sentient dust-serpents kept pretty much
to themselves in an unused corner, while the rest of the
detritus clung harmlessly (?) to surfaces where there wasn't
much going on. Well, there might have been, but who
could tell? In any case, careful vacuuming and wiping took
care of most everything, and I still had room left over in
the garbage can I'd pulled into the room to dump stuff into.
There was (and is) only one real problem: I WASN'T GETTING
RICH! Heck, I wasn't even paying the bills.What a frickin'
racket this is. Work all day and night and die.
About this time I had the poor judgement to hint to my
brother, who never met a computer he didn't like to take
apart, that the only reason I'd never tried overclocking my
G3 upgrade was that the 8600 was, um, you know: down
there, where mortals fear to tread. I mean, to open it
up without uncabling and expose its delicate innards to the
Things Under the Sofa, why , that just wasn't right.
Wouldn't be prudent. Brother Bob is married to a powerful
bundle of energy from Thailand (her name is Dang) and
responded thusly:
"Well, since you've already acknowledged the
spiritual aspect of your box of mysterious and wonderful
electronic juju..
{quoting from my email]
>Guess I *could* just open it
up on the floor...<
Surely, you don't have this wondrous machine sitting
on the floor!?
That's a sure ticket to bad karma & hard luck.
This is why Dang has taught me to always put the Buddha's
at a high point in the room, preferably above head level
and *never* (with a few exceptions like "happy buddhas")
where you might be pointing your feet! One just doesn't
put important spiritual magnets in such a disrespectful
position. Now, I'm always alert for the old
"Buddha-as-doorstop" mistake so often seen in import
retail shops. "Surely, that business will fail" I think
to myself. If only they knew.
This could explain the reason you're still in economic
limbo -- the tool you use to make the rent money is not
in a place of power. (and I'm not talking about 110 v @
60 hz) While I'm on the subject, it's not just elevation
either, pay attention to the compass too. Rising sun is
better than setting sun. And away from the WC. Doorways
are also bad, particularly the main household egress. Too
many opportunities for good energy to escape and bad
energy to sneak in and attach itself. Say, where's the
head of your bed facing? Keep it away from the
toilet."
He added that he had replaced numerous hard drives in PCs
at work, and that most of the failed drives came from
machines sitting on the floor. Well, hell.
MAMA DIDN'T RAISE NO FOOL
The combination of feng shuei and empirical
evidence was too much to ignore, but being lazy, I elected
to worry first and take action later. A few nights ago,
however, something came over me, and before you know it (4
hours later), I had a new setup!
See? Ain't it purty? I have to admit, I feel much
better with the computer off the floor. It seems happier and
doesn't make as much noise as I remember. I can't hear the
squeaking disk brake my wife is always complaining about,
either, so who knows: maybe the 8600 is just as loud as it
ever was -- which was never really objectionable, to tell
you the truth. And to honor the new placement of the best
investment I ever made, I pulled all the cables out from
under the sofa, wiped them off ('Watch out, that one's
moving!"), and let them hang shamelessly out in the
open air for all to see.
I also moved the Buddhas up, but I'm still not getting
rich. I think it's because of the bed. The head faces north,
which is good, but still makes a beeline for the toilet in
the next room. Given a choice, I'd rather move the toilet
than the bed, but you know which is easier to shift. If you
don't see this column next week, it'll be because I finally
swung the bed around and won a Pulitzer.Sorry, I won't be
needing a chauffeur...
I like to do my own driving!
("Grack!")
Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John
H. Farr wishes everyone well and suggests you not point
your Mac at the toilet or put your bed on the floor. Um, is
that right? If you're confused, a visit to his Zoozone
site is bound to set you straight. The Zoozone has a
brand-new FARR
SITE called "Home Alone" and features a different New
Mexico image every day at FotoFeed
. Go take a look and tell your favorite neighborhood
syndicator.
More of These
Things
AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file,
European
Birds -- Sounds and
Sonograms.
"GRACK!" is © copyright 2001, John H. Farr, all
rights reserved.
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