November 7, 2002
11/7/02 Hey there boys and
Hey there boys and girls! I promise no moping about how America has gone down the shitter (at least not tonight), and instead, we're going to take a Whirlwind Cavalcade Tour of MY ELECTRONIC STUFF!!! You know how I was talking about how we wish some of our diaries mentioned the stuff we were wearing and hearing at the time of writing, because it can end up being so much more interesting down the road? No? Well, I did mention it.
Anyway, here's a rundown of the techie stuff we're currently using here in Brooklyn and at the farm – just so it can seem delightfully quaint in a few years time.
1. Computers.
Tessa uses an 800 MHz iBook (the grey kind) and MacOS X, and I'm typing this right now on my trusted old friend, the original Tangerine iBook, which has seen me through many a tight spot. In the back office, I keep my ultimate grandfather workhorse, a tangerine 266 MHz iMac that I will carry with me throughout my days, like an heirloom from the Civil War. Asset Pictures is planning on getting the dual 1.25 gig G4 with two Ag Neovo flatscreen monitors for the office tomorrow, so I'm as excited as a little kid about to get a Big Wheel.
2. PDA's.
For some reason, that term still means Personal Displays of Affection to me, something that could get you four demerits and a lost Saturday at my high school. Anyway, Tessa has the new Palm m515, which purrs like a kitten and lets you read novels on it. I have an ancient Palm V that has 2MB of memory and only turns on when the tiny gerbils inside are feeling up to it.
3. Wireless.
Words cannot express how fucking cool the 802.11b wifi world is, better known to us Mac aficionados as the Airport. We have one of these pumping through our apartment in Brooklyn (and the roughly 25 other apartments around us, even though they don't know it), and one at the farm that allows us to surf the net while in the cow pasture. Some people would find that silly, but you know what? Don't be so judgmental. At least I can still get excited about something.
4. Stereo.
I don't own a single piece of stereo equipment that was bought in this decade, or even the last. My stereo remains the same: a 1987 Onkyo amp with a separate radio tuner (do they even sell those anymore?), a 6-CD player without a fast-forward button, and speakers that have fallen off so many bookshelves that I have to Superglue the coils back together every year or so. But when it's all working, it's an analog enthusiast's dream. Just don't, you know, walk around too much when you're near them.
5. Cable and broadband.
Our particular block in Brooklyn got hosed for digital cable, so we're stuck with shitty analog, which is actually more expensive and has 1/9th the channels. And since Verizon has a lot of bullshit business policies, we went with Earthlink DSL, which has been great. Upstate, we use DSL from Taconic Technologies, which is a flawless service seemingly run by two old ladies named Blanche. Digital cable up there is a little spotty and slow, but we cut everything in the Berkshires an incredible amount of slack because the cheese is so good.
6. Other cool stuff.
Because of this blog, I got totally hooked on digital pictures, which is not the cheapest hobby on earth, but one of the more instantly satisfying. When my beloved Olympus D-520 Zoom fell off the top of a refrigerator on Halloween, I upgraded to a D-550 to have a little more resolution (3 megapixels, which means you can blow pics up to 11x17). I've stuck with Olympus because I like the navigation on the back, and I'm also a huge fan of SmartMedia cards, which are the coolest little floppy disks since sliced bread.
Another great purchase of ours was the XM Satellite Radio, which earned a new merit badge by helping me get to the hospital on a 2-hour drive with a kidney stone whilst on Percoset. And I'd like to give a shout-out to my cell phone, which is Sprint's Samsung SCH-8500, a little guy with whom I've had no trouble. Tessa uses the newer version of that AT&T Nokia red phone that everyone else on earth has.
God, it looks like we have a lot of stuff. Maybe we should be more ascetic about this kind of thing, but I come from a long line of strong ancestors who embrace new technology with both arms. My mom had the first Mac in 1985, and was on the "internet" (Prodigy) in 1987. My grandmother once told me that she remembered the first car she ever saw, driving up through the dusty farmland of rural Colorado in the early teens, and remarking to herself how beautiful it was. I hope to carry some of that fearlessness with me wherever I go.
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writing this blog on the iBook right now - meta-meta-picture, eh?