Auctions

I've had surprising success selling off the stuff that had accumulated in my attic, much better than I had expected. I've made enough to cover the costs of the new iMac (which was what motivated me to do this after so many years), almost enough to cover the additional memory and new software. I still have a few more items to list, which I ought to attend to before my enthusiasm for this disappears once more.

I have several auctions that close today — one in particular seems to have attracted a good deal of interest, if the number of people watching it is anything to go by. It's an old portable computer, one I've had for almost twenty years — I had bought it with an old girlfriend, for her to use while she was recuperating from surgery (though I don't think she ever used it as much as I did). It seems to have become increasingly rare as the years have gone by, and I'm anxious and impatient to see what it will sell for.

For the most part, though, I'm just glad to get this stuff out of the house, at last. I like the idea that someone will put it to better use than I have over the past several years. I received an excited letter from someone who had bought a set of old books, to say how much he had been looking forward to reading them. That's meant a great deal to me.

Phoenix

My son and I watched the Mars Phoenix Lander successfully touch down this evening. (We had to settle for NASA-TV's coverage — we weren't able to get to Mars in time.) We saw a simulation of the entry, descent and landing that had been timed to coincide, more or less, with the actual sequence of events. I think this made it all a bit easier for him to understand what was happening (and it was a good deal more interesting than watching people nervously waiting and occasionally cheering).

I did not, however, try to explain to him that everything had actually happened about fifteen minutes before, due to the time it takes for the information to travel to here from Mars. Fifteen minutes is an eternity to a five-year-old.

I have promised him there will be pictures for him to see in the morning.

Clock

I've had this clock for years — but for the past ten years it's been in a box in my garage, hidden in plain sight among other items that were packed away and somehow never unpacked. I rediscovered it only yesterday .

I have a vague concept of how old it is, but I've never been sure.

Ten years ago, when this clock was packed away, the Internet was still reasonably new, so much so that there most likely wasn't a page devoted to Numechron "Tymeter" clocks. Even if there had been, there wasn't such thing as a search engine yet, so finding that page would have been virtually impossible.

Yesterday, it took all of 15 seconds to find out more about this clock. I still haven't been able to identify when this particular model was manufactured, but I've learned of the history of the company behind it. (The Pennwood Electric Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, founded in the early 1930's, was among the first to market with a mechanical digital clock.)

The clock has regained its' place in my office, on a shelf next to my desk. It's remarkable to me that the motor still works, still keeps time, after what might have been thirty or forty years. I like the quiet, but confident "clunk" it makes when the minutes change.

Original Art

I have a piece of original comic strip art, something I've been thinking of selling on eBay. It's a daily strip from "The Jackson Twins," by Dick Brooks.

Back in the day, when I had interest in pursuing a career as a cartoonist, my grandmother knew someone who knew someone, and brought me out to meet Dick Brooks — a real working cartoonist! — and to see his studio in Connecticut. At that time (I must have been sixteen or seventeen), I had developed a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of newspaper comics — yet I had never heard of "The Jackson Twins," this despite the fact that the strip had been running since 1950. I didn't let on, of course. (It's possible that Brooks had only recently retired at that point, as I would later discover that the strip had ended in 1979.)

I came away from the experience convinced that if I were ever to become a successful cartoonist, I'd need an Electric Eraser. (I had no idea such a thing existed!) That, and he was kind enough to give me a piece of original art, specially autographed for me, which I've had ever since, albeit in the back of a series of closets.

I'm usually much more sentimental when it comes to objects that represent a particular place in my life — but since I knew nothing of "The Jackson Twins," it's never meant all that much to me. I've been thinking of putting it up for sale, but there doesn't seem to be much demand. Seems it doesn't mean all that much to anyone.

Formality

I wear formal clothes so infrequently that my five-year-old seems uncomfortably surprised when he sees me in them.

"I don't like the suit," he tells me. "Will you be wearing it when you pick me up?" I reassured him I would not.

(Five minutes later, he told me he thought I looked good. Go figure.)

Truth to tell, I'm not all that fond of formal clothes, either. (Has my son has inherited this from me?) I prefer something relaxed, more comfortable, which I invariably bring with me on those occasions when I'm obliged to dress more formally. This time, however, I had to spend the latter part of the morning wearing two right shoes, the result of the hurried rush to get out the door!

Rhyme and Reason

I'll often indulge in gentle wordplay with my five-year-old — usually rhyming or alliteration, a habit acquired from years of reading Dr. Seuss together. (His favorite books have been read so often they're falling apart.) He's beginning to respond with his own contributions, following my lead.

(I seem to recall him doing this when he was younger, and a therapist having been concerned by it for some reason or other — I'm not sure why.)

Every so often, he'll tell these implausible, convoluted tales of things he'd done or seen during the day at school. I can usually coax the truth out of him (or sort it out for myself), but the tales he tells are far too entertaining not to let them play out.

This is one of those instances where I wish I had more experience with kids. Do most five-year-olds do this?

For Sale

I've been putting stuff up for sale on eBay this week. (That was part of the reason for my recent adventures in the attic.) Most are items I've wanted to sell for years, odds, ends and traces of my former employment. It's just taken me this long to find the wherewithal to gather everything together.

(That, and the more I rid myself of now, the less I'll have to pack and move when I go.)

A few are books that have become redundant. There's also some equipment that is no longer used, which may be of no more use to anyone else than it is to me.

And my Newton MessagePad, as beloved to me in it's time as my iPhone is now (though not nearly as useful). I found an e-mail message on it that was sent from the hospital to friends and family the day my son was born. I wonder if I used it more than once or twice since then. I'm reluctant to part with it, but perhaps I love what it represents to me — new technology — more than the item itself.

Taking photographs and writing copy has taken up a substantial amount of time, much more than I would have expected. But then, there must have been a reason I put all this off for so long...

Boxes and Books

I've spent the morning tidying up my attic, most of which has consisted of my moving heavy boxes from one side to the other. (You wouldn't think an attic full of boxes could be so unruly, but life can be full of surprises.)

I have come to the conclusion that — assuming it's even possible for someone to have too many books — I have too many books. Far too many. Box upon box upon box of them. Some I've had for twenty, perhaps twenty-five years, a few go back even further than that. Some have never been read — others no more than lightly browsed. I look through the boxes, every so often, excited to discover books I'd forgotten.

When we moved to this house in 1998, most of what we brought with us was left in storage, while we settled in and got adjusted. But we came to appreciate the simplicity, the absence of clutter, and many of the books have remained packed away since then. Others line the shelves in a closet. There aren't enough bookshelves in this house — I'm not sure there ever will be.

Exchange

This morning, I finally exchanged the International English Keyboard that had inexplicably been packaged with my new iMac, for one with much more familiar punctuation. The Apple Store employees seemed genuinely intrigued and excited by the foreign keyboard, as if it were something exotic and unusual. (I suppose it is — they're only available online in the US.)

3:30 AM

And I am restless.

Snapshot

I have a nine- or ten-year-old iBook, which is still used (occasionally) by my five year old son. It's shows wear in it's bright orange casing, and it's just about worthless in comparison to the computers I use today, but it has this persistent sentimental value to me. It was my first portable computer, and I ordered it hours after it was introduced (though I had to wait for a frustrating two or three months for it to arrive). I adored it, and I've been using a laptop ever since.

I eventually bought another iBook to replace it — essentially the same design, but in a vibrant, radioactive green! — and when that model was damaged and needed repair, I had the hard drive replaced with something larger. The green iBook was eventually sold, and the original drive was returned to me, all but forgotten.

I came across it not too long ago when I was tidying up in my office, and I thought it might be fun — and relatively easy, if I followed the directions carefully — to replace the smaller drive in my old orange iBook. If nothing else, I thought, it might make the iBook slightly more useful. (The larger drive is still only 10 GB. Doesn't most of the iPod range has more storage than that these days?)

When I started up the iBook from that old drive, I saw a snapshot of my life as it was three years ago. Email that had just been sent and recieved, projects in progress, receipts from a business trip. My desktop picture, a false-color image of Saturn's moon Titan. (I still have that picture, on my iPhone.)

iMac

I bought a new iMac yesterday — this was, in part, an impulse buy, but one I'd been thinking about for the past day or so. New models had recently been introduced, and this seemed as good a time as any.

I had no idea there was such thing as a "new computer smell"!

A necessary part of the process of installing a new computer is, of course, the ritual cleaning of the desk. In the process, I discovered an air intake vent on the old iMac I was somehow unaware of, which had become covered with dust. (Small wonder the fan had become so loud.)

When I noticed the keyboard had a symbol for the Euro, I thought that was just Apple being forward-thinking. But then, when I started to use the computer, I noticed that the keys seem to have been mislabeled — the characters were where I expected them to be (I can't quite type without looking at the keyboard, but I can usually get by without paying too much attention), but not where they were indicated on the keyboard.

A quick 30 seconds of research, and I've come to the conclusion that my iMac somehow mistakenly came equipped with an "International" keyboard. I'll have to replace that, sooner or later.