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January 31, 1998
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
News Archives
Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
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External URLs that have cropped up in the course of the News history.
January 31, 1998
The countdown begins tomorrow for the new web site upgrade. I won't spoil the surprises by saying what's getting fixed and how, but suffice to say that I think this will be a very worthwhile set of changes.Spent a good portion of the last couple days in the Mountain View Library flipping through Value Line, an investment research reference. It's amazing to me that with the market as high as it is there could be so many good equities available at good prices. I won't name names, but sometime real soon—say 10 days?—I'll provide a complete list of recommendations and information on how I picked them.
January 28, 1998
Received the 64 meg RAM upgrade, and it's bad RAM. Tested it in every memory slot, and it won't come register in any of them. So my 80 meg dream machine is postponed a few more days.I know a lot of people are bad-mouthing the independent prosecutor statute under which Kenneth Starr has issued all the subpoenas in the Clinton sex scandal, but I, for one, think it's a much-needed law. The alternative in this case, for example, is to have the investigation run by the Keystone Kops out of the Janet Reno-led Justice Department. I'm confident that were they in charge Monica Lewinsky's navy blue, allegedly semen-stained suit would've already been sent out for dry cleaning.
January 27, 1998
I've ordered and should receive tomorrow a 64 megabyte RAM upgrade for Fritz. This will boost the machine up to a heretofore-mind-boggling 80 megs of RAM. (Does anyone else recall the Vic-20 which shipped with 2.5k?) This should be sufficient to do all the digital audio work I want. RAM prices, though on the rise again, have dropped very low and $150 for 64 megs seemed like a very reasonable deal. The 16 megs that Fritz came with virtually assured I'd need to upgrade at some point, so why not now?My friend Dave was asking about Dawson's Creek, the new series about teen angst which follows Buffy the Vampire Slayer on WB. Ever since they started advertising for it, I've been trying to avoid getting drawn into what looks to be a very compelling drama. Simply put, I don't want to spend another hour a week in front of the TV. Of course I saw last week's initial episode, and for a first show it was very well done. Don't know if I'll be able to resist the temptation on a weekly basis.
January 26, 1998
Among other things I've noticed about Fritz—the new Power Mac 7500—is that he handles Adobe Photoshop at a speed that allows me to really enjoy the program for the first time. My graphic design/artist friend Garr (who also teaches Photoshop classes) has, of course, been very encouraging in the past of my efforts to learn Photoshop, but my desire was always ultimately thwarted by the mind-numbing sloth of the program on my Mac IIci. Thanks to Fritz I'm playing with Photoshop once again, and this time, perhaps, it will take.January 24, 1998
Despite the soccer loss to Bellarmine (see Sports), the day was marvelously turned around by a nice dinner gathering with friends Jennie, Shan and Heather. The focus of conversation caromed wildly during the course of the evening, and we hit topics like education, morality, beatnik poetry, breasts, vacations, television and job hunting, just to name a few. Great people and great fun!January 23, 1998
I'm sorry but do President Clinton's recent woes involving another (alleged) affair and another (alleged) cover-up surprise anybody? This entire presidency has been one big swamp of lies and corruption, punctuated by strong political stands when the polls say it's the politically appropriate thing to do. Bill Clinton is probably a nice guy, but he's not an honest one. He's got the morals of a snake, and that's probably being unfair to snakes. More likely than not, this sex scandal is just the latest crisis in an on-going personality problem.On the brighter side, at the very least I'm thinking this will cure the long-term Clinton angst over his "place in history."
Lest anyone think I'm picking only on the Democrats, I'm happy to add that I thought that the President Bush's morals were out of wack as well, though I will concede that at least he has some. In Reagan's case, I think there was a strong moral component to his character, but his cabinet and handlers were "ethically challenged," and that spelled trouble when combined with Reagan's "hands-off / it's-nap-time" management style.
January 22, 1998
My nagging cough continues to nag, and it's severely messed up my sleeping schedule. The last couple of nights I've been going to bed around 4 AM and waking up at noon. This is not recommended.January 21, 1998
I've spent the last few days moving files to and fro in an effort to get Fritz running with all the software I need. Because I don't have a new keyboard and monitor yet, I've had to transfer via Jaz cartridge, an ultimately more time-consuming process since I forgot a couple files I needed and had to re-connect everything to the Henry in order to get them.Nonetheless, everything now appears to be in order, and I hope to update the web site with a little more regularity from here on out.
January 19, 1998 — Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday (celebrated)
As many of you know, I bought a Macintosh IIci system a few years ago at a sealed-bid computer auction. By the grace of God (and I mean that), I won with a bid of $412. The next two bids turned out to be $405 and $406.By $6, then, I purchased a computer (who I named "Henry") which would become a fixture in my daily activities. Word processing, surfing the net, e-mailing, handling the finances, doing desktop publishing and design—Henry was there every step of the way. In fact, according to TechTool, Henry has logged over 22,000 hours of use since his date of manufacture. That's over 2 years of slaving away for ungrateful users. (And I should know, I'm one of those ungrateful users more often than not.)
Now Henry, being a Mac IIci, is undeniably one of the greatest machines Apple ever made. Besides the terrific industrial design (lift two tabs and you're inside the case—no screws to deal with), the IIci has a 68030 microprocessor running at 25-MHz, the standard slew of Apple ports and 3 Nubus slots. From 1989 to about 1991 Henry and his ilk were king of the Macintosh hill, and even now most software will run, albeit slowly, on the IIci. It remains an excellent word processing, e-mail and web surfing machine.
But my dreams call for more horsepower, specifically PowerPC horsepower, and to that end today I purchased a Power Mac 7500/100. I've named him "Fritz" because I think that's a funny name for a computer to have. Fritz is a second generation PowerPC machine, highly upgradeable and featuring another outstanding industrial design. (A design so good in fact, that Apple's continued to use it for the 7300 series, 7600 series and G3 desktop models.) Fritz has 1 gig hard drive, 16 megs of RAM, a 4x CD-ROM, stereo in/out sound ports and a video-in port.
Fritz is very fast compared to Henry, with MacBench 4.0 scores of 144 to 11 on the processor test and 154 to 4 on the floating point test. I plan on upping Fritz' RAM to 80 megs in another week and adding a PowerPC 750 (aka G3) accelerator in another month or so. (The G3 accelerator I'm looking at MacBenches around 1100 on the processor test.) Fritz will be "the machine" when it comes to recording my album later this year.
I know this appears to leave Henry out in the cold, which seems particularly cruel given Henry's long-term and excellent service. But it just so happens that Erin needs a machine which can do some word processing and keep track of some grades, two tasks at which Henry continues to excel.
So Henry will be sliding down the desk a few feet once I get a new monitor and keyboard for Fritz. We may even setup a LocalTalk network (built-in on every Mac you know) and let the boys meet each other. I'm sure it'll be helpful to have Henry show Fritz the ropes. Couldn't hurt.
[This is what happens when a person sees the movie Tron too many times.— Ed.]
January 15, 1998
Is there anything more miserable than being up all night hacking and coughing? (Well, yes, laying in bed for a month and a half with a herniated disc, but don't get me started.) All right, well, my voice went out a couple days ago and outside of some very deep Darth Vader-like sounds the best I can manage is a cracking whisper. This loss of vocal control is like puberty all over again.Besides being contagious, sleepless and miserable, I've spent some quality time with my synth writing some new material. They say that pain is the basis of all great art (or was that great comedy?), so maybe this cold/flu thing has worked out okay. Because in the midst of my sinus congestion I've managed to write a song demo called Much Finer Things of which I'm enormously proud, and I would probably be even prouder still if I had a voice to sing it.
Before this latest plague descended, I was in the midst of a computer search for a used Power Mac 7500 (or 7600--whichever I can get cheaper). Since I'm no longer capable of carrying on a decent phone conversation (or in-person conversation, but why pick-nits?), my computer purchase will be delayed a little while.
January 14, 1998
Happy birthday, Liz!January 9, 1998
It's really one of the sappier movies to come to the big screen in the last decade, but Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams is really a quite enjoyable suspension of disbelief, and I'll be darned if I can do anything but recommend it.Costner is excellent (unlike most of his work the last five years) and the supporting cast of Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster and Ray Liotta is superb. The script is filled with many humorous and touching moments, the only really noticeably stupid scene being one at the end where Jones is forced to deliver a homily on baseball as the Universal Constant so that storyline doesn't completely run off the rails into Goofyville. (Notice to Screenwriter: Too late.) There's a whole lot of pseudo-Freudian/Jungian Father-Son psychology stuff going on here, and a lot of feel-good stuff about dreams. Field of Dreams has its flaws, but I like it.
January 8, 1998
It seems like I just got over a nasty headcold, but no rest for the wicked apparently because my throat is now as sore as it has been in years. I don't know if this is a cold or the flu or what, but it looks like I'll be fighting something for the next few days. (Here comes the chicken soup, videos and on-line movie reviews. Prepare yourselves.)January 6, 1998
Still in catch up (not Catsup) mode from our Oregon trip. I've finally answered all e-mail, returned all calls and written all letters. A new backlog will start tomorrow, I'm sure.Tied archrival Bellarmine in soccer, 2-2. Details in Sports.
Got my new Onkyo dual cassette deck via UPS today. Now I'll be able to make my album available on compact disc or tape. (FYI, the place to buy stereo equipment is Home Video Library in Portland. Their sales people are very knowledgeable, and they're always willing to make you a deal. For example, I got this tape deck for $40 over dealer cost, and they picked up shipping.)
January 3, 1998
A week and a day is a pretty short trip to Oregon, but once again we managed to squeeze in visits with many friends: Julie, Garr, Jen and Esteban, Dave and his brother Kevin and many others. We'll visit again soon. Promise.I started a Sports section for this very purpose, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my extraordinary happiness with the Steelers 7-6 playoff win over the new England Patriots. If we can win two more in a row, we're world champs!
I don't know what was up with Alaska Airlines. Normally a paragon of on-time, top quality service, our flight was delayed and our baggage wasn't available for about an hour and a half after the flight touched down in San Jose. On top of this, one of the bags, a rugged Samonsite, was dented along the steel frame. I wrote a letter of complaint first thing, and since I've had so many good experiences with Alaska I'll give them another chance. But I sure hope this was a fluke and not a huge long-term decline in service. (I should add that the flight itself was pleasant and the food service was, as usual, above average.)
January 1, 1998 — New Year's Day
Stayed up way too late at last night's party, but when you get a chance to see friends like Matt, Ginger, Joe and Dennis it's hard to call it quits early. All right, so 3 AM is a little overboard. I still think it was worth it.
