MAGGI PICAYUNE

On the off chance he actually reads this site or bothers with an RSS feed, I won’t tell you what I sent him but it was awesome. Who wants a great surprise ruined?

Doc (nee Lee) is the guy who has made much of my life in Austin possible, even while I was a student at Marquette, this person was guiding me to my eventual career. Thanks to his personal Macintosh SE and a printer-based scanner, I had one of the more interesting final projects for Journalism 166 (I think): Desktop Publishing. Keep in mind, I was taking this course in 1990, the bar for impressive was set pretty low.

His assistance fueled a change and gave me hope to find work after graduation since radio/broadcasting has lost its appeal: too many people trapped in the Seventies then.

Eventually it led to brief series of jobs with publishing and then Apple.

Here’s hoping he has a great weekend celebrating with Masami and his new son Nicholas. I told him in an e-mail I will have to call his son Doc Jr. due to my nephew and godson already having this name.

I cannot remember when we converted my old Flower Power iMac to its current role. The darned thing has been around for so long, powering up every morning at 530 AM, tapping into the stream, displaying key widgets for the day; life would be almost unimaginable without it.

Unfortunately, I had to consider it when the darned thing failed to boot properly on a recent Saturday morning. Good thing I knew what I was doing, there’s little need for “tech support” in my household.

The initial assessment was the OS being at fault since the Startup Manager said the hard drive was a valid choice. Too bad Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) was the first to be distributed on a DVD; the iMac only had a CD-RW drive. I transported it to work where I could find the legacy software to get it running again. No dice! I couldn’t get its contents transferred over to salvage settings and files I wanted to keep. Diagnostics stated that the hard drive was on the verge of failure. Then it came true within five minutes.

With some searching and asking around, I scored a replacement for the iMac in a couple days from a person who owned a 20 GB PATA (I remember that was state-of-the art) he said I could keep.

Now Tank Girl runs even faster. I had been thinking its poor performance in the Finder was the poor amount of RAM. Turns out I was receiving warnings or symptoms about what was to come.

I hope this hard drive lasts a couple years since I believe there should be some relatively cheap, used iMac G4s or G5s at Goodwill or somewhere to carry out the duties of a digital rooster.

On this day three years, they gave us something to celebrate in Central Florida…other than being in a place where the weather was much better than in Central Texas (I recall, it was a bit chilly while Orlando was swampy).

According to the gift guides, numero trois is leather, crystal or glass. Hmm. A biker jacket, fancy drinkware or a window? With them moving to Texas, a riding saddle would be more accurate for leather but owning a horse is impractical and expensive. Jose likes many thing I enjoy yet he’s not a geek or nerd, he always gravitated toward coolness which made him wiser than me at Marquette. Anyway, the lack of nerd moniker means the alternate suggestions are out.

We are going to be visiting Nancy and Jose next weekend (Halloween) so I will think of something by then. Maybe take them to a restaurant with leather (rich Corinthian) seats and drink wine from fancy goblets, that could cover it.

Meanwhile, do me a favor, wish them a happy anniversary here or better yet through an e-mail. Facebook will do but it seems rather lazy.

1946

She’s also known as the Little e because her dad’s name is Ethan and we still call him E.

I’ve never seen a kid grow so quickly either as I’ve watched her progress through the Facebook posts of her parents’.

Hopefully I can score something e’s speed at the local Lego Store when I get my iPad modified at the Ghost Armor kiosk. She’s three so it will have to be the Duplo line, none of those cool Star Wars sets.

Correction: Evie’s birthday is really 10/19, not 10/20 as previously posted.

Personally, I’m amazed my mediocre immune system hung in there as long as it did recently. The blistering heat of Central Texas ended earlier than normal which leads to cold-and-flu season here, usually mixed up some people’s nastier allergies from all the cedar pollen.

I was doing pretty well, especially when it came to fighting if off since exhaustion was setting in through my backfill. Then whatever was making its way through work (believe me, a cubicle-base environment is a fave for contagions) punched me in the nose by Sunday. I could feel building while listening to the Stars win their season opener over the Rampage. Monday morning guaranteed a I needed to stay home, sleep for long stretches and ride it out over two days.

Which is worse though? Being stuck at home, sick and miserable, waiting for the ailments to subside or being functional enough to return to work while still shaking off the remaining 10-20 percent of the illness: sneezing, red eyes, coughing, gunk and fluid issues (aka having to go number one every 20-30 minutes). One doctor said the last side effect is a great thing; not if you were sitting through Lord of the Rings at a movie theater.

The part I hate more is the catching-up element: chores at home I had to let slide, coming up to speed with work, the current-events vacuum and general feeling of how unproductive I was for that time. Unproductive? While being sick? Somewhat. It’s hard to read while ill. I fall asleep more frequently trying and the mix of over-the-counter medication compounds the pending insomnia I’ll have later. My current doctor explained how cold medicine leads to sleep-deprivation which I thought was weird and self-defeating. Seems he is correct. I hit a point of diminishing returns quickly with them so I have to tough it during in the “feeling 80 percent or better” days going cold turkey.

Regardless, it’s great to back in the Land of the Living! Many great things have happened: Stars winning 3-0; Helen’s birthday (she at least verbally said she liked my gift, maybe Helen will post what it was and the story behind it); tickets to see shows next Spring; my iPad arriving Monday!; Rock Band 3 is on the horizon; and an upcoming trip to Dallas to see Nancy and Jose!

So prepare to have your RSS-based solutions to be reacting on a steady basis again. I’m closing in on 2000 posts and moving over the final months of 2008 from the old server.

She gave me some grief last weekend on the phone when I was off by two days. Normally, I do have it logged correctly in my oldest electronic source but I had been depending upon the newer one tied to my iPhone. Somehow, I entered the wrong date because I linked her to Columbus Day.

No matter, her present ended up being late thanks to Cold n’ Flu Season hitting my job pretty hard last week. It knocked me down by Sunday evening, hence, the fewer posts on Picayune.

My hope is that Helen still has a good sense of humor regarding her initial present. When she receives it, maybe she’ll share it with everybody. Not the actual gift, the story behind the gift. Fear not, I’ll give her something nice later.

Meanwhile, if you know my friend, wish her well on Facebook or better yet, write her a personal e-mail which I think is superior, more polite and less socially retarded.