You cannot possibly understand how much I’m dying inside, how desperately anxious I am for Steve Jobs’ keynote address at MacWorld tomorrow. I’ve always enjoyed the sense of anticipation for these, but this time it’s almost more than I can bear. Why? I don’t really know.

Part of it is that I can afford to — and expect to — purchase whatever gadgets he happens to announce. But mostly I think it’s because I’ve just become aware how handy it would be to have a truly Mac-oriented phone/information manager. And wouldn’t you know it? That’s what he’s expected to unveil. I have my fingers crossed that:

1. He will indeed announce such a device;
2. The device will actually do much, much more (approaching a mini-computer); and
3. The device won’t be exorbitantly expensive (relatively speaking).

Of course, I won’t actually be able to pay attention to Jobs’ speech. I have an appointment with a customer, and then have to make the company Costco trip. This just makes things all the more painful!

Artist’s concept (there’s almost no chance this image is genuine):

Allow me to rave some more about my new computer. Again.

I’ve never purchased a top-of-the-line machine before, so this is new experience. I feel like I’m on the cutting edge. Admittedly, a lot of this stuff isn’t new — people have been doing these things for months or years — but it’s all new to me, and I’m wallowing in the wonder of it all.

Here are some of the things I love:

• Video chat — You’ll recall that Mac, Joel, and I participated in videophone market research some years ago. That was a novelty, and showed promise, but ultimately was a hassle to use. Apple has removed all barriers. New iMacs and MacBooks ship with built-in video cameras at the top of the screen. Video chat is as easy to initiate as any other chat. And it’s fun! We don’t see Jeremy and Jennifer as often as we’d like, but last night we spent 45 minutes together via video chat. It was awesome. It’s a completely different experience than instant messaging or voice chat (which is just like telephone). I’m sold. I want all of my friends to rush out and buy MacBooks so that I can do video chat with them. Mac! Joel! This means you!
• Windows — For years, Mac-users have been able to run Windows via a product called Virtual PC. The truth is Virtual PC sucks. It’s slow. It’s cumbersome. It’s a bother. Since Apple switched to Intel chips, the same chips that Windows PCs are built on, it’s much easier for programmers to make Windows work on a Mac. And that’s what they’ve done. Apple offers a free download of a product called Boot Camp, which lets you opt to start in either MacOS or Windows, but even better is a piece of software called Parallels. Parallels lets you run both MacOS and Windows at the same time. Not everyone needs to do this, but for a few this is a godsend. For example, I wrote all the Custom Box software in Visual Basic on a PC; now I can run those programs on my Mac.
• Dashboard — I shouldn’t love this feature so much, but I do. The Mac “dashboard” is a collection of little mini-programs called “widgets”. When you press F12, your regular desktop fades to the background and your collection of widgets appears. I have a calendar widget, a dictionary widget, a Flickr widget, a Wikipedia widget, a weather report widget, a stock market widget, and a Google widget all running. If I need some info, I simply tap F12 and voila!! I have what I need. This is one of those jaw-droppingly simple things, like a scroll wheel on a mouse, that has revolutionized the way I work.
• iTunes — I’ve always been ambivalent toward iTunes. I liked WinAmp on the PC, so I found the iTunes interface clunky and restrictive. But I’ve grown to embrace The iTunes Way. By giving up control of my files, I’ve gained accessibility. It’s easy to search for songs and albums and artists in iTunes. And though it’s mostly just eye-candy, I love the new album-art jukebox. It makes the experience more visceral, as if I’m actually flipping through my CD collection. It’s improved my relationship with iTunes immensely.
• Speed — As I said, I’ve never bought a top-of-the-line machine before now. I’ve built PCs that were near the cutting edge, but they’ve generally had problems. This is the fastest laptop that Apple makes, and I packed it with 3gb of RAM, which is the most memory it could take. Things are silky s-m-o-o-t-h. It is a pleasure to use.
• Wide screen — A few weeks ago, I bought an Apple 23″ Cinema Display, which has amazing resolution. You can fit a lot on that screen. It made me realize just how important screen space is to me. On a normal monitor (at 1024×768), I can work with only one program at a time. On a larger display, I can have multiple programs open side-by-side. For many people, this isn’t an issue. But for me, as I write my weblog entries, I want to be able to have my text editor open next to my web browser. On this wide-screen laptop, I can. When I go back to 1024×768 now, things feel cramped.

I’m like a raving fanboy. I don’t care. I’ve only had this machine three days, and already I know it’s the best computer I’ve ever owned. While the 17″ size is still rather large and cumbersome, I’m getting used to it. This computer will never be as convenient as the 12″ models I’ve had for the past five years, but the additional screen real estate is a fair compromise.

“You’ve come a long way since you switched back to Mac,” Jeremy said last night over video chat.

“Yeah,” I said. “When I first switched back, I found a lot of things frustrating. I wasn’t wholly sold on the Mac experience. I’m sold now.” And I am. This is the way computing should be: fun, exciting, and productive.

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For the geeky, here are some comparative stats.

On 30 September 2002, I switched back to Mac by purchasing a 12″ iBook. It was a 700mhz G3 with 128mb RAM and a 20gb hard drive. The iBook had a DVD/CD-burner combo. It connected to the internet via internal modem or an ethernet cable. (I eventually bought an add-on wireless card and expanded the memory to 640mb.) I purchased very little software for the iBook; most of what I needed came with it.

On 27 November 2006, I purchased this 17″ widescreen MacBook Pro. It’s a 2.33ghz Intel core 2 duo with 3gb RAM and a 160gb hard drive. The machine comes with a fast wireless connection, built-in video camera, and who knows what else. I’ll purchase very little software for the MacBook Pro; most what I need comes with it.

A lot of people have been asking how much I’m making from my web sites. A vague answer is: enough to order a new pimped-out MacBook Pro.

My goal all along has been to earn enough to order a new computer. Not exactly reaching for the stars, I know, but a fella’s gotta start somewhere. My initial goal was to be able to do this by October 2007. But when Apple announced upgrades to their laptops on October 24th of this year, I realized that I could afford to buy one now. I placed an order that afternoon. (But not without some deliberation: should I go with the 7200rpm/100gb drive, the 5400rpm/160gb drive, or the 4200rpm/200gb drive? The choices we geeks face…)

I was eager to get my new machine. Because I was taking the second week of November off to write, I figured that would be a great time to break in my new computer. When I placed my order, I frowned at the estimated delivery date: November 7th, the Thursday of my week off. “Ah well,” I thought, “there’s plenty of time to get writing done early in the week, and then time to play with the new computer at the end of the week.”

During my vacation, I checked the order status several times every day, hoping that the computer would shipped early. It never did. In fact, it hadn’t shipped by November 7th, the day it was supposed to reach me, and then suddenly the ship date changed to November 12th! This made me sad, but it gave me an opportunity to alter my order. In the two weeks since placing it, I’d realized that I actually wanted a large hard drive, not a fast one, so I called Apple and made a small adjustment. No problem, right? Wrong.

By changing this one aspect of my order, the ship date was pushed out further still! The new ship date was November 22nd, the day before Thanksgiving.

Again I waited, hoping the machine might ship early. It didn’t. But it did ship from Shanghai on Wednesday morning. “Hot damn,” I thought. “It might reach me by Friday.” I watched the tracking reports as the computer flew to Anchorage, Alaska, then boarded a plane for Indianapolis. “It’s really going to do it,” I thought. “It’s really going to reach me by Friday.” When I went to sleep on Thanksgiving night, the computer was still in Indianapolis, but I had great confidence it would reach me the next day.

On Friday, I sat cold and alone in the Custom Box Service offices. (This is the deadest day of the year for us. Nobody calls. Nobody comes in to work. It’s just a ghost town.) The FedEx web site still promised delivery by noon. The FedEx telephone system said the same thing. But according to the tracking report, the computer was still in Indianapolis. “Maybe the tracking report is wrong,” I thought, but deep inside I knew the tracking reports are never wrong.

I waited in the office until one before I called FedEx again and paged through to an operator. “I’m sorry, sir,” she told me. “Your package has been delayed in Indianapolis.” I sighed and drove home.

For a time over the weekend, I actually forgot about the endless wait. (Forgot, that is, until Paul J. cruelly reminded me.)

I had a dentist appointment early this morning. FedEx usually comes to the shop late morning or early-afternoon. I expected to come back and still have to wait for the computer to arrive. But just as I was walking out the door, the FedEx truck pulled into the drive. Such torture! I signed for the package, opened it, looked at the shiny metal case, but then had to leave to get a filling. O cruel fate!

Eventually, of course, I was able to use my new computer. In fact, I’m typing this entry on it now. It’s quick and responsive. The screen is ginormous (1680×1050 &dmash; just imagine what this is going to be like when coupled with my 24″ cinema display). I love the new features in OS X.4 (I had never bothered to upgrade my other Macs).

I wish I had more time to play with the new computer right now, but I don’t. I have a lot of writing to do. But make no doubt: play with this beast, I shall!

I’m just happy that it’s finally here.

I ordered my MacBook Pro on the afternoon of October 24th. It finally reached me on the morning of November 27th. That’s a l-o-n-g wait.

I have died and gone to geek heaven.

I recently downloaded Firefox 2 for the Mac. I like the improved tab management. I hate the fact that the scroll bar is still broken.

But what simply has me in ecstasy is this: my Mac just crashed hard while connecting to my lovely 23″ Apple Cinema Display. (This is an issue that I need to look into.) “Crap,” I thought. “I’ve just lost all my work. All my open weblog entries. All my open browser pages.”

I had five open Firefox windows, each with at least a dozen open pages. That’s a lot of stuff to lose track of.

But when I restarted the computer and relaunched my browser, Firefox asked me if I wanted to restore my previous session! Holy cats! I’ve been wanting something like this for ages! And sure enough: the browser has re-opened every single page I’d been using before the crash.

This is like a geek dream come true.

Now if only there were a similar feature for BBEdit, my text editor. I weep to think how much writing just evaporated into the electric ether. (I had a nice entry going about the birds/squirrels in the yard that is now lost.)

Warning: religious discussion ahead.

I’ve become a full-fledged member of the Cult of Mac. These machines are great for a number of reasons:

• They come with everything you need built-in, both via hardware and software.
• They really are easy to use.
• They just work. You don’t have to futz with things. They just work.

I don’t begrudge people their Windows-based PCs. Many people have to use them. Others believe they’re the only real option. Some genuinely prefer them to Macs. That’s great. I’m not any of those people. I’m one of those geeks who could live in Windows or Linux, but who has decided he has better things to do. I’d rather live on a Mac, not have as many options (though really, I’ve never noticed a limitation), and be able to constantly productive.

That’s not to say that Macs are perfect. They’re not. They crash, though not often. (Mostly they just freeze up when they crash.) Certain individual programs have a tendency to crash, especially web browsers. Safari (the default browser) can be damn sluggish. I have problems with Mail several times a year. iTunes is a bloated resource-hog. iPhoto isn’t particularly useful.

Or is it?

Here’s the thing: I’m constantly amazed at how different Mac users know how to do different things. I think that iPhoto is a piece of crap, but Jenn thinks it’s fantastic. She thinks it’s versatile, easy-to-use, and totally worthwhile. And you know what? She amazes me with the things she does in iPhoto and iMovie. She does things that I didn’t know were possible.

I like getting together with Paul Carlile because he, too, shows me ways to use my Mac that I never would have imagined. He seems to know iTunes inside and out. It’s amazing to watch him work with it.

Paul has also taught me a lot about chat. I’m old. To me, e-mail is cutting-edge technology. In reality, it’s trailing edge stuff. Kids today are on to bigger and better things. One of the things they were into a few years ago (and still use today, though it’s certainly not cutting edge) is instant messaging — internet chat. I don’t do instant messaging. I find it overwhelming. I used to do IRC, and I do in-game chat all the time, but for some reason I find one-on-one instant messaging intimidating.

But Paul prompts me to try new things. He often e-mails asking if I’m available to chat. And so I chat. But he goes beyond that. For example, because I knew he and I had been e-mailing back-and-forth this morning, I set my iChat status to “available”, which is something I’ve never done before. Paul pinged me and then requested an audio chat. An audio chat! And so we chatted over our computers, just as if we were on speaker phones. Very cool. He sent me an mp3 via chat. I sent him a photograph. I realized that when my new computer comes in a week or so, I’ll have video-chat capabilities. (Remember when I did product-testing on the videophone?)

Yesterday I experienced my first unbridled splurge in many months. I went out and bought a video iPod to send with Kris on her Colorado trip. I brought it home and spent the afternoon loading it with music, games, and television shows. Last night I took it to bed, and while Kris fell asleep, I watched an episode of Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

I feel so cutting edge.

Ah, YouTube, how I love you. Lonelygirl15. Storm Large. Stephen Colbert. That dude who does all the movie re-enactments. (Woohoo! He did The Big Lebowski — NSFW.) And, what do you know, a whole collection of intros from my favorite science fiction shows. It’s like a sort of geek-gasm.

For Dave and my brother Jeff (with whom I used to watch this show), “a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist”.

Man, I love that theme music. I also like the theme music to Buck Rogers:

Whatever happened to Gil Gerard anyhow?

Yes, my brothers and I loved science fiction shows. We didn’t have a TV when we were young, so we had to catch peeks of The Six-Million Dollar Man when we were visiting friends on Sunday night.

We didn’t get to watch The Bionic Woman when it originally aired, either, but eventually KPTV in Portland would re-run it in the late mornings during a period when we did have a television. Staying home sick became a treat!

Jamie Sommers wasn’t the only superwoman we liked. There was also Wonder Woman.

The Wonder Woman intro changed later in the show’s run:

Does anyone else remember this Indiana Jones knockoff? I think it aired on Friday nights.

Saturday morning cartoons were always a treat for us, but I was especially drawn to the live-action shows, shows like Space Academy:

and Ark II:

Who can forget the mighty Isis? (Isis, Isis, Isis)

Which, as I recall, aired in tandem with SHAZAM! (in something like “the power hour”).

I think The Greatest American Hero borrowed its flying effects from SHAZAM!. I watched every episode of this, but it never lived up to my hopes.

We worshipped Battlestar Galactica:

It helped that Mormon themes were prominent in the show’s mythology. We could relate. Now I love the new incarnation of Battlestar. I think that the first season’s opening sequence is the best-ever for a sci-fi show. (I really wish they hadn’t done away with the 20 seconds of preview clips for the season two intro.)

Another childhood favorite has been remade recently. I started watching Doctor Who during the Tom Baker years.

I love the new series. It gave me chills the first time I heard the theme redone.

There have been some other good recent sci-fi shows. What would the mid-nineties have been without The X-Files?

Farscape was fascinating, but I could never really get into it.

Firefly was vastly overrated. I know you all love it. I don’t. (And Serenity wasn’t very good, either.)

Babylon 5 is simultaneously over-rated (by fans) and under-rated (by everyone else). It’s not nearly as good as the zealots proclaim, but it’s worth watching. Especially the second season. Each season had its own title sequence. I’m not going to post them all, but here’s the title sequence for season one:

And the title sequence for season two:

(You can get a feel for some the awful writing with “the name of the place is Babylon 5” at the end of the voiceover.)

Here’s a show that my wife and I loved, but which didn’t last:

In high school, I loved Max Headroom, but now it seems oh-so-very-mid-eighties.

There are a lot of sci-fi shows I haven’t seen, such as:

I used to watch these two when KECH 22 debuted in Portland:

Here’s a show that’s not nearly as good as I remember it being:

And, of course, here’s the classic, the one that started it all for me. My childhood was devoted to Star Trek, the original series. KPTV showed reruns every Sunday at 4pm throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It would also frequently run the show on weekeday evenings before prime-time. I loved it.

During the early nineties I became obsessed with the first spinoff. I posted to USENET about the show. I kept detailed logs of every episode. I even audiotaped it. (I can’t believe this is the best quality version available on YouTube.)

Deep Space Nine was okay, though it lacked some of the spark of the first two series.

However, Voyager sucked. It had a great intro and gorgeous theme music, but the rest of the show was lousy.

It wasn’t as lousy as Enterprise, though, which had the worst theme song ever for a sci-fi series.

My parents once took me to a movie theater in Portland specifically because the Star Trek blooper reels were playing. They’re not as funny as I remember.

What is funny (and Star Trek-related) is the recent William Shatner celebrity roast. You can find all of the segments on YouTube, but the best is Shatner’s response (which is very NSFW).

And finally, though it wasn’t a television show, here’s a clip from one of my favorite early-eighties sci-fi films. I own this soundtrack on record, tape, and CD. I spent $50 to order the DVD (which is out of print) from eBay. Yes, I know I’m crazy.

Stupid, but I love it.