So, it's finally happened - after a mere, what, six years since they were first invented, I finally own a new-style Macintosh computer, one with USB and Firewire ports instead of SCSI ones, one that can finally run Operating System 10 (OSX). Specifically, I am the new proud owner of a G4 desktop, seen above, with a 500 mHz processor, 1 gig of RAM, and a 30 gig hard drive, insert manly satisfied grunt here. And as long-time readers know, I have a habit of sorta personifying all the computers I've owned over the years, even to the point of naming them, each named after a different writer I admire ("Douglas" for my 1997 Powerbook 1400c laptop; "Sylvia" for my old PowerPC, a gift from a neighbor; "Haruki" for my Centris, which I've been using the last three years; and "Murakami" for its external 2-gig hard drive). So I gave it some thought, and - ladies and gentlemen, meet Poppy. Yes, named after Poppy Z. Brite, creepy-ass erotic writer extraordinare, and feel free to tell her if you know her 'cause I imagine she'd get a kick out of knowing. (Oh, and tell her we have a mutual friend as well - Monica Kendrick, who at least used to write a music column for the Chicago Reader, and maybe still does as far as I know.)

So how did Poppy come into my possession? Why, it was a donation from one of my readers, of course! God bless my online readers, man - without them I'd have no tech equipment at all. I'm not going to use the person's name, for reasons that will become obvious in a bit, so for my journal I'll be referring to him as TGS (The Good Samaritan), who's just very typical of the average reader profile here at this site - around my age, a tech expert in some corporate environment, living in a suburb, married, a car-owner and home-owner. And this was his old home computer, until recently buying a new one, and he figured that it'd probably get a lot more use by giving it to me than by letting it collect dust in his basement, so that's what he did. Hooray, man. And even better, he lives in St. Louis, and not only was I there last week but so was my friend Tom, so he was actually able to drive it straight back to Chicago in the trunk of his car, and deliver it to my front door and everything. So that worked out...just...perfectly.

So yeah, let's just start with all the new opportunities in my life just from the hardware alone, that I didn't have before: the chance to make my computer my home stereo as well (along with external speakers I already owned); the chance to watch DVDs; the chance to record spoken audio with an external noise-dampening mic (which I already owned); a 16" display with twice the available dots as my last monitor, hence twice the things I can see onscreen; the chance to sync my Treo straight to the computer where I do the majority of my work; the chance to hook up an iPod or videocamera, if I ever own one in the future; and the chance to plug in my external SD card, the same one I take to internet cafes for downloads and uploads, the same one that fits not only in my Treo but my British digital camera (Epsilon) as well.

Okay, but get this: TGS not only wiped down the hard drive before giving it to me, and installed version 10.4 of the operating system (otherwise known as "Tiger" - meow!), and installed the latest versions of most of Apple's iLife software (including iTunes 5.0.1, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, iCal, iAddress, iSync and others), but also installed what has to be at least $10,000 worth of high-end creative software as well. So now all of a sudden not only do I own the latest OSX versions of all the software I've used over the years (namely MS Office, Photoshop and ImageReady, Quark XPress, Palm Desktop, Acrobat Pro, Illustrator, Filemaker and Suitcase), but a ton of high-end software I've never gotten a chance to even try on my slow-poke old Centris with System 9, like Flash (with Actionscript editor), Dreamweaver, GoLive, Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Dashboard, InDesign (Adobe's answer to Quark, which some designers swear is better than anything Quark will ever do), Quark Passport (for managing all your projects and associated files), Adobe Bridge (the same as Passport, but for projects sharing such Adobe apps as Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, InDesign and GoLive), plus some shit I haven't even figured out what is for yet, all right all RIGHT!

So much new software...giving me headache... Dude, dude. One of my most favorite activities in the whole world is learning new software, especially powerful cool software, and suddenly I have like twenty apps all to learn at the same exact time, and it's like letting an alcoholic loose in a liquor store. Plus of course these mammoth 400-page user guides are installed electronically now on OSX hard drives when an app is installed, which means I have full, complete and searchable documentation included for all twenty apps as well, which is like handing a 14-year-old boy a stack of Playboys! Dude, I'm not coming out of my apartment for another six months!

So Poppy's been booted up here in Chicago a little over 48 hours now, and it's interesting I think what I've already discovered about OSX in just that short a time period. Like, I've pretty much figured out how to set up Poppy so that it acts and displays in the same way as my old Mac, even with all the bells and whistles of OSX still there. Like, above is first a photo of my System 9 desktop, followed by a shot of my System 10 desktop, to give you an example. I've partly switched over to the new system, in that I'm storing most of my files in the preset areas of my hard drive where Apple wants me to keep them, so that other programs will automatically detect them, and I'm a click away from them in the new OSX window drawer, etc. But then partly I still like having some floating folders on my desktop for quick drag-and-drops from expansion cards and CDs: a direct Treo photo folder, an Epsilon one, an electronic Inbox for my Getting Things Done system, an "Export" folder, etc.

Still, though, I'm working the system (the new one, that is, that admittedly takes some getting used to, but immediately becomes better and more powerful than anything in System 9 once you do), and have tweaked the user interface so that it acts in the System-9-ey way that I like (where windows open permanently in List view unless I manually override it, and clicking on a folder will open a new window). And I'm picking up some keyboard shortcuts that are good to know: Apple-Option-D to hide and show the dock, Apple-Control-D to pull up the dictionary, Apple-Space for the cool new Spotlight real-time hard-drive search, Apple-Shift-3 for a screenshot of the whole monitor, Apple-Shift-4 for a screenshot of a specific area defined with your mouse, and more. And of course getting used to the four cool new hotkeys that come specifically with Tiger, which all Tiger users should know by heart: F9 to display all open windows as thumbnails, which you then click on to open full-size; F10 to do the same but just for windows within a specific application; F11 to immediately hide all windows and jump to the Finder; and F12 to toggle the Dashboard on and off.

I've discovered iSync now, and have configured it so that my Mac now knows I own a Treo and sync regularly; this cool little Apple app basically keeps your Treo and Palm Desktop syncing with each other, but then in addition also syncs your Treo's calendar to the in-house iCal, and your Contacts list to the in-house iAddress. (You can set it like I have, too, so that Treo changes always trump iLife changes, so that you don't accidentally screw up a listing while doing desktop work.) And then that way you can take advantage of the full incestual power of these programs: the Dashboard widgets that exist for them, the way they directly connect to your other iLife programs, the way you can set them to directly sync with your online .mac account if you want. But see, I like Palm Desktop's interface more than these iLife programs, so I'm glad that iSync allows me to continue syncing to that app as well, while the typical Microsoft way would be to give you an "either/or" situation.

So the first thing, I guess, is to as quickly as possible get all the old files from the last eleven years of my life assembled on the new Mac, and the old archives erased or stored; it makes sense to avoid confusion as much as possible, to start doing as much new work as possible from Poppy, to get as many old files transferred from Haruki as possible. That's what you're looking at above, is a shot of how the current interconnected matrix (what we here in the war room like to call The Beast) is looking along the back wall of my apartment; old Mac (Haruki) on the left, new Mac (Poppy) on the right, and little ol' Treo in the right foreground, singing along with the old 'uns to a rousing round of Dueling Macs. And now that I'm looking at the photo, I'm wondering - is there a cross-compatible platform for AppleTalk between OS9 and OSX? This is how all old Macs used to talk with each other, in fact, through their infrared ports and special software called AppleTalk; so I wonder if OSX ships with a special OSX version of AppleTalk, precisely for situations like I find myself in right now? 'Cause right now I'm having to save old files on Zip disks, take them to an internet cafe and transfer them to my SD card, then bring it all back home and plug my SD card into my new Mac (which doesn't have a USB Zip drive, grr). And that sucks, and is very timely and expensive and stupid. So after today's entry, I'll go check out the possibility of turning on AppleTalk.

So what's in store for me with Poppy? Well, as tempted as I am, I'm working hard at sticking with the original plan that I had for when autumn started - to finish up my newest travel book, Ach Du Heilige Scheisse!, which I've owed to maybe 100 people for a little while now, and get the finished versions online so that you can download them and/or print them out, load them to a mobile device, etc. But part of that will be fun new cool, because I'll be doing the onscreen version in OSX's Adobe InDesign for the first time. And I'm doing that because the newest version of Acrobat Pro actually lets you define areas of your PDF document as "clickable" - like showing a back arrow, for example, and going back one page in the document if a reader clicks on it. And InDesign was programmed and is owned by the same company that owns Acrobat, as well as Photoshop and Illustrator and a bunch of others, which means apparently that automated buttons are included in the menu for adding these interactive elements to your PDF document right in the page-design stage itself (versus Quark, where you can't do that). So before anything else, before anything anything else, the travel book will be finished, I promise.

But that won't take too long, and then it'll be time to tackle four new projects at the same time, four that all kinda need to be done at the same time: I'll be converting all my old online material into importable databases for my new Movable Type build; I'll be creating the new, more powerful design scheme for GAD Publishing Co., the basement press that exists only to publish my work; I'll finally be assembling and releasing the new 14-book plan to publish every poem and monologue I wrote between 1996 and 2001; and I'll also be supplementing the new poetry book with a growing series of audio files, featuring me performing the work in slam style.

Like I said, I'm teaching myself Soundtrack Pro right now, and thought I'd go one further than the authors who release MP3s of their spoken work, and actually release the raw audio files as I'm working on them. So here's the unedited spoken take of my story The Tao of Nicotine" (from my book The Tao of Now) for you to listen to if you want; and as I learn more about the software, and how to modulate harsh pitches and blend with sound effects and music, I'll release further versions so you can follow along.

Tomorrow: A history of the Chicago West Park System