September-November Update

Saturday, 14 November 1998

Sorry for slacking off. Here's a quick update on what's been going on in my life for the past two months:

New Software:

MacOS 8.1: In order to install the new hard drive, I had to get hold of a MacOS CD. The one that came with my machine was nowhere to be seen, so I went out and bought a copy of MacOS 8.1. Unfortunately, Frontier (the utility I use for maintaining this website, as well as for a host of other things) starting acting funny, and I figured the OS upgrade might have had something to do with it. That's why it's been so long since the last update.

New Hardware:

4.5 gigabyte hard drive: I was really scrimping for space on my old drive, so I bought a 4.5 gig external, swapped the drive for the internal that came with my computer, and used the former-internal-now-external to bring across a whole bunch of stuff that had been languishing on the internal drives of my old Mac IIvx for three years. I had planned to reformat the old drive and install one of the PPC versions of Linux on it, but it may not be big enough for anything but the new 75-meg "lite" version of PPC Linux I've just heard about.

64 megabytes of RAM: Two weeks ago, I was in J&R Computer World, and I checked out RAM prices. 16-meg DIMMs were going for about US$30, and 32-meg for about $60. Since I'd been frustrated at how my computer ran on only 32 megs of RAM, I figured I'd head over, buy two 32-meg DIMMs, and have a total of 80 megs to play with. Well, 32-meg DIMMs have shot up to US$100 in two weeks! The 16-meg chips had only gone up to US$40, so I bought four of them, and I'm now running with 64 megs. Frontier is behaving itself; I don't know if that's a function of the RAM or of something else I've done in the past two months.

New Comics:

I'm not about to go over two months' worth of new comics, but here are some highlights:

Cerebus: The current storyline is highly variable. Lord Julius came back a few issues ago (or maybe just a like-a-look) for some of the kind of humor that Dave Sim does very well. The latest issue makes it look like that might be something like a plot rearing its ugly head. The previous issue, though, was just, well, stupid.

Hicksville: This graphic novel by -- oh, damn, I can't remember the author's name, and I've lent my copy of the book to Kevin -- is one of the best things I've read in a long time. (Later: It's written and drawn by Dylan Horrocks.)

New Music:

Some good stuff I've bought recently:

• Prolonging the Magic by Cake
• Viva! La Woman by Cibo Matto
• The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld by Orb
• Severe Tire Damage by They Might Be Giants

New Restaurant:

Congee Village: (100 Allen Street, Manhattan) Either Vicki Rosenzweig or Lise Eisenberg sighted this one as we were heading towards Wo-Hop from one of the monthly RASSF meetings at d.b.a. Wonderful food, lovely decor, reasonable prices, lots of congee. Make sure to get the cashews and squid.

Old Job:

Remember back at the beginning of August, when I mentioned that I was back working at Crossover, but that it was probably only for a few weeks? Well, 19 weeks later, I'm still there. They keep saying that it's probably only till the end of the month, and then the end of the month comes and goes and they've still got stuff for me to do. I feel like Scheherezade. I've been working on the web materials to accompany Crossover's new game, Fantasy War, and on the new website for Crossover's financial services division, and some other stuff, mostly related to the financial side of the company.