Cool Mac Gear

Well, that was simple!

After darn near twenty years of using Macs, I'm finally on board with OS X. Completely ignorant, God knows, but on board, better late than never. What I have here is a semi-new 500MHz titanium PowerBook G4 with 256MB of RAM and a fresh OS X 10.2 installation. That's how it was delivered to me, ready to roll. There isn't any Classic installed, but I'll have to go ahead and do that or forgo some functionality from a few beloved legacy apps. I suppose someone will tell me to partition the drive and put 9.2.2 on a separate chunk. Aw gee, do I hafta?

I usually compose these columns in Tex-Edit. (No, not TextEdit. :-) I'm so new to this, I haven't had a chance to try the included apps.) Intending to email the file I'm working on now to myself so I could tidy it up on the 8600, I needed Tex-Edit for OS X, v. 4.5 -- Tom Bender's Trans-Tex Software is one of my favorite developer shops, and the Texas connection is icing on the cake. Anyway, doing this the way I did involved a) launching the included Internet Explorer brower, yuck; b) going to Apple.com and downloading Safari (yay!), then using the included Google search window to find Tex-Edit and downloading that. The point is, it was easy to do. So far it's actually kind of fun, jumping into X without any idea where things actually are ...

Meanwhile, the magpies are taking hot baths in the terra-cotta birdbath outside .A hot bath is better than no bath at all, and at 10 percent humidity, they'll cool off soon enough. Watching them makes me wish I could join in, except for getting scalded. As it is, the bottom of this TiBook is hot enough to kill most bacteria and small furry animals, so maybe I wouldn't even notice. (The tangerine iBook now residing in Dubuque is one cool customer compared to this, I gar-own-tee.)

Northern New Mexico is in the grip of what they call a "heat wave" here, which means at least 90 degrees F. by afternoon and nightime lows in the 50s. Yes, I know, back in Maryland, weather that encouraged me to sleep under a down comforter in mid-July would be cause for spontaneous religious conversions! But the power of the sun at 7,000 feet is something to behold -- I have two identical thermometers outside. One, on the east side of the building, is in the shade and registers 84 degrees at this very moment, 6:40 p.m. MDT. The other is mounted on the latilla fence in front, just out of view in the photo above. THAT one, also in the shade mind you, catches the reflected heat from the south-facing concrete stucco wall and shows 115 degrees! (Here comes another magpie to the bird bath: he takes a drink, staggers, and collapses into the catnip ... )

Oh Lord. Does this thing have a fan, or was I supposed to add liquid nitrogen? -- the details I don't know -- I guess I'll find out when the titanium shell starts sloughing off in molten dribbles. If this were winter, I'll bet I could get the kiva going just by leaning the case against the piñon. Don't get me wrong, though: I'm unspeakably happy to have the TiBook, and OS X is just fine and dandy with me. I can hardly wait for colder weather and the chance to save on heating bills by wrapping a serape around me and the 'Book, too. Some of you probably think I'm kidding.

OH, STOP THAT! I have "Dock Hiding" selected, but every time my palm slides across the trackpad and sends the cursor south, up pops this silly transparent thingie I wouldn't be using if I had any other way of locating stuff. I predict I'll come to love it, though. Right now it's sorta comical, but who thinks up these icons? A stamp for the email program?!

So far all of this is relatively painless, except for the third-degree burns on my bare thighs. If this were a car, I'd be praying I'd make it to the next town before the engine seized. Hmm. I just looked, and there isn't anything listed under "Melting Temperature Preferences," so I suppose I'll just have to grin and bear it. After all, physical inconveniences are pretty rare when we're talking about computers, so a few gangrenous welts in the long term shouldn't be a deal-breaker. Whew. [pant, wheeze]

Computers are one thing, at least when they're cool, but it wasn't quite so easy yesterday when I decided to change spark plugs in the F-150. With the Road Rocket now lounging peacefully in a cool subterranean garage on a hillside above the Mississippi, the '87 Ford pickup truck is my sole transportion and as such needs to be in top condition.

First I gave it four new tires. I hadn't bought new rubber in a while but wasn't too suprised to see that there are now financing plans for tires, eek. What the hell, I paid cash for honker six-plies. Then I filled the crankcase with high-zoot synthetic oil. Finally, the plugs: Wal-Mart had ordinary Autolites for less than two bucks a pair, but I went for platinum-tips at double the cost. The reason was simple: I didn't EVER want to change them again.

For reasons known only to the EPA, corporate beancounters, and the devil himself, Ford stuck all kinds of stupid things on top of what in the old days would have been an easy-as-pie straight six. The result is that out of six spark plugs, only one was easily accessible -- and that one was rusted and stuck. Instead of getting easier to turn as I cranked the wrench, it got harder. Imagine how happy I would have been with a stripped or broken spark plug and no second car, hah! What I did was screw it back in (which was easy), then back it out again, over and over, with liberal applications of WD-40. Eventually something seemed to give, and I got the sucker out, expecting the worst. Amazingly, it worked, leaving me with a filthy but serviceable hole and undamaged threads.

I have to say that all of this was kind of gratifying in a way. It's been a few years since I've gotten that skinned-up and greasy, and slathering liquid detergent over my blackened arms brought back memories of the days when I had an actual garage and enough tools to build the Queen Mary from scratch. Computers aren't like that, as a rule: you don't get dirty working on them, and nobody needs band-aids or a stiff drink afterwards. (At least I hope not.) Grease under my fingernails shows I did something, though, and gave me an excuse to join the birds.

No reflection on the magpies, but I did elect to use my own tub.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr invites your emails.

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