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An Apple a day keeps the doctor away. 21 days until my birthday! |
Monday, April 19, 1999 Mac Lab I went to sleep early this morning, and got up early this afternoon, and went to see my counselor. I'd like to write something about that, if only for my notify list, but only if I get the time to do so, which is iffy at the moment. On the agenda for this week:
After that, I preregistered for a couple of English classes and grabbed a much-needed slice of pizza. While eating the latter, I overheard a few people sitting at the next table talking about The Matrix. Glancing that way, I suddenly realized that one of them was my former philosophy professor. I finished eating as fast as I could, and immediately got out of there.
From there, I circled back around, and went to the computer lab in the I building, which was packed. The main lab has 80 computers, of which 5-10 were out of order, and the rest were in use. Several other students were hovering around, waiting to swoop down as soon as a terminal became available. Last year, I was usually able to find a system in the smaller lab down the hall when this happened. Said lab had perhaps twenty computers, but there was often one free, because the systems there were much less state-of-the-art than the ones in the main lab. I think they were older 486's, with Windoze 3.1. This was more than adequate for my purposes, generally speaking. However, during Winter break, they upgraded the computers there, so now you can never get one. In the meantime, I wanted to check my mail. So I tried something radical, something I had never tried before. I stepped into the Macintosh lab.
I may have just stumbled across the best-kept secret on campus. Purloined-Letter style, it's hidden right out in the open. But the Mac lab has 25 Power Macs, and only five or six people were actually using them. It was just amazing. 'Course, it's not all peaches and cream. The first few systems I tried using were frozen. But I eventually located a working system, and had a simply blissful time from there. Checked my e-mail, replied to one message, and then fiddled around a bit to see what else I could do with the system. So, for the first time, I got to see what the Soapbox looks like on a Mac. I was a bit apprehensive, after reading a few horror stories on Diary-L, but I was pleased to note that it looks pretty darn good, at least if you ask me. Ah, the advantages of a simple layout... Then I imported my latest column from the college paper (which I happened to have on my Internet account, in Rich Text Format -- oddly enough, none of the Macs I saw had floppy drives; just empty drive bays), fiddled with it in Word for a bit, and printed it out, just to see if I could. (This wasn't as pointless as it sounds. I wanted to know whether this would be a practical option when I really needed it.) It turns out that I can, indeed, although the printer in the main lab is much better. Still, this has definite potential. I'm pretty certain I'll be back.
An aside, to my Macintosh-using readers (and I know I have a few): What do you do with a frozen Mac? I know what to try on a PC. First there's Control-C and Escape, and, ultimately, there's Control-Alt-Delete. But I haven't a clue what the Macintosh equivalents are. I'd appreciate any advice you could offer. Also, if there are any crucial differences between Word for Windoze and Word for the Mac, it'd be nice to know about them. Thanks.
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