Word 5.1 (which came out in 1992) is not PowerPC native, but it's the last version of Microsoft Word that I have the patience to use.

T


he Dodge Dart carried me back to Staunton, my childhood home. The Macintosh 6500/225 and scanner I'd ordered for my mother had arrived, and it was my job to set it up in the Shaque.

This took an enormous amount of work. To make the tower case fit in the most convenient place, I had to saw a slot in one of the shelves. Then there was the business of getting the cantankerous SCSI chain working for long enough to transfer the 30 or 40 thousand files to fresh new magnetic fields. Of course, then came the oligatory double INIT conflict that couldn't be sorted out without dozens of reboots. Last of all, I had to upgrade to Microsoft Word 5.1 from 4.0, since 4.0 will not run on a PowerPC. Word 5.1 (which came out in 1992) is not PowerPC native, but it's the last version of Microsoft Word that I have the patience to use. Anyone who has ever suffered through Word 6.0X on a Macintosh knows exactly what I mean.

The dazzling rainbows they send up are perhaps just a little too futuristic for someone who was raised before television.

Meanwhile, the others (my mother Hoagie, my psychotic brother Don and my Dad) kept coming by to check up on my progress. During pauses in the action, I showed off some of the new computer's capabilities. Hoagie was impressed by many things I regard as mundane. For example, I don't think she'd never really seen a CD up close before. The dazzling rainbows they send up are perhaps just a little too futuristic for someone who was raised before television. But then to pop those little shimmering jewels into a computer and have them play music, that was over the top! The music coming from a Mac 6500 is much better than I could have ever expected. The machine evidently includes an integral subwoofer.

Then there were was the World Wide Web. We didn't have internet access yet (except via a long distance call to Red Light, which I did briefly in order to check my email), but I could still show off all the web pages that were stored locally on the hard drive. With that 225 MHz clock speed, with those millions o' colours, and with that subwoofer, my stone-age ancestors were amazed.

Manipulating reality with a scanner and Photoshop was another little display of magic welcoming my parents abruptly into the present.

Then we took a tour of various multimedia CD titles. They were so whiz bang as to be preposterous, especially an atlas program that allowed you to zip around the world as if aboard a space ship, to the dark mellow sounds of ambient jazz. Shades of MIDI.

---

In its own nauseating way, his pride is actually kind of touching.

I


n other news, today was my psychotic brother's 33rd birthday. He's too far into his 30s for me to continue teasing him about his advanced age, at least until he starts approaching the Big Four Zero. When he teases me about my advancing age, though, I have a way of making it backfire on him. I've been known to say things like, "How does it feel to have your little brother going on thirty?"

Yesterday Don came in 3rd place in his age group in a Staunton foot race. Now he's bursting with sudden visions of grandeur. He still hasn't taken off the outfit he'd won the race in. And he hardly ever puts down the little plastic trophy that was his prize. In its own nauseating way, his pride is actually kind of touching. All he talks about is running and his rosy future as a great and respected athelete.

I can understand his pride. His life up until now has been a non-stop series of failures linked by long phases of psychosis-flavoured apathy. For him to suddenly receive accolades for superior performance sets the present in a lofty position overlooking the past. He has reason to be proud. But to seriously suggest, as he did today, that we be sure to establish a museum in his honour if he should suddenly die, is still laughably grandiose.

one year ago

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