Geek Chic

Well, I've successfully avoided owning a palmtop computer for at least five years. There's an unusual idiosyncrasy about technology in my family: we always want to know what's best, but we won't buy into something half-baked. Everything is an investment in the future, I guess.

At the age of eight or nine, I recall seeing the Radio Shack insert in the Sunday paper and goggling my eyes over their Color Computer, which only cost about as much as a color TV then. My father wasn't impressed with the cost to value ratio. When I wanted the $6.98 Steve Austin action figure, (the real, bionic SA, not that bald-headed thinly-veiled homoerotic sex object) I had to convince Harvey I would continue to play with it past Christmas day. This probably explains why at 32 I still stubbornly hold onto it. (That and the amazing likeness of Lee Majors -- if anyone out there knows who the artist for Kenner was please contact me). Maybe he was concerned about his son playing with dolls...

Anyway, as peeved as I was with his attitude I soon found myself marching in step. When I bought my first computer, a Sinclair ZX81, it was after geek-like precision reviewing against the other offerings of 1982. Bought a crappy secondhand b&w TV for $10 from a repairman who stated that he never wanted to see me bring it back, and I was well on my way.

A touchpad computer not much heavier than a pack of cards, with monochrome display and a whopping 16K added on. Needless to say I was in heaven: a computer of my very own, not a terminal hooked to a PDP somewhere. Before long I passed BASIC and started messing with Z80 machine language.

To make a long history short, I went from ZX81 to Atari 800XL, to the earliest days of Macintosh, and currently own a G4 7500. All carefully picked. In fact, too carefully. When we bought our first Mac Classic, Ruth suggested we get the 80M hard drive. I said, "C'mon, 40M is enough." I'm still mentally bitch-slapping myself over that one.

I wasn't even an instant Mac convert until I went to college and had to use them, back in the dark days of 1985. You remember then, back when copying a MacPaint graphic and pasting it into the KeyCaps desk accessory would bomb the machine out...

So when the Newton arrived on the scene, my feelings were mixed. Incompatible with Mac, but fits in your hand, dude. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't go that route, but I was miffed when a tech I knew defined the fledgling PalmPilot as "a Newton that doesn't suck."

The Palm didn't suck. But most of the applications for it made it look like a four hundred dollar datebook, and nearly every demonstration model in stores was broken. If you're a college student (or recent escapee from whence) it may not be the most practical use of that much money.

Also, I'm a devotee of the non-computerized method. Not really a neoLuddite, but concerned with recognizing the value of the genius that went into movable type, two sliding pieces of plastic that calculate logarithms, and paper time management tools that creatively challenge you to organize your thoughts. One of the people I worked under in college as a geek computer support person spends his weekends farming, raising chickens and getting to know the dirt around him. Weekdays he runs an ISP. He and I both believe technology should know its place and we shouldn't become hopelessly dependent on it.

Last week Ruth made me an ultimatum. She said that I had two choices. Buy two Handspring Visors or she'd buy one for herself and I could suffer not getting to play with it.

Note to young, unmarried men: when chicks fight, they fight dirty. Expect this.

I gave in, and $250 isn't that much to pay for something that can spreadsheet, send and receive mail, control your TV, let you compose music, play games, store novels, and oh yes, keep track of your appointments. It has the three prerequisites of a real computer:

• Addictive games available
• Limitations to whine about
• "My brand X platform is better than your Y platform" flamewars
  on Usenet

If it's worth arguing fiercely over, it's probably worth having. Go visit the soporific discussions on WebTV's own forums if you don't believe me.

Mainly, one of the reasons I love this gadget is because it keeps me from being bored when I have some free time. I like to write. I like to draw. This lets me do either or both, and upload the results later. Ms. Croft, here, is a good example of how to kill some time, even if it does bring me back to 1985, tools-wise.

So, here I am again, the owner of a touchpad computer not much heavier than a pack of cards, with monochrome display. Go figure.

Potsherds

The weather here's beautiful, as usual.

This morning, the news awoke me to let me know that the next likely tsunami strike is along the midAtlantic coast, between Virginia and North Carolina. Since I just sold a house in that area and moved away four months ago, I can't say I regret the change of location.

North Carolina is a beautiful state, excepting Charlotte, Durham, Winston-Salem and Raleigh. The coastal region never drops below 40, the western Blue Ridge Mountains contain the highest peaks east of the Mississippi, and I'd never lived somewhere before where even the weeds are pretty. Wilmington enjoys an interesting tourist synergy with Myrtle Beach: Wilmington passes itself off as historical and well-mannered, and Myrtle Beach is South Carolina's conception of Sodom and Gomorrah: amusement parks, titty bars, outlet shopping and one of every theme restaurant. 70 miles of rural US 17 separates the two; the perfect day trip or even dinner jaunt.

Flagstaff is more isolated. Phoenix is the nearest city in any direction, three hours to our south, and Flagstavians consider Phoenix the way the Amish see us. Phoenix TV news is an education: I've never seen so many creative forms of murder and manslaughter before moving west; my original conception for this site was to be an index of the baby killings, high speed freeway chases and automotive homicide, pitbull maulings... The times I'm disappointed at being so far away from a metro center are ameliorated by ten minutes driving through Phoenix.

Phoenix, down in the flatlands, is the imitation potted ficus plant of cities. The streets are proudly lined with obviously non-native palm trees, which looked amusing in the Cape Fear border islands, but just plain vulgar in the middle of Arizona. Competing with the palms are beautiful citrus trees bordering the yards of the homes, except that the plump orange fruit are bitter ornamentals, to prevent the homeless from picking and eating them. The air is referred to by the locals there as "hazy," the same sort of "haze" that typified Los Angeles a decade back. Before long you realize the intense whitebread perspective of "The Family Circus," whose creator has been a Phoenix local for some time, isn't a caricature. Still, Phoenix is enjoyable to visit, and shop for stuff you can't find here.

The first thing about Flagstaff that took me by surprise is how small it is. Perhaps twelve miles at its widest axis, it constitutes the seat of and largest city within Coconino county, the largest county in the United States (San Ber'dino subdivided last year, losing the title).

A longtime native took us out on a road trip a few weeks back, to a large but secluded portion of the country just twenty miles out. Atop one of the hills, we could see for seventy miles in one direction, and no signs of civilization in any direction save a dusty car trail in the scrub. In another nearby location we stood in Hopi ruins, vividly-colored potsherds at our feet that were baked before William the Conqueror set face on England. As we heard nothing around us but the wind blowing, a potsherd caught my eye and I picked it up. On the inside of the rim was a small crack the potter had tried to fill in with slip, and suddenly I realized I was sharing an artist's secret with someone from another world. Our tour guide, a potter himself, summed it up neatly: "You're looking at a thought from a thousand years ago."

It's one thing to see artifacts in a museum, butterflies pinned to cotton in a window box, but to handle them yourself in their original context, where you are the alien element...