(This is a continuation of yesterday's journal entry; you might want to read it first, if you haven't already.)

So, what else has been going on with me, in the two weeks since I last updated this journal? I'm glad you asked...

--The most exciting thing, I guess, is that my new Mac Intel Mini finally arrived! This is the computer, to remind you, for which I held a reader fundraiser last month; and that went, er, okay, although admittedly the vast majority of the money needed for this new computer ($500 of $600) came from freelance work I did here in Chicago, not reader donations. (And yes, I know, it's been months now and I still haven't announced who my two new freelance clients are! And that's because neither of them are ready for me to announce them publicly yet, not until the overhaul of both their websites are finished later this spring. Anyway, patience, dear reader - all will be revealed this summer.) This is actually the first brand-new computer that I've bought straight from the factory in quite awhile, in fact; so I decided to be a complete fucking dork about it and actually photograph the entire process, from its unpacking to its first boot-up. Anyway, I put a Flickr photoset together of the whole nerdy thing; fellow losers can see it here.

Now, as regular readers remember, I actually already owned a Mac OSX computer right before this one; my aging but ever-reliable first-wave G4, graciously donated to me a couple of years ago by one of my readers. And apparently (or so my online Mini research told me), there's now a function built into OSX, that makes it easier than ever to transfer all the content of an older Mac to a newer one, specifically for situations like this where customers go out and purchase brand-new computers. It's called Firewire Disk Target Mode, for those who are curious; and so I tried it out myself when this new Mini arrived, and damned if the hype didn't turn out to be true! It was, in fact, just this amazingly simple procedure; so I thought I'd review it in full detail here below, for all you fellow Mac enthusiasts who might one day need the information:

1) Obtain a cord with two Firewire plugs, if you don't already own one.

2) On your older Mac, go into the "Startup Disk" section of your System Preferences. Click the button that says "Restart in Firewire Disk Target Mode." When that older Mac reboots, then, it will suddenly now think of itself as simply an external hard drive, not its own computer at all.

3) With the newer Mac still off, plug the Firewire cord into both computers; then, turn the newer Mac on. If it's the first time this newer computer has ever been turned on, it will automatically detect that an older Mac has been connected, and will ask you if you'd like to transfer its information before doing anything else.

And really, that's it; after clicking 'yes,' the entire process took my particular computers about two hours to finish, transferring a total of around 10 gigabytes of info, made up of tens of thousands of files. And much, much cooler, this process even resticks all those funky little files associated with each of your applications back into the proper folders of your new Mac, and even brings over your user information, administrative passwords, and prior network settings for your DSL. Wow! And even cooler than this, now that the transfer process is finished, my new Mini now recognizes my old G4 as a simple hard drive as well, meaning that I suddenly have an extra 30 gigs of memory at my disposal.

So that's all been really cool, needless to say, and I'm hoping that by this time next week, every single detail of the process will be complete. Oh, and did I mention that these Intel Minis now ship with that new Apple remote control, as well as a free copy of Front Row (Apple's answer to Windows Media Center)? They do! And the remote, I have to admit, is an extremely cool little accessory to now have; Front Row, however, has been less than spectacular. I mean, it's not that it's a bad program, not at all, just that it simply does a lot less than I thought it was going to; it is, in fact, nothing more than an alternative interface for four of Mac's in-house media applications (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie and the DVD Player), just like using the programs as always but now with funky new animations! And this is underwhelming enough when it comes to the video programs; but even worse, the new Front Row interface for iTunes is actually worse than the one built into the program itself, much clunkier and harder to navigate through, definitely with much worse onscreen graphics while the song is actually playing. So that was a little disappointing, given that Apple could've used this opportunity to build some legitimately cool new functions into the software involved.

Oh, and did I mention that you can install Windows on these new Intel Minis as well? You can! So that's exactly what I'm going to be doing later this week, courtesy of Apple's new Boot Camp software and the patient telephone help of my brother, a cross-platform specialist for a bleeding-edge tech company in New York City. So hopefully that too will be as smooth as the hype indicates; and if it is, that means I'll suddenly be running Windows XP in my home for the first time in my life, and actually be able to install and run Windows-only software. And that too is extremely cool, needless to say, because there's simply some applications out there that I would really like to use, but that only exist for Windows; for example, I'll finally be able to run the Windows versions of all these instant-message programs, which means that I too will finally be able to see other people's webcams, and talk with them through the built-in audio function.

In fact, there's only been one real problem with the new Mini so far, which is that for the first two days I was feeling this tremendous sense of guilt about now owning it, and couldn't figure out why. Once I thought about it, though, I realized - this is the first time in my entire life that I've bought a new computer when my old one was still working fine. And once making that realization, I suddenly realized why I was feeling so guilty - because I had conditioned myself so thoroughly over the years, to think that the only appropriate time for me to get a new computer was when the old one had completely fallen apart. But of course I bought this new Mini specifically to run a program that my G4 can't (more below), and it's important that I be able to run this program at home; so there's really no reason for me to feel guilty about it all. And now that I've realized this, I'm not feeling guilty anymore. So, um...there you go.

--So, yes, as regular readers remember, the whole reason I got this new Mini in the first place was to run a specific application, that my G4 cannot; an extremely graphics-heavy videogame, in fact, entitled Second Life. (Curious as to why I want to play Second Life so badly these days, by the way? Well, because I have plans to actually make money within the game; serious money, in fact, enough to actually pay my rent each month. Those who want to know more can read through the 12,000 or so words I've already written on the subject, by clicking here.) Unfortunately, though, fate has conspired so that I have yet to actually play so far; that is, last Friday when the Mini finally arrived, I was too busy actually setting it up, and then this weekend an old friend of mine from high school ended up visiting Chicago (more below), and then for the last two days I've been too busy writing these journal entries and doing freelance work. So anyway, the plan is to hopefully port in this afternoon for the first time, finally, and to check out whether this Mini really is going to work well for Second Life or not.

In the meanwhile, though, this weekend I got a chance to run yet another graphics-heavy program for the first time, that my G4 also couldn't handle; it was the experimental Google Earth, in fact, the quiet little secret of the company, that you're always hearing uber-nerds whispering about in the dark corners of the web. HOLY FUCKING SHIT - have you tried this program, people? It is literally one of the most amazing things I have ever seen successfully run on a home computer; even now, in fact, two days after starting to play with it, I can scarcely believe it actually exists. I've put up a new photoset at my Flickr account with lots of examples, but I'll explain more below as well...

Google Earth, at its heart, is nothing more than a new interface for Google Maps, which of course all of us are familiar with - the zooming, the satellite views, the ability to type in specific addresses, etc. In the case of Google Earth, however, this information is presented not as a series of flat-screen maps, but rather textured around a virtual ball, so that you're actually interacting with the information as if it were a globe. And so that's cool enough - to be on one side of the world, for example, type in an address from the other side of the world, and literally watch an entire half a globe of Google maps spin in front of your eyes, until finally coming to a stop on the new destination.

Oh, but check this out - in Google Earth you can tilt these images as well, literally as if you had been reincarnated as a bird, and were flying over the area in question. And not only that, but you can still zoom and move around in tilt view as well, and can specify the tilt to be any angle between 0 and 90 degrees. Fuck me, man! And not only that, but in a total of around 30 American cities now (with more getting added each month), Google has built a 3D landscape into the cities as well, actually mapping the spatial coordinates of the downtown buildings found in those cities. And this is still while having the ability, mind you, to "fly" over spaces, to specify whatever tilt you want, to specify whatever angle you want. And this is all updated on your screen in real time, just like a cheesy CGI movie about killer snakes or volcanos or whatever, meaning that "flying" through these cities is now just like those cool-ass old planetarium shows from the '80s, but in this case with you having complete control over what exactly you're looking at. Fuck ME!!!

Oh, but shit, it doesn't even stop there; users of Google Earth, in fact, have the ability to create their own 3D renderings, just in case there's some building somewhere on the planet that Google hasn't rendered themselves yet. Or, if you want, you can also overlay a flat image onto a certain section of the globe; say, like in the above example, if you happened to find an old historical map, showing exactly what parts of Chicago burned down during the Great Fire of the 1800s. And not only this, but the fucking overlay will tilt with the main information, as well as spin, zoom, and everything else you can do in Google Earth!

OH MY LORD, I WANT TO GO TO CALIFORNIA AND SACRIFICIALLY OFFER MY BODY TO THE STAFF OF GOOGLE EARTH, for no other reason than for creating a piece of software that has blown me away so completely and profoundly. I mean, seriously, if you happen to have a computer with a fast-enough processor and enough graphics memory to run Google Earth, you really do need to stop everything you're doing, right this second, and go download the app right now. Believe me, you will not be disappointed.

--So what else? Well, like I mentioned, a friend of mine from high school was in town this weekend; his name is Ken Kase, in fact, just this insanely talented musician, still living in St. Louis. See, Ken is a good friend of this St. Louis band that did really well for themselves in the '90s, before breaking up, called The Sun Sawed in 1/2; and for the last two years now, the band has been convinced by Chicago's International Pop Overthrow Festival to do a "reunion" show of sorts, which the band has asked Ken to sit in on now for both years. And in fact, apparently last year's reunion show went so well, that a number of the original band members have started a new project, called Freshly Mowed Lawn, who also played this weekend; it's one of those New Pornographer or Pavement deals, actually, where the actual band members are scattered across the country, and only come together once every six months, for an album or special performance or whatever. Anyway, so that's why Ken was in town, to play these shows - Saturday at Gunther Murphy's, Sunday at Schuba's - and of course I wanted to go out and check the shows out.

It's always strange seeing Ken, of course, since he and I have literally been friends for over 20 years now; we originally met, in fact, when I was a junior in high school and he a sophomore, our bond cemented because of our shared geeky love of such jazz pioneers as Pat Metheny, Sun Ra and Chick Corea. (In fact, all you jazz fans, Ken's brother Chris Kase is an extremely popular contemporary jazz trumpeter, now based out of Spain, which is why the Kase name might sound familiar to you.) And it just so happens as well that yet another friend of both of us, Tom Henkey, now lives in Chicago as well (who I actually go back with even further - Tom and I have been friends, in fact, since he was three and I was four), which means that a visit from Ken usually degrades into a weekend-long drinking session between the three of us, which indeed happened this weekend as well, with the childhood stories and high-school in-jokes getting worse and worse with each round of drinks, until eventually no one else in the entire goddamn bar can stand being around us. Hooray, rural Missouri and annoying '80s in-jokes! "Don't need nothing...but some pancakes!" Fight Tigers, motherfucker!

So anyway, that was a lot of fun as always; and as always, Ken and I ended up having this extremely long and drunken conversation about the arts, our careers, and where we are now versus where we thought we were going to be when we were teenagers. That's always an interesting conversation to have with Ken, to tell you the truth, because frankly we're about the only two people left from our high school who are still pursuing careers in the arts (although admittedly we've both taken a sideways step of late - I'm now an arts administrator, not an active artist, while Ken is mostly a music engineer now, not an active musician). It's always interesting, I think, when confronted with the ghosts of your past, both the dreams and mistakes one made decades ago when one didn't know better, and to compare them against where one is now.

Am I a better person than I was 20 years ago, when I was 17? Undoubtedly; I'm much better around women, I'm much more secure about my career and life choices, much more able now to understand and handle the complexities of the world. But the curious thing, I think, is that when it comes to certain subjects, my opinion literally hasn't changed one single bit, all the way back to my teenage years when I originally formed the opinions in the first place. I still think that teenagers get the fucking shaft most of the time from adults, and that we adults need to stick up for their rights, since they can't. I still think that God doesn't actually exist, and that those who sit around worshipping such a thing are wasting their fucking time. I still think that do-it-yourself artists are the very best artists of all, and that we as a society need to be doing everything possible to support this endeavor. I still think that most human beings are dangerously naive sheep, willing to go along blindly with anything that anyone in any position of authority tells them, and that this is the cause of most of the messes in the world, everything from the Inquisition to the Nazis to George W. Bush. I still believe that actions speak louder than words. I still believe in the terrifying power of love. I still believe that no one else has the right to tell you what to do, and that you are perfectly justified in saying "Fuck you, asshole" when you come across one of these people who believe otherwise.

This, I suppose, is the most surprising thing of all about being a grown-up, the older I get and the farther away I get from being legitimately "youthful;" that no matter how old you get, the majority of your moral code still remains the same as those conclusions you first made as a teenager. Teen readers of mine, I hope you won't pass this opportunity up - I hope you won't dismiss the things you're feeling right now as temporary opinions, ones that are destined to change as you get older. The details change, yes, as you learn more about the world, and learn about more and more subtle things concerning those issues; but your basic opinions of these issues never really do change, which is why I think it's so critically important that teens absorb as much information as they possibly can, to look at the world in as many different ways as possible. Believe me, your older self will one day thank your younger self, for making the effort in the first place.

Well, okay, I guess that's enough for today. Talk with you again in another week or so.