Help! I've fallen off the internet!

[missroserose]

In case anyone's looking for me, my computer here at work is being updated, which means that the only available connection I have to the Internet is through a circa 1998 Blueberry iMac. I'm honestly surprised I can even post anything at all. Also, I apologize for any typos in this entry; I've got to say, I never thought I'd see a text entry box two characters wide and twenty lines tall. Hurray for Internet Explorer 5.1 for Mac.

So, yeah...might be a while until I show up online again. I'm still reachable by Gmail, though, thanks to Google and their dinosaur-friendly minimalist interface.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go sit in the corner and scrape delusory insects off my skin...

...only a few more hours until I can go home and have some internets...

Comments

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

the only available connection I have to the Internet is through a circa 1998 Blueberry iMac

Dude. I'm impressed. We have two or three that we're resigned to turning into furniture rather than trying to make them workable again. One's a fish tank and two're a coffee table. Pity the new iMacs aren't quite that recyclable.

Though when I was the last person in the newsroom each night I liked turning on voice activation and turning them all up all the way. Nothing like freshmen being screamed at by a room full of iMacs first thing in the morning.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

A fish tank? What an awesome idea. Did you just scoop out the innards (y'know, like a pumpkin) and fill it with water, a bubbler and a plant or two? I find this doubly amusing, given that I used to watch the old After Dark fish-tank screensaver on the Macs in my elementary school for hours, hoping that the flying toaster would appear.

Also - yay Commodore 64! My first gaming system...it will always hold a special place in my heart...*sniffs tearfully*

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Wish I could say it was my idea. And actually, wasn't even my aquarium; one of my minions got the idea, especially when he saw a corner of iMacs bound for the dumpster. Me, I get nervous around unshielded CRTs; too many horror stories from the vaults of Dad the electrician....

I miss the After Dark screensavers. Especially the Simpsons screensavers; they were clever.

And yes, my days with naught but a C-64 (later, 128) and the good ol' trusty 1541 disk drive...learned so much about programming back then. And gaming. Back when EA was a mark of quality instead of the Wal-Mart of gaming software ("Look! Madden '08! We changed four rosters!"). Hell, I did the titles for the cross-country team's video on my 128. It was embarrassingly low-tech, sure, but it worked....

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I was wondering where you were. Oh, well.

I have one of those old iMacs. Well, mine is from 2000. Still works fine.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm surprised at how well this one works. It's certainly a lot more reliable than the Win98 computers that were its contemporaries, even if it is a dinosaur by today's standards.

Unfortunately, our billing program is even more of a dinosaur (it was written for a Mac Classic, back when those were the new thing on the block) so I'm pretty much stuck using this thing until we get a new program. Which I'm hoping will be soon, given how ungainly our current software is...

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

No no, not dinosaur. If we're going to liken computer development to biological evolution, then the first iMacs are akin to mastodons. The dinosaurs would be things like the original Mac, the Apple IIgs, or the IBM AT. The Sinclair Spectrum, the TI-99, the old Tandy computers, and the like, would be the creatures of the Permian period, such as therapsids, late trilobites, and others. The old IBM mainframes would be from the Silurian and Devonian periods, and the first electronic computers like ENIAC and UNIVAC would be Cambrian.

This, of course, would make Babbage's Difference Engine the original, Archaean single-celled creatures.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Funny how it kind of runs in reverse - the predecessors were huge, and the modern-day versions are much smaller.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Well, the trend in biology hasn't been just toward the larger, but also the more complex, and in that sense, computers have followed.

But you're right, the early computers' size is astounding.

[dngrsone.livejournal.com]

Hew now... you guys are making me feel old... I learned BASIC on Tandy TRS-80 Model IIIs...

And I learned the finer points of machine code on C-64... some days I wish I hadn't given that rig away (I had a pair of 1541 drives and the monitor).

[errant-variable.livejournal.com]

Um... if you're using the circa-1998 iMac, it's not "blueberry" but "bondi-blue" also known as "the color that Mac Techs hate".

http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/05/0202.html

(I get rants from Susan on this, figured I'd share the pain). I guess what it means is that the less painful the color of the plastic, the less painful the user experience. Glad you're mostly enjoying yours.

[errant-variable.livejournal.com]

I just totally dyslexified up that href. *shrug*