So, the new job will allow me to use a Macintosh as long as I can get my job done. This doesn’t mean they provide one; as I had covered in an earlier post, they provided me with an IBM T43 giganto-laptop/room heater.

I happen to have an extra Powerbook, which works out perfectly. Rather than let it gather dust at home I’ll use it at work.

So, just as I’m getting a handle on what I can use the Powerbook for and I’m getting ready to take it into work, a minor crisis happens to one of our friends.

Our friend (whom I will call Judy) has an iBook; she has the opportunity to go to L.A. and help her singing career; she has a whole bunch of data (songs, etc.) on her ‘Book, and she had to have it with her.

However, her iBook developed a classic problem: the video display logic board went out, and as a result she could no longer see anything on the screen, even when plugged into an external monitor.

I offered to help her out, hoping that I could fit her data on an older (but still precious!) iBook I had kept around. This is one of only two machines I have still capable of booking into OS 9 natively so we could play the Mac version of Total Annihilation. (I told you it was precious!)

This was not to be. The old iBook only has a 20Gb drive, and Judy’s iBook had nearly 25Gb of data, not including the OS. No way it was going to fit.

So, I was left with a choice: Tell her “I can’t help you”, and her chance at grabbing a brass ring potentially blown due to, as she put it, “a broken pencil or the equivalent thereof”... or I could loan her the Powerbook for her trip to L.A. and I could either do without a Mac or try to use the iBook myself in the Powerbook’s absense.

Well, we Mac cultists have to stick together, so I took a chance and loaned her the Powerbook.

You have to understand what a big thing this is for me – I almost never loan anything to anyone. This probably goes back to middle school where I made the mistake of loaning a genuine Rubik’s Cube to some random idiot (whom I thought was a friend) who eventually returned my Cube… with all of the stickers pulled off and re-applied because he was not able to figure out how to solve the puzzle. Apparently he’d done the pull-and-reapply trick a number of times as the stickers very much liked to fall off.

I think I threw that Cube away not too long after that.

This don’t-share-your-stuff mentality was recently enhanced by the condition that my iBook was in when returned by my daughter – scratched, with makeup marks on the power brick and a broken leg on the wire wrap for said power brick. This is what I get for letting her have it in her possession while her dumbass boyfriend was around… this being the same boyfriend who broke another laptop’s PCMCIA slot (but denied it) and managed to ding my guitar but just kind of neglected to mention it until I confronted him about it. (Sidenote: I can’t believe I ever let that moron in my house – the moron, in this case, being the boyfriend.)

Anyway, long story short (too late!); I loaned Judy the Powerbook, and I kept the iBook for my own use. I actually have set up the IBM T43 at work as a server (yes, you read that right) and I just leave it at work and let it run; a couple of other people have access to this machine and it would do them no good if I took it home every night.

Also, as it is still running Windows (the servers are under VMWare, running on a Windows host), I have wisely learned to fear Windows Schlorosis… the creeping tendency for a Windows box to become more and more unstable until it becomes so unreliable that you have to reload it. For what I do, that amounts to about 3 months between reloads. Not acceptable.

Instead, I leave the Windows portion of the machine in stasis while the VMWare portion does all of the heavy lifting.

This means I need a desktop machine… so I put Ye Olde iBook to to work while I waited for Judy to return the Powerbook.

In short: It has held up quite well. It only has 640Mb of RAM, but even so it doesn’t swap too much.

Apps I run:

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• NoteBook (TK based personal Wiki)
• X-Chat (IRC client)
• Yahoo! IM client)
• Terminal (command line client)
• sidenote (a note app)
• Codetek Virtual Desktop
• QuickSilver

These run 24×7 on this machine, and I don’t have too much swapping unless I open a bazillion Firefox windows.

What’s amazing to me is a G3 processor based machine from late 2002 is still quite usable; it may not be super speedy, but it is certainly powerful enough to do what I need in my day-to-day work.

The only place where it falls down is Java-based apps. While the JVM works just find, the apps are more than a little bit S L O W. I will be glad when the Powerbook returns.

Now I’m off to play some Total Annihilation. Cliff, feel free to make snarky remarks in the comment section of this post.

Update: The Powerbook came back today, and Judy took perfect care of it. Not a scratch or ding. But, as Pam went over to get it and Judy powered it up, the LCD backlight stopped working. Judy was, of course, mortified. However, it seems this is a common problem with the 12” Powerbooks, and it saved me from having it happen while I was depending on it for work – plus, it’s covered under AppleCare anyway. Judy had a great time in L.A., and the laptop was a lifesaver for her. Her original iBook is back from the repair center and I’ve already cloned her data onto the iBook.

It’s nice to do something nice for someone who appreciates it. You’re welcome, “Judy”!