Five questions from Zoe Trope

[avram]

Y’all know how this works by now, right? zoe_trope asked me five questions:

1. What was your first computer like?

It was a Macintosh SE, one of the early, beige toaster models. Nine-inch black-and-white (no gray) screen, one meg of RAM (which was a lot back then), two floppy drives, no hard drive, no modem. I had a separate floppy for each major app I used, and each one had the operating system and something called “Minifinder”, a low-overhead substitute for the Mac desktop and file browser, and I had each disk set up to boot directly into the app, and shut down on quit. I had to reboot to change applications, and (here comes the punchline) it was still faster than launching Photoshop is now!

Eventually I got enough money from a consulting job to pay the $500 for four megs worth of RAM (which was a lot back then), and I opened the case up to install them myself. This was an old-style, all-in-one Mac, designed to electrocute the unwary, and the upgrade involved cutting a resistor off the motherboard (I used toenail clippers). Those were the days! None of this namby-pamby setting a dip switch, or the automatic detection of new memory that I benefitted from when, years later, I upgraded my Mac IIvx to 64 megs of RAM (which was a lot back then). At some point I also bought a used 35-meg hard drive off a friend for (I think) $400.

2. What does “Avram” mean?

“Exalted father”. You’ve heard of Abraham, the biblical patriarch, right? Well, in Hebrew, he’s Avraham, means “father of many”. If you go back to your Book of Genesis, you’ll see that he was originally named Abram (Avram), and then changed his name after entering into the covenant with God.

My father’s father, who died long before I was born, was Avraham, and my parents wanted to name me after him, but decided that the name was old-fashioned sounding, and wanted something shorter. My dad reads science fiction, and said “There’s this writer named ‘Avram Davidson’...”, and that’s how I got my name.

A few years ago I read Davidson’s The Phoenix and the Mirror, one of the Vergil Magus books, and realized that it’s probably what Gary Gygax had in mind when he wrote the magic item creation rules for D&D.

3. What's your favorite LJ to read?

Why, yours of course!

Seriously, I don’t know if I could pick just one favorite, especially since I read them for various differing reasons.

4. Describe your morning routine.

It’s all too often an early afternoon routine these days. At some point I drag my ass out of bed, head down to the bathroom, do my level best to rid myself of as much mass as possible, then brush my teeth. Sometimes I go back upstairs and spend time net surfing (especially if I have to wait for one of my housemates to get out of the bathroom). After I think I’m as light as I’m gonna get, I weigh myself. This is often followed by groans and a bout of bitter self-recrimination, or sometimes (as today and yesterday) a yelp of surprised joy.

Then I net surf some more, as I my lazy impulse wrestles with my virtuous impulse over whether I’m going to exercise. If virtue wins, then I get into workout gear and either lift weights indoors or do Heavyhands outdoors (drinking two cups of water either before or during). This generally takes 30-45 minutes. Then I shower. If laziness wins, then I just skip straight to the shower. Sometimes I first scrape off the accumulated stubble — face every two or three days, head every five or so days.

Then breakfast — generally cottage cheese and yogurt mixed with honey and a banana. Also two more cups of water and a multi-vitamin.

5. Do you work well under pressure?

Brilliantly.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

So, you're named after Avram Davidson? That's cool, he's a really good writer.

I'm named after my paternal grandfather, also. He was Luke Francis, I'm Luke Thomas.

[zoe-trope.livejournal.com]

hee. your first computer sounds way oldskool, yo. love it. and great answers -- thanks for sharing. the "avram" thing was very educational.

(i think i've learned more on livejournal that i have in high school. hah!)

[intelligentrix.livejournal.com]

I had the Mac 512e (I called it the mac-in-a-box). Same set-up as the SE except smaller and only 512k of Ram. (Which was a lot back then.)

Questions from zoe_trope

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

Hi avram!

IIRC, when my computer got ruined and I had a writing deadline, you gave me that old SE, which you had been keeping to cannibilize for parts. I had it until this last move, and it performed pretty well for years. I cobbled all sorts of stuff to it, and even had it running a web browser (okay a bit slow, but still faster than my fancy new laptop boots sometimes). After this move, I gave it to my sister, who used it until her fiance gave her a new one a year ago. Don't know what she did with it, but it sure had a long, useful life.

Re: Questions from zoe_trope

[avram]

Actually I loaned it to you, but after a few years I realized that I probably wasn't getting it back anytime soon, and that I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did.

Re: Questions from zoe_trope

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is true. But I did ask, at some point, if you wanted it back, and you told me not to bother.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Gracious, if having your first useful computer be a Mac SE makes you "oldschool," that must mean Teresa and I are...uh oh.

(I say "first useful computer" because in fact we had a Commodore Vic-20 years before, but we never managed to do anything with it except make the little stick-figure man dance.)

[avram]

Preschool?

One of my buds in highschool had (I think) a Vic-20 with a tape drive[1]. We'd go over to his place to play a computer game, and it would take like half an hour to load the game from the tape into memory. We'd play another game (generally Ace of Aces, the book version) while waiting for the computer game to load.

Years before the Mac I first learned programming with the BASIC Programming cartridge on my Atari game system.

1. For the youngster out there, this means the programs were stored not on hard drive or floppy disk, but on a tape cassette[2]!

2. Oh, yeah, tape cassette. This was something we used to record and listen to music back in the 70s and 80s.