Thursday, February 27, 2003

Well, I took the big plunge today and registered a domain name.  Signed up with a hosting site, too.  Not that I'm not happy with Userland, which is where my blog is currently residing, but being the control freak that I am I want to tailor things just the way I want them, not fit into a preconceived mold.   So next up is a crash course in learning HTML and the ins and outs of all the other doohickeys that make for a cool blog site.  Good thing I stocked up on more coffee.  (Yep, kona.  The good stuff.  Eat your heart out.) Meanwhile, all of this has put me in mind of my first computer: a big behemoth of a thing the size of a mini-refrigerator which ran off of dual 8-inch floppies.  No hard drive, no memory... the whole operating system (MS-DOS) was on the first floppy, you stored everything to the second.  When running, the thing sounded like a Black Hawk helicopter and put out enough heat to keep my little studio apartment nice and warm through the coldest winter days.  I was so excited when my student loans and a huge tax refund simultaneously hit my checking account.  It meant I could afford a newer, faster, smaller computer.  I bought what was then the top of the line: the IBM PS/2.  Oh, was it sweet.  A 20gig hard drive, 640 k memory (back then the industry standard said that was all of the memory we'd ever need) and it had a 300 baud modem.  Whoa! I cherished that baby for years, and it was with great excitement and pride that I replaced that pokey modem with an external 9600 baud sucker that was lightning fast.  Well, at least it was at that point.  With power like that, I was able to start a BBS using RA and Fido for my usegroups.  (For you young 'uns, a BBS is what we did in the old days which gave birth to the Web.  Don't bother your pretty little heads on trying to understand the rest.)  But the biggie, the real biggie, was the day I added a color monitor and Windows 3.0 to that thing.  Ok, so I sacrified a lot of speed and it took 15 minutes for my computer to boot, but oh, the colors were sooooo pretty. Believe it or not, I didn't let go of that PS/2 until three years ago.  Oh, sure, I'd moved on to bigger and better computers with blindingly fast processors and broadband net access, but sometimes it's hard to let go.  Sometimes it's scary.  Sometimes you want to know that if the new stuff doesn't work out, you can always fall back on the old things in a pinch.  6:21:41 PM  Bites [];

This reminds me of an old Sam Kennison schtick... Man cuts off penis to prove fidelity to estranged wife 10:48:32 AM  Bites [];

Mr. Rogers died yesterday.  Strange, but I don't really know what to do with that.  Mr. Rogers has been this constant person in the world's background throughout my life.  I watched him as a child, although I found his show incredibly dull.  Back then, however, there were only 2 t.v. channels and if you didn't watch Mr. Rogers you were stuck watching 'Let's Make a Deal,' which aired at the same time in our town. The first boy I ever had a crush on, Robert Brown, reminded me of Mr. Rogers.  We were five, and he was the only boy I knew who wore a cardigan sweater.  I thought he was glamorous, dressing like a tv star. Mr. Rogers was there through both of my kids' infancies.  Oh, I'll admit that neither of them were interested in his show.  It was so quiet, gentle and bland, not nearly as catchy as Sesame Street with its much better puppetry and constantly changing bright colors.  No, I was the one who watched Mr. Rogers through their infancies.  I liked Mr. Rogers for the same reasons they did not, and the very mildness of his manner and voice quieted our busy household on more than one morning when I sat on the sofa cradling a sick or frustrated child.  But as my kids grew out of infancy, mornings with Mr. Rogers gave way to shows that entertained them, that taught them songs and motor skills, letters and shapes. I'll miss Mr. Rogers, I will.  No, his death won't make a major change in our day-to-day lives around here, I'll admit.  But it was nice to know he was there, just as he'd been since I was a child. 7:55:24 AM  Bites [];

I hate reality tv.  I have this theory that the slew of 'reality' shows that we seem so addicted to is our civilization's version of the gladiator fights and other barbarity that immediately preceeded the fall of Rome. Apparently, Fox's latest offering will be "Mr. Personality," a show that involves a woman choosing a man out of a group, with all of the males disguised so she can't see their faces.  Hmmm... isn't this just a protracted version of the Dating Game? So here's a suggestion for the next big reality show: "Guess my Psychosis."  It goes like this... a desperate but otherwise absolutely gorgeous single woman spends, say, 7 episodes getting to know a group of gorgeous single men, all of whom have a major psychosis, neurosis or other untreated psychiatric condition.  Her goal is to select the one least likely to turn into a deranged killer after their breakup two weeks following the conclusion of the show.  Meanwhile, we as the viewers are fully aware of just how dangerous all these guys are, so the fun is seeing whether she picks the future serial killer or the obsessive-compulsive who has to shave every inch of his body below his chin at least twice a day.   7:27:31 AM  Bites [];

© Copyright 2003 Kate Berry. Last update: 3/9/03; 8:51:48 PM.