Mac-Lovin' It
For my interview presentation in a few weeks, I should show some of the work I did while working for Cornell, which means 1988-1996. But planning to be able to show images and data in say, 20 years in the future, was not (and still isn't!) ever a thought I've had. Fortunately in this case, I'm a shameless pack-rat. Up in the attic was a box with about 50 ZIP disks (as well as a few hundred 3.5" floppies!) Down in the basement was my original ZIP drive. Of course, it's SCSI, and my last 3 Macs don't have SCSI anymore. But back up to the attic, where my venerable Beige G3 Mac (circa 1996) has been resting since I bought the G4 in 2002. Power cable, SCSI cable, ADB keyboard all connected up, hit the power button, and "Bonggggg!" that familiar Mac start-up chord, and soon enough a pretty gray apple appeared on the screen. Within a minute, my old friend was ready to go.
And it all worked Flawlessly. Shared my 2007 iMac drive, mounted it from the G3, and copied a few hundred MB of data and images from the old Zips. Including all of the images I used for my 1996 interview presentation, and some full PowerPoint presentations of conference talks I did in the last 90s (which Keynote happily opened), and lots of documentation I did, including some of the very first extensive web-based documentation I was doing in 1994.
Gotta say I'm happily impressed. "It Just Works" indeed!
And I'll add, none too humbly, I'm impressed looking back at my stuff from back then. I do good work. Err, well, did good work.
Of course, there was also the obligatory detours down memory lane that came from scanning through all this data from so long ago. While scanning through an old email archive from ~1998, I got a bit sad and droopy for a while, reminiscing for the old days. All those names of people long ago lost touch with. Like that line from one of my favorite movies ever: "Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant. " So true.
And it all worked Flawlessly. Shared my 2007 iMac drive, mounted it from the G3, and copied a few hundred MB of data and images from the old Zips. Including all of the images I used for my 1996 interview presentation, and some full PowerPoint presentations of conference talks I did in the last 90s (which Keynote happily opened), and lots of documentation I did, including some of the very first extensive web-based documentation I was doing in 1994.
Gotta say I'm happily impressed. "It Just Works" indeed!
And I'll add, none too humbly, I'm impressed looking back at my stuff from back then. I do good work. Err, well, did good work.
Of course, there was also the obligatory detours down memory lane that came from scanning through all this data from so long ago. While scanning through an old email archive from ~1998, I got a bit sad and droopy for a while, reminiscing for the old days. All those names of people long ago lost touch with. Like that line from one of my favorite movies ever: "Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant. " So true.