My old arch enemy -- Decker is in for a world of hurt.
When I was a wee lad, my middle school library had a cutting-edge computer lab. It was in a loft-esque space overlooking the rest of the library; we ascended stairs, at either end of the smaller, oval-shaped loft space, when it was our turn to rise from the Dewey-decimal coded past to meet the tools of our binary future.
I'm guessing we had some variant of Apple ][s -- I know they could display a few colors, but that's it. We didn't have quite enough for every student, and our use time was very, very limited. I always got the impression that our librarian wasn't very comfortable with the newfangled gadgets, and no one was sure how to even set them up, let alone how to use them as a learning tool.
This was well before Al Gore invented the Internet (soon-to-be-our-sentient-master, all praise It), so we each had our own 5.25" floppy disc copy of whatever software we were using. In most cases, our teachers did the right thing and had us play educational games -- either Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? or my personal favorite, Oregon Trail.
I hated WWCSD? because, after everyone had checked-in and after the librarian got us up-and-running on all of our machines, we were never left with enough time to catch our art/gem/map thief. It was a pointless exercise -- the culprit was free to run off to Switzerland to anonymously deposit their loot, and we were sent off to run yet another eleven-minute mile in PE.
Oregon Trail, on the other hand, was excellent. Minimalist. Raw. Gritty. It was the old west in four-color, pixelated glory. I didn't know what dysentery was, but I soon learned to hate the damn thing as it killed my party over and over again.
Leave it to McSweeney's to take a classic and improve upon it. I present to you a Short Imagined Monologue by Michael Nelson Price entitled No Son Of Mine Plays Oregon Trail Like That. An excerpt...
Listen, son, we need to have a talk. This isn't going to be easy for either of us. You are not my son. I'm sorry, I know this will come as a blow to you. But the fact is, no son of mine plays Oregon Trail like you do.
. . .
For some time, I managed to convince myself that you preferred the banker simply because his vast resources allowed you to purchase the maximum number of oxen. I was sure that you were attempting to set a speed record of some sort. Of course, I knew that the game limited you to 40 miles a day regardless of the number of oxen, but I thought you would figure that out for yourself. But you weren't about to figure anything out. Not about Oregon Trail, and not about life.
For more Oregon Trail goodness, see the following...
- Interview with the game's creator.
- Detailed information in this article naming it one of GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time.
- Play it here.
Before entering law school, my Class was told that while my school didn't yet support Mac users and didn't allow the use of Apple laptops for exams, the administration expected that policy to change soon. When our IT department refused to revisit the subject after a year and a half, I decided to conduct my own survey of law schools in California and across the country. The result? 2/3 supported Macs, and more were opening up to the idea of supporting Apple laptops every day.
I passed my report on to our administration who, following the support and guidance of our new IT manager, changed their policy. In the Fall of my 3L year, I took my first law school exam on a Mac. It felt fantastic.
In the meantime, our SBA President asked me to start a formal Mac User Group, which I did. Though I graduate in May, two other students have agreed to take over leadership of the group, so it will live on after I'm gone.
One problem remained. The Bar Exam. And the CA Bar Association wouldn't budge. Nor would they allow correspondence via email or fax. Only mailed letters. So over Spring Break this year, I put together a summary of my prior survey, responses thus far from the exam software provider and from the CA Bar, along with reasons the Bar should change its policy.
I finished the packet on a Monday. At that time, the Bar hadn't changed its policy. On Tuesday I put the packet in the mail. On Wednesday a friend emailed to say that the Bar, on its own, had changed its policy [pdf]. We'd be able to take the Bar Exam on a Mac this summer! I didn't think the Bar would change its policy so soon, but I'm glad they did.
Now I have a new "problem." You need to boot into Windows via Boot Camp for the Bar Exam, and therefore need an Intel Mac. As I'm a loving owner of the last model PPC PowerBook, I'll either need to get a cheap Windows laptop or a new Mac.
I'm strongly considering the oh so pretty MacBook Air. I played around with one at MacWorld this year, and the machine is gorgeous, thin, light, zippy, elegantly engineered, sturdily crafted. The early reviews are all favorable, and Charlie Rose even took a face plant to ensure the safety of his baby. But even Charlie Rose's mishap pales in comparison to what happened to this guy. If I get one and fall in love with it, how will I keep track of it?
From Newsweek:
If my Air was stolen, I don't expect to see it again. The people at Apple (one of them couldn't stop laughing) do say that if the thief tried to repair it, Apple would identify the unit by its serial number. (By the way, NEWSWEEK is going to pony up the $1,800 for the loss.) Fortunately, because I had never bothered to wirelessly move all my data to the laptop, my personal exposure is limited. As a precaution, I did change the password on my Gmail, and de-authorized my iTunes account. Thus the thief, if there was a thief, cannot watch the two copy-protected episodes of "The Closer" I had downloaded. But I don't think it was stolen: as I noted, the power cord was in my living room, indicating that I'd used it sometime that weekend. It was safe at home—before it disappeared. So what happened? In lieu of the presence of a poltergeist with techno-lust, I have developed a theory that I first viewed as remote, but now believe explains the fate of my Air.
On Sundays in my apartment, the coffee table where the Air sat becomes the final resting place for the bulky New York Times. It is not unusual for other magazines, and newspapers from previous days, to accumulate there as well. My wife, whose clutter tolerance is well below my own, sometimes will swoop in and hastily gather the pulp in a huge stack, going directly to the trash-compactor room just down the hall from our apartment, dumping the pile into a plastic recycling bin. Sometimes the whole mess gets so nasty that I even perform this task myself. Could it be that somewhere in the stack was a Macintosh computer so thin that its manufacturer brags it could fit inside an envelope? I believe so. (For the record, my wife does not subscribe to this theory.)
My MacBook. I've lost my laptop! I've abandoned my Aiiiiiiiiiiiiir! I've lost my MacBook. I've abandoned my Air!
