A New Beginning ... (or back to where it all started)

I got my first computer at the end of my first year in college. It was a Mac SE that looked like this:


When I started grad school (the first time), I switched to a PC laptop (a 386, if I remember correctly). The old Mac got left at my mom's house where it was used by my sister and eventually made its way to the basement. I liked my Mac, but I was going to Italy and I needed something portable. Laptops were pretty new then - strange thought. It was a funny little thing with its black (more of a grayish green, really) tiny little screen and its fat keyboard/base.

I used the laptop a little my second time around in graduate school, but by then it was already getting a little old and clunky. It got stolen when someone broke into Sara and my first apartment (actually second...but that is a long story). By then, you had to pop the battery out and put it back in everytime you wanted to start it up, whether it was plugged in or not. The joke was on the stupid people that broke in.

I bought a new laptop - a Quantex (PC) a few months later right before Sara (and Zeus) and I went to Italy for the first part of our dissertation fieldwork. That computer lasted quite a while, but it was getting a little clunky and I needed something more reliable when I started to work on my dissertation. I purchased a HP Desktop. The Quantex passed on to Sara who wanted to play with it...something to do with Linux. She didn't really play that much and then it was given a better home by Volume 22's Scott.

The HP had some bugs from the beginning, but who of us is without fault. The computer served me well; somehow I managed to crank out a dissertation on it. It also moved around quite a bit: Providence, Walla Walla, Boston, and now New York. During these journeys, as it exhibited its flaws and its age, I began to think of moving on but I could never justify it. A while back it began to crash more than usual. Then the CD-ROM died, and then the DVD-CD writer. The strange noises got louder and more disconcerting. I knew the time to move on had come. Being the winter break, I had some time to research computers and debate my next move.

And I decided to go back to where it all began...many generations later.

So here it is, my new baby:



May its keys bring me much productivity and success. And may its innards stay healthy and cause few problems for many years.

And this is the first post from it - hopefully there will be many more.