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A few months ago I bought back the ebay'd iBook I bought from EB, but it was upgraded in the meanwhile. Assisting Ksenia with her Powerbook helped me get used to some of the paradigm shifts that chased me a way last time. (EB has a theory that the timing of the original purchase, right after Mo moved out, might have contributed to it, that it was just a time of too much change to begin with.)

And then recently I got a new job, and I have an ugly but powerful laptop that I sometimes bring home. It's bigger than I like laptops to be (though I'm starting to appreciate "widescreen" format screens...you can see longer lines of code and logfile dumps without linewrapping) and has that ugly shiny black plastic that partially led me to reject a Kenwood stereo system in 1996, but it's undoubtedly the most powerful PC in my day to day life.

So there's kind of an embarassment of riches, 'cause if I'm heading out to Ksenia's or similar I have to figure out which ones to bring. My trusty old small PC laptop, Sliver, has all my files, I know how to get web tasks done on it easily, but it runs hot and can't run on battery. The iBook I actively enjoy using...OSX has a certain minimalistic feel (and encourages me to not have a huge plethora of windows open), it runs cool, has great battery life...but it can't play DVDs, and there are some tasks (especially image manipulation) that I haven't learned how to do on it. Then there's always the work PC...powerful, big, good battery life...but it's not my PC and it doesn't have my personal files. It can burn DVDs, which came in useful recently.

And of course Ksenia has her Powerbook around a lot...probably the rough equivalent of my work PC in terms of power, but it's a Mac. Having all four machines in the same room is kind of weird.

Cheap(ish) laptops have kind of changed my computing life, especially when combined with wireless networks at home, work, and Ksenia's family's place. Oh, and doubley so this winter, when I'm turning down the thermostat and using space heaters...I usually want to huddle someplace warm rather than setting up at my cold desk.

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Geek Existentialism of the Moment

--image from Geek on Stun's Marios. 64.

Life is a lot like the Minus World.

It's all the same, it just keeps repeating itself, until you run out of time.

The Minus World is a "secret" level in Super Mario Brothers, an underwater, endlessly repeating loop. But you know...given how hard that level is to get to, and also how wildly improbably our own existences are, maybe we should be happy and grateful to get there/here.