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GeneralRe: ME WANT! Pin
Mike Hankey27-Jan-14 3:50
mveMike Hankey27-Jan-14 3:50 
GeneralRe: ME WANT! Pin
DaveAuld27-Jan-14 4:52
professionalDaveAuld27-Jan-14 4:52 
GeneralRe: ME WANT! Pin
Mike Hankey27-Jan-14 5:33
mveMike Hankey27-Jan-14 5:33 
GeneralRe: ME WANT! Pin
Mohamad M. Mohamad26-Jan-14 21:47
Mohamad M. Mohamad26-Jan-14 21:47 
GeneralRe: ME WANT! Pin
Brisingr Aerowing27-Jan-14 3:22
professionalBrisingr Aerowing27-Jan-14 3:22 
GeneralRe: ME WANT! Pin
Mohamad M. Mohamad27-Jan-14 19:47
Mohamad M. Mohamad27-Jan-14 19:47 
JokeRe: ME WANT! Pin
Marc A. Brown27-Jan-14 3:43
Marc A. Brown27-Jan-14 3:43 
Generalbelated happy 30th. birthday, Mac ! Pin
BillWoodruff26-Jan-14 9:41
professionalBillWoodruff26-Jan-14 9:41 
Well, I'm two days late (US time) to whimper my felicitations, but: why not; after all, them was fuzzy (and hirsute) times back in 1984 in the Valley that $ilicon made [^].

That January of Orwell's year I was running a computer program for children at the French-American Bi-lingual school in San Francisco; it would be more correct to say that, with 200+ children per week warming the seats around our sixteen-or-so Apple II's, the program was running me ... ragged.

Around March (I think) of that year I escorted a group of the elite (International IB) upper-school students over to Oakland to see the first incarnation of the Mac (128k, 68000 cpu at 8mhz.) at an Apple dealer's shop. US $2500 for the little critter seemed (and was, in those days) a very high price.

The de rigeur demo of MacPaint didn't do much for me, but MacWrite and MacDraw were eye-openers. I had seen WYSIWYG word-processing and vector-drawing programs in demos on the Xerox PARC machines, but never thought mere mortals would have them.

It was a year later, sometime in the spring of 1985, I was able to buy my first Mac: at one of the bay area's geek flea-markets: a talented hardware-wizard, a Jamaican named Robert from Berkeley, had somehow gotten hold of Macs that had failed qa and were headed for the junk-bin, and somehow ... uhhh ... "rescued" them ... salvaged them into kind-of working machines.

So for US $600 I had a 128k Mac with a keyboard with the entire bottom row of characters transposed one character over. Learning to type fluently on that machine was to give me problems for years.

My first-wife went Krakatoa on me when I came home with my prize (she was an actress, and play director, and epic explosions were her specialty).

A year later, when (I believe) the first Apple LaserWriter to be rented to the public was available at Krishna Copy in Berkeley, I started my first company, Technical Document Design. I would whip-out custom graphics for technical companies, print them, have them turned into negatives on film by a local print shop: voila instant overhead-projection slides with high-resolution (compared to what was the then standard).

And, the Mac and LaserWriter combination led me to specialize in PostScript, which turned out, in the long run, to be a very lucky choice of obsessions.

So, I can say of the Mac, as Pele said of soccer: "been very good to me."

Thanks, Mac !

p.s. The small room (upstairs) where the first LaserWriter for rent was available at Krishna Copy was something of a circus. Which, given Berkeley's latter-days of the counter-culture hive identity, could be expected. People would bring their dogs, and children. The scent of patchouli and sandalwood as likely as proto-yuppie cologne, and human sweat.

One of my first paying clients was a self-anointed "spiritual master" with wonderfully luminous eyes, and massive dreadlocks, who claimed to have reached enlightenment in Afghanistan after being sent to live alone in a small hut for four years in total silence, never going outside the hut.

He said that once a year his "guru" would summon him for an audience, and ask him a single question: "what have you learned this year?"

The first year he replied: "the food is terrible." His guru said: "excellent, now back to the hut."

The second year he replied: "I'm so bored I might as well be dead." His guru said: "excellent, now back to the hut."

The third year he replied with a single word: "fark." His guru said: "excellent, now back to the hut."

The fourth year he replied: "This is a total waste of time !" His guru said: "excellent, now get out of here, and go teach."

I was definitely sucker-punched by the punch-line, but after I had recovered from laughing, I asked him if he didn't feel, at times, angry with his teacher. He said: "no the other disciple had to stay in the hut seven years."

The Prophet hired me to do a brochure for a dating service that supposedly matched, using what he claimed to be ancient Vedic astrology, high-rolling gamblers going on trips to Las Vegas with a selection from a bevy of female escorts whose compatible signs would render them "shaktis" for said punters, thus increasing their luck exponentially.

To say that the virtue of these ladies available for cosmic escortage was beyond anything but lucky ... would be a stretch.

I am not making this up !
“But I don't want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can't help that,” said the Cat: “we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”

“How do you know I'm mad?” said Alice.

“You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here.” Lewis Carroll

GeneralRe: belated happy 30th. birthday, Mac ! Pin
Septimus Hedgehog26-Jan-14 23:33
Septimus Hedgehog26-Jan-14 23:33 
GeneralRe: belated happy 30th. birthday, Mac ! Pin
KP Lee27-Jan-14 17:00
KP Lee27-Jan-14 17:00 
GeneralGroundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism PinPopular
JMK8926-Jan-14 9:02
professionalJMK8926-Jan-14 9:02 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
GuyThiebaut26-Jan-14 10:03
professionalGuyThiebaut26-Jan-14 10:03 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
jschell26-Jan-14 12:41
jschell26-Jan-14 12:41 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
Dalek Dave26-Jan-14 14:07
professionalDalek Dave26-Jan-14 14:07 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
Ron Beyer26-Jan-14 14:13
professionalRon Beyer26-Jan-14 14:13 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
JimmyRopes26-Jan-14 16:35
professionalJimmyRopes26-Jan-14 16:35 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
Bergholt Stuttley Johnson26-Jan-14 21:42
professionalBergholt Stuttley Johnson26-Jan-14 21:42 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
JimmyRopes26-Jan-14 21:59
professionalJimmyRopes26-Jan-14 21:59 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
Nagy Vilmos27-Jan-14 2:48
professionalNagy Vilmos27-Jan-14 2:48 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
jschell27-Jan-14 9:13
jschell27-Jan-14 9:13 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
User 5924126-Jan-14 19:36
User 5924126-Jan-14 19:36 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
Chris Quinn26-Jan-14 20:58
Chris Quinn26-Jan-14 20:58 
GeneralRe: Groundbreaking new research showing exactly how vaccines cause Autism Pin
Simon_Whale26-Jan-14 22:05
Simon_Whale26-Jan-14 22:05 
JokeThe tap PinPopular
Ravi Bhavnani26-Jan-14 6:18
professionalRavi Bhavnani26-Jan-14 6:18 
GeneralRe: The tap Pin
Mike Hankey26-Jan-14 10:33
mveMike Hankey26-Jan-14 10:33 

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