July 30, 2001

PC industry running on the rims
Nice image, isn't it? As the layoffs continue in the PC manufacturing sector, it's more and more apparent to me that this particular bus won't be back in service anytime soon, even after business picks up. Why not? Because someone will have to replace all those wheels, and the skilled people laid off and disappearing will be awfully hard to replace. Still, some tech firms are expanding, and Apple is holding its own -- despite the whining from the peanut gallery and idiot legions of knee-jerk analysts.

For my money -- what little there is of it -- most of the financial reporting I see seems ludicrously shortsighted. Hardly anybody talks about the Big Picture, preferring instead to focus on daily ups and downs. I wish they would take a longer view, because the fact is that after letting the robber barons loot the Treasury again, there won't be much left in the kitty for stimulating research and development of the people, by the people, and for the people. Whenever that happens, we get what folks like Monsanto, Brown & Root, and Microsoft want to give us. If you think that's just fine, I hope you enjoy surfing the WWMW (World Wide Microsoft Web) with electricity from your neighborhood nuke after a fine meal of genetically-engineered sterile veggies and hormone-injected, irraditated beef. Personally I think this is a helluva lot more important than whether the Nasdaq went up or down on a given day, but then I'm weird.

At least Apple is still profitable. And you know they're doing something out there in Cupertino, probably piling up all kinds of insanely great products to unveil at the proper time (not now, of course). The last thing we want is for something like a wireless Macintosh Web tablet to hit the market while everyone in the suburbs is catching on that putting gas in the Navigator and saving for Junior's education are incompatible. Just wait a bit, in other words.

Interregnum, Pleistocene water, and the ole I Ching
The good sign I see is that people (as well as Apple) are taking advantage of adversity and moving ahead with their own common-sense agendas that do take the long view into account, even in the face of contrary attempts to manipulate them into doing something quick and stupid. In California, for example, the citizenry has helped avert more blackouts by cutting electrical power use by 12 percent. Any day now there may be a White House scolding, but the Golden State has just performed the equivalent of adding who knows how many more power plants without spending a dime. Apple has seen a 70 percent drop in quarterly profits over the same time a year ago but isn't chopping personnel (resource preservation of another sort). Meanwhile back in Washington, the U.S. House of Representatives has decided that adopting European standards for arsenic in drinking water (10 parts per billion) is better than the tentative 20ppb mentioned by the government and lots better than the current 50ppb.Well, duh. I would rather eliminate as much as possible of a known carcinogen now so that more of my friends and family are still alive when I'm an old man, rather than take my profits up front and bet on a future miracle cure. Wouldn't you?

Here in Tucson, Arizona where I'm currently hanging out, almost all of the deep wells supplying the city do not meet the probable new standards, but so what? At the current rate of consumption, in a few years there won't be any water anyway, because the water they're pumping fell as rain over 30,000 years ago and isn't being replaced. You can repeat this fact over and over again, but no one seems to grasp the implications. Therefore, anything that slows down the madness or makes water more expensive is a good thing, in my humble opinion. For some reason the city fathers (and I use the term loosely) are not grateful.

My wife and I are out here sponging off Mom because our last house was just sold out from under us and the new rental won't be vacant until September. Just before we temporarily split from New Mexico, we flung the Ching and drew a hexagram that more or less said to do and expect nothing for a while ("Standstill"). I.e., none of this "crossing the great water" stuff for August or September. Well, that fits. And it seems to apply to a lot more than just our own situation.

Yow, is it September yet?!
I'm typing this from my a spare bedroom in a dwelling located where the above picture was taken. My mother had generously donated space in her separate painting studio, which has its own AC unit, but I wasn't able to set up the 8600 in there and am now enduring sticky mousepad conditions reminiscent of the East Coast. The rooftop evaporative cooler still works, but given the moonsonal humidity, not very well. You would think, to look at that arid hunk of rock above, that this location could never be muggy. You would be wrong.

The reason I couldn't use the studio was that it was built a number of years ago by illegal migrant construction workers hired by my economy-minded parents. (I guess that disqualifies me from a presidential cabinet appointment). The guys did a great job and were very inventive in cleverly splicing the power line to an existing household cable, thus bypassing the breaker box and saving themselves a lot of extra work. Unfortunately, this means that none of the electrical outlets in the studio is grounded! No, I will not plug in my beloved PowerMac there.

My sister, a Windows programmer working here in Tucson, can't go online at home because the loaner PC her employer gave her to use in her apartment has a bum power unit. Well, "had." A technician at work replaced the faulty power supply with one that tested OK, but when she plugs it into the motherboard, it goes dead too. It works, apparently, but only if it isn't used, if that makes any sense. This kind of nonsense rarely assaults Mac owners, all of whom should now cross themselves, burn sage, chant, or do whatever strikes their fancy and mutter a tiny prayer of thanks.

Postlude
You get what you pay for, wouldn't you say? I type. I sweat. I wait. I dream. I work. I plan...

I Mac!

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr had no idea the freakin' desert would feel like Baltimore* and urges anyone with sufficient influence to have this fixed immediately. Meanwhile, all you FARR SITE fans who've read everything in the Applelinks FS archives should know that the column can be read at the ZOOZONE (you can even sign up for the Farr Site News by clicking here and sending a blank email).

*She told me so, but who believes his mother?!

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