Item One: Sorry about the lack of updates, which were chiefly due to

Item Two: I've been travelling and producing more or less nonstop since returning home from the MacHack conference, which was the last thing I posted about, which is a damned shame because

Item Three: I've been to Macworld Expo and have much to say thereabout, also regarding having seen The Producers on Broadway while there and

Item Four: Met Matthew Broderick, but more importantly (to me)

Item Five: Climbed another rung along the Ladder To Celebrity while listening to The Wallflowers at Apple's big party, but though I've been real busy and whatnot I was also thwarted by

Item Six: More work on my server, which hoarks some of the bandwidth on someone else's T1, and which got upgraded to Mac OS X via Tenon Systems' iTools Apache server app, before everything got screwed up and in desperation it would up getting back into operation by running Mac OS X Server instead, but not before

Item Seven: The DNS for the site got temporarily messed up -- as it always does while domain-name servers all across the country scrambled to write down cwob.com's new server address, leading the crushing influx of "Why no updates?" emails to laterally morph into "Why is your site suddenly a paeon to Borland's Pascal compiler?" ones.

Well done, Andy, we seem to be well and goodly caught-up.

So with...let me count...at least three Big Interesting Stories right there in the hopper waiting to be told, I will instead deliver a parable for our times, told through the sad experience of my Goldstar VCR.

Naturally, there's a very real social pecking order among the various bits of technology in my organization. Roughly speaking, the closer it is to my bed, the more it's envied by the others. In The Microprocessor Social Order, Lilith stands alone -- naturally. My PowerBook has its own little shelf immediately adjacent to the bed and on those nights when I repeatedly ignore my body's "You are running on reserve power. Recharge batteries soon or the system will shut down to preserve contents of memory" warnings, I sleep with Lilith right in the bed.

The other machines are envious, but realize that when the top-spot is unchallengable, second-place becomes first place. So there's a certain amount of pride in being the tower machine that sits on the desk on the opposite wall, the VCR and DVD player on the good stereo system in the bedroom...the PC system and other Macs that operate inside the office hear the fans whirring proudly and arrogantly in the room next door but still, they shrug and acknowledge that at least they're not one of the remote client machines in the den, a whole floor below.

The den also features the house's sole cable hookup. TiVo has often wondered what it would be like to at least see the inside of that golden room, to at least visit the apex of the pyramid. But TiVo is wise and TiVo is good. TiVo understands that if it got its wish, it would be managing and recording video from only a slim handful of broadcash channels, instead of the 100 cable outlets he browses and serves in the den. Like a racehorse kept in the stable, a GI JOE doll never taken out of its packaging and played with, or a lobster that's never trapped, shipped, boiled alive and then cracked open and drizzled with butter and eaten, TiVo would not live a life of happiness and personal fulfillment in The Good Room. TiVo knows that and is content, and it knows that I appreciate and value its presence there because at least once a week I kneel in front of it and sing "TiVo loved me this I know, 'Cause its 'Now Playing' list tells me so."

The Goldstar, connected to TiVo's output jacks, is my sole conduit between the downstairs den and my workspace. It is thus only marginally less important to my organization than TiVo. You'd think it'd be happy and, yea, proud of that distinction.

But no. It's fitful and filled with resentment. A month or two ago, it made a plea for attention by Acting Out, suddenly refusing to Rewind or Fast-Forward anything. I suppose it imagined that it'd lead me to see How Wrong I've Been. In the twenty minutes that it'd take for me to cue up my "Junkyard Wars" and "Battlebots" compilation tapes to the next blank spot via standing there with my thumb on its Forward-Scan button, I'd realize what a fool I'd been and the old spark would return.

When this ploy eventually failed, it went ballistic and took far more drastic and devious steps. It decided to wait until I'd inserted my compilation tape of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies, recorded "Living It Up" off of TiVo as requested...and then it gave me the silent treatment, refusing to power up, refusing to record or play, and worst of all, refusing to even power up and eject the tape.

I thought I'd heard some clicking after I'd begun the recording and walked away. Evidently, TiVo had gotten wind of the plan and was clucking its tongue. Some appliances just can't be taught and demands that it makes its own mistake instead of benefitting from the wisdom and experience of other devices.

The Goldstar obviously imagined that by holding such a valued tape hostage, I'd respond by clasping it to my chest and taking it for a ride in the car to the repair shop, where the tape would be liberated, its FF/REVERSE problem would be fixed, its heads would be cleaned and aligned, and newly-returned to the house with playback and record specs that trounce anything else, it'd be brought into that Holy Light of the Big A/V Setup in the Bedroom.

TiVo, however, knew better. At its core it's a Linux machine and as such is prone to open-heartedness, and so tried to warn the Goldstar of what would inevitably happen, though it knew that you just couldn't talk sense into an off-brand.

So when I noted that my Martin & Lewis tape was stuck inside a dead machine, I made a few half-hearted attempts to bring the Goldstar back to life (chiefly, unplug it, let it have a few minutes to collect its thoughts, then plug it back in again). And then I unplugged it, took it upstairs close to the top of the pyramid, set it down on the workbench...and then tore it apart with my cordless driver to get the tape back out.

TiVo just shook its head when I returned back downstairs with the Panasonic VCR. The two of them shared a good laugh over the folly of the Goldstar. For the Panasonic's part, it was absolutely thrilled with its new spot in the organization. In its former position as Secondary Video Deck it had come to understand (and, in its weaker moments, even envy) the TiVo VCR, and when I elevated it from Secondary Upstairs to Primary Downstairs status it saw the move only as an endorsement of the consistent and reliable service it had provided and of my faith in its ability to handle greater responsibility.

The Goldstar will have plenty of time to consider its behavior and to perhaps grow emotionally. Though its case, bezel, power supply, transport, and analog board are now in the trash, its motors have been carefully extracted and stored. Maybe if or when the day comes that it's allowed to serve the Organization as the drive motor in a new beverage-dispensing robot or as an actuator for a network-deployed Silly-String gun, it'll recognize that Job Satisfaction comes from applying one's self-awareness and personal goals with an appreciation of the potential that one's environment provides for challenge and growth...and not from some hollow value system based on how one feels they're being perceived by shallow-thinkers.

Catch up on the many heroic banalities that I posted earlier this month.

This page and its contents copyright © 2001 Andy Ihnatko.