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!

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.

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