This little household companion through which I squooge together loving messages to you all? An early model iMac. Grape, to be precise. I am very cautious about typing anything critical about my adorable electronic pet on its keyboard, because I'm convinced that it will get even with me in a self-destructive fit of pique and piss all over its own motherboard or something. But the fact is, I don't love this family member so very much sometimes. For one thing, it came with craptastic word processing--a horrible little 'do-it-all, do-nothing-well' package called AppleWorks, which is really (I believe) ClarisWorks in thin disguise. Whatever that is. MS Office it ain't, is all I'm sayin'. Documents created by this wonder could not be read on machines using Windows of any variety unless the creator had the presence of mind to convert it to .rtf, nor could MSWord docs be translated into it--fricking useless, and I got sick of having to remember to tell everyone to send me only .rtf files, and forever explaining what those were, and converting everything I wanted to send out likewise--so, in the end, I had to shell out $100 or so on the then-current version of MSWord for the Mac, the now-risible Word 98, and guess what? As of recently, translation on this version has crapped out across platforms also.
So I, who used to be a big Mac fan, have gone a little sour. But really my worst problem is my Bronze Age operating system, OS8.6. I find that machines with which my surly pet attempts to socialize are increasingly aloof, even disdainful. Their owners are constantly complaining that my pet does not support this or that sort of play that is the latest rage among the best machine sets. I am tiring of their endless snide remarks and chiding tones.
The final blow, though, was the utter failure of the current configuration to cope with Yahoo IM. Increasingly, it appears that asking me to forgo IM is like asking me to forgo the telephone, automobile and television combined. Yesterday one email exchange between myself and a very funny and talented friend amounted to IM via smoke signals.
So, I've started investigating an upgrade to OSX. Ohh, my heart started to beat when I saw that the latest version of it is a Panther! Surely all my electromagnetic woes will be speedily chased far, far away by the prowess of the Panther! However, the local 'puter gurus tell me that in order to do an upgrade of this magnitude, I'm going to have to leave the computer with them for three days. So, I've been stalling.
But I really think I ought to just suck it up and get this over with. Howie tells me I should do some kind of backup thingie. But I don't think I have time to print everything out in all my files .... hahahahaha. Just seeing if you were still paying attention. I have a disk on key, but it gets kind of squirrelly with the iMac, just like all the other devices in its life.
Anyway, as of ... soon ... I'll be a bit more limited in my general online ubiquity, as I'll be marginalized to moments when Howie leaves his computer long enough to go to the bathroom or something. But know that I still love you, and that Mommy always comes back.