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How many different kinds of "stop-leak" can you try in one radiator, I wonder?

In trying to avert an expensive trip to my favorite mechanic to fix what appears to be a leaky heater core in my '87 Ford F-150 pickup, I've now tried three of the four different brands sold at Wal-Mart. Hot coolant dribbling onto the floor inside the cab is effectively grounding me, preventing the long road trip I keep threatening to take. Is this a blessing in disguise?

What this has to do with the TiBook sitting on my lap is a good question, but I know there's a connection. Maybe it's the 512MB RAM thingie I'm supposed to install. I have the RAM, I'm just lazy, and the TiBook runs the OS X version of Tex-Edit just fine with the on-board 256MB. The truck goes back and forth from my house to the grocery store perfectly well too, so long as I don't set the bags on the floor on the passenger side. That could be problem.

[Whoa, there goes another one! Coyote, I mean. The cat is sitting next to me on the love seat and his eyes just opened WIDE ... The living room door is open, just the screen door between us and the outdoors, and the critters are active tonight. For the record, the sound they make isn't at all like the "aroooooh!" sound hound dogs or drunken humans produce. It's a lot more higher-pitched and piercing. In Native American tradition, the coyote is the joker, so tricky in fact that he frequently fools himself.]

I recently moved, though I still haven't completely unpacked. But one of the biggest decisions I had to make over the last few days involved my two computers, the TiBook I'm writing this on and the venerable Power Mac 8600. In my new house (actually a very old house), I've been having great fun setting things up exactly the way I want. As regular readers are surely aware, my wife is living in Iowa now, happily outfitting an immaculate little brick house on a hill in Dubuque. I on the other hand am doing the Internet editor/New Mexico writer trip on my own hillside here in Taos. Consequently, I've been able to turn the "living room" in my ancient adobe into one big office, albeit with a love seat, a little TV, and a small table with chairs. The middle room (between here and the kitchen) has a wood-burning stove, a large sofa, and a six-foot long mahogany bar, I kid you not. I mean, an actual bar, with a slate top and a footrail. This room I'm calling the "saloon," and it really looks like one.

Bear with me, now. This is serious business.

Consider that this is my Big Chance. I'm just as married as I've ever been, but living on my own for now. With only myself to please, I'm really focused on having everying as perfect as it can be. One of the things I've always wanted, even before Steve Jobs came up with the term (I swear), is a centralized "digital hub" or multi-media center. Now that I have a bit of space, I thought I would unearth my turntable from the storage unit and convert some LP tracks to CDs. My tape deck is part of this hypothetical system, and so is a mixer for recording audio directly into the computer. Oh boy!

But hey, I'm on a writer trip here. As I moved into the "living room" with my computer desk, printer, scanner, and assorted goodies, I noticed how much I liked the room with nothing else in it. (Well, hardly anything else.) In every other situation with the 8600, I've surrounded my workspace with weird totems and magical objects, favorite photos, inspirational crap, you get the idea: CLUTTER! The "new" space with its white plaster walls seemed surprisingly inspirational all by itself, and after all, there's a mountain outside the window. A great big freaking mountain, every day.

I have a funky old coffee table I was going to put in front of the love seat I'm slouching on now, but as soon as I put it down, the room wasn't "empty" any more, and I felt disappointed. That's not the way I'm operating now, to disappoint myself, so out it went. Ahhh, the saloon! It could go with the sofa and the bar in the saloon. That could be a quasi-"living room," I realized. Keep the clutter in there, not in here: fossil collection, animal skulls, small bronze sculptures, guitars, and -- but wait a minute, what about the stereo system? Oh, no!

There was already a problem with the stereo, as it turned out. I had everything perfectly arranged around my workstation before I unpacked the Yamaha amp and tape deck, not to mention the turntable. Sure, I could put them in the saloon. I wanted music in there anyway. What's a bar without tunes? But the thoroughly-equipped computer is in the other room. How could I play with my LPs and make custom CDs? How could I make recordings?! What about my digital hub?!

"Well John, you do have a Tibook," whispered the little voice in my head, and it was right. With the proper USB gadget to get audio into the laptop, all of this would still be possible. I hated the idea of not using the 8600 for this (it's an AV model with RCA jacks I never get to use), but I've also aways wanted to have mobile multi-media capability. In theory, at least, there was no reason I couldn't use the TiBook for the fun stuff, then transfer the files to the Big Guy for CD burning. Sure, I could upgrade the read-only drive in the early TiBook or buy a portable burner, but funds are scarce. This would be a case of working with what I've got, not throwing money or credit at the problem.

You wouldn't believe how long I wrestled with this. It was keeping me from unpacking, in fact. But in the end, I put the stereo in the saloon where it really belongs. This way my Internet workstation and writing environment stays free of amp, tape deck, speakers, tapes, CDs, LPs, turntable, extra cables, blah-blah-blah. I can't listen to music when I write anyway, so why play CDs on the computer and pretend to work at the same time? Besides, I could still listen with headphones if I wanted to. The point is that something has happened, something that's caused me to be dedicated to focusing and having SERIOUS FUN, here and now. For the time being, it's most gratifying to have white plaster walls and an uncluttered space in my office.The stereo is in the saloon, in the middle of the house where the music should be. If and when I'm ready to record new songs, spoken word MP3s, or archive LPs, I'll do whatever I have to do to be able to accomplish this on the TiBook using OS X. I know it's possible. Besides, THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M DOING NOW, DUH!

I'm not taking road trips, so why mess with a mechanic? I don't have to install the RAM yet either, although would you believe I almost tried to do that tonight (before writing this column)? -- it's already nearly midnight, how smart would that have been? (NOT VERY !) I hope somebody learns something from this. What's the number one thing you most want to accomplish right now? Focus, focus, focus!

For me to get to this point, however late in life, is stupefyingly grand.

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

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(Beautiful land for sale here: "What It Is About El Rito,")

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