Evendays

Hi: Internet’s down. I don’t know how long. Perhaps till August. So posts will be infrequent, like this one.

Same for Stephruns.

Oh well. Know that you are loved, even if we are not connected.

Brady
 

10. www.viamichelin.fr: For those of us without GPS. It lets you blame someone else when the directions are wrong.
9. Abebooks.com: The best place in the world to find used books.
8. Kayak.com: Incredible site for chasing down cheap airfares.
7. Up to date news about the dollar and the SF Giants, both of whom will stay in the cellar all winter long, and possibly into the summer.
6. Skype.
5. Instant prayers and sympathy from internet friends.
4. Family blogs. A great way of keeping up with Son 2
(missionmarseille.blogspot.com/), Sister 1’s family (randywray.com), and Buster (littlebustersmith.blogspot.com).
3. Email pictures of nieces and nephews.
2. I can cc Wife when I invite someone over for a meal. No more surprises.
1. Unexpected, encouraging emails and inspiring blog posts that often make my day.

In honor of the iPhone’s recent release and to wrap up my Mac History posts:
(All stock prices are split adjusted.)

In March of 1990, Apple stock was at 8.56. My Mac SE sans printer cost us $2900.00. Could’ve bought 338 shares. Running total: 338 shares.

In March of 1995, Apple was at $10.00. My Powerbook 520 cost us $1000.00. Could’ve bought 100 shares. Running total: 438 shares.

In July of 1999, Apple was at 11.84. My Blue and White PowerPC G3 cost $1440.00. Could’ve bought 122 shares. Running total: 560 shares.

In December of 2004, Apple was at $32.63. My iMac G5 cost $1994.00. Could’ve bought 61 shares. Running total: 621 shares.

In July of 2006, Apple was at $57.27. The family MacBook was $1050.00. Could’ve bought 18 shares. Running total: 639 shares.

Apple’s closing price on Friday, June 29, 2007? $122.04.

Had I stuck to pencil and paper, an exhaustive concordance and Randy’s old sermon notes, and had we bought and held, we’d have $77,983.56 in AAPL stock.

BTW, I bought the program Microsoft Word for $292.00 in March, 1990. MSFT was at $0.69. Could’ve bought 423 shares. I’d have $12,471.36 in the account if I’d held.

Now I know MS Word is not worth THAT much.

One day I spied Father-In-Law (FIL) checking out my monitor, all 17 inches of it. “You can sure read the text easily on that thing”, said he. “Not only that, but you can get more that one page of a document on there,” I replied, sensing an opportunity. “I have a lot of trouble reading the little print on new G3 Powerbook,” said he.

“Hummm,” said I. “Want to switch?”

A month later he bit and I had an absolutely great portable machine $1000.00 over my budget and FIL was able to read his documents.

The Powerbook is now 9 years old, can run OS 10.4 (slowly) and the latest version of Microsoft Office. I’ve been able to do most of the repairs myself, though one time I took it to replace the power source and the Wizard changed the screen too. Go figure. But, the whole family will miss PB when he’s gone.

BTW, a few months after the exchange, FIL made a trip to the USA and bought himself… the same portable with a faster processor. “But you can’t read the screen!” said I.

“Nah… It’s just that you were drooling over the other one,” said he.

In March of 1999 I was in the computer market again. That’s always a problem when you’ve got friends that own Mac stores, but it was 4 years after my last purchase and a new battery for my PB 520 was going to cost more than the machine was worth and… Well, you know how it is when you’ve already convinced yourself…

I had the funds for a Mac G3 Blue & White, code named Yosemite. It was a desktop… Ran at 300 MHz, had 64 Mb of RAM and plugged right into my 17 inch screen. It had NO floppy, NO SCSI, and cost about $1900.00. It was bold.

I bought it while Wife’s Dad (FIL) was in the USA. And not that it mattered, but I finally had a faster machine than he did! But, of course, FIL was up to the challenge, and came home to Switzerland with a very slick black PowerBook G3 (the Lombard with a “bronze” keyboard). It had a 14” screen in beautiful color, no ADB port, no floppy… But I was speechless. It was my dream machine. Out of our budget, but my dream machine.

After 5 years with my Mac SE, a good friend (and supporter) from Austin started looking for a new portable for me. At a Sunday evening church service, he ran across someone who could get an Mac PowerBook 520 for only $1000.00 in March of ‘95. It was a great mobile machine and had a connection for a 17” monitor for use on my desk. It had a track pad and a 160 Mb hard drive, and it ran at 25 MHz, waaaaay faster than my old SE.

I took th PB 520 everywhere, especially when I was teaching English is businesses. I’ll never forget the manager of a French bank walking in on me before class and saying, “That is certainly not a PC.” “How did you know?” “It’s got style,” he replied. I just smiled. Not only were my sermons getting better, but I could work on them anywhere, able to digitalize a thought faster than you could say QUERTZ. And my MacBible program still worked on it.

The PB 520 sold me on mobile computing and I promised myself I’d never go back to desktop computers.

Well, never say never…

Continued from February 20… (see way below…)

Wife’s Dad (F-I-L) finally told me that if I got a Mac, I could make a printer network and use his LaserWriter. So I bought my first Mac, an SE FDHD, in March of 1990 (8 MHz). It had a 9 inch monochrome screen and cost about $2,900.00. It came with a 1.44 Mb floppy drive, 4 Mb of RAM, a 40 Mb hard drive, used System 4 and Finder 5.x (and updating to newer systems was FREE!). Man, few sermons had ever looked so good. I also got an ImageWriter ($450.00) for those times I couldn’t use the LaserWriter.

I’ve still got the SE (Son 2 would not let me throw it out and now it’s part of his inheritance). I used FileMaker to make databases and to keep track of expenses. An early version of Microsoft Word set me back $225.00. I loved the French spell-check. When the kids were old enough to manage a mouse, they enjoyed playing freeware games. I bought a golf game and Hunt for the Red October (never figured it out). Wife hand-made a cover for the SE. The screen saver displayed Romans 8.1. It was a great machine.

More this weekend…

Wife’s dad (F-I-L) loved technology. In 1984, Mother-in-law already had one of those daisy wheel typewriters that could remember a one-page letter. It would even pause so you could type in a name for a personalized letter. We used that machine to write our first mission newsletters. Amazing. Plus, F-I-L had two IBM Selectrics, one with a Cyrillic “golf ball”.

In 1987 I bought a used IBM XT and a dot matrix printer for about $2000.00. My sermons got better right away. The printer was terrible and would print an “@” for an accented “à” and “&” for the “é”. But I used them (and sold them 3 years later for $500.00).

Wife’s dad bought a MacPlus (circa 1986) and a LaserWriter printer. He wouldn’t let me touch his tools (toys) at first, but when I showed him how MacPaint worked and actually printed something out for him, we both stood amazed at our creation: A checkered, striped, gray-scaled EPI (his first name) with a happy-face background. And we did it all with three key strokes and a thing called a mouse.

He could write his radio scripts in Ukrainian with a QWERTZ keyboard (I think that’s how you spell it…) and run off printable Ukrainian text in PageMaker, type-set and ready for eager readers. Now that really was amazing.

To be continued…