Revisions & Computers

Welcome to the April 2025 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To
#55

First off,

Survey Contest Winners

I'm happy to announce that Scott, Jim, and Lee all won signed copies of Greysuits which will undoubtedly be worth many ones of dollars until they are, one day, inevitably, donated to a thrift store and later driven to the dump or burned to make room for new boxes of old books cleaned out of someone's attic or basement or storage container.

Until then, though, it looks great on a bookshelf!

(Thanks for the photo, Scott!)

Second,

What I'm Up To

Back in October, in the pixels of this very publication, I stated my intention to have Skytrails finished and published by the end of 2024.

Well, predictably, that did not happen. Which is why I hate setting deadlines for myself. Because I feel like such a failure when I don't make them, which happens as often as not.

But, to be as kind to myself as I would be to anyone else, I can hold my head up high and say I've been whittling away at it—editing, revising, and even adding whole new chapters.

My one and only beloved alpha reader is reading from the beginning and telling me which parts are too boring, confusing, or annoying. I'm making changes based on her feedback, then I plan to hand it off to a wider circle of beta readers.

All of this takes so much time.

And it takes me longer than most people. (When I was a kid, my parents used to say I was 'slow as Moses' or 'slow as molasses', depending on their mood, and in that way I have not changed much.)

I've said before that this story (which I still call Skytrails even though that will probably be the title of book one and not the whole series—more on that below) is really important to me. Probably too important, actually. I'm probably holding it too tightly and treating it a little too precious.

I've also said before that this story is a labor of love. The amount of time I've spent on it is beyond ridiculous.

What do you call something that's beyond ridiculous?

Ludicrous, maybe.

It's ludicrous how much time I've spent on it!

Anyway, I was only supposed to add a third part to complete the story, but I've ended up making major changes all the way through. Which is surprisingly difficult when it's a work that's been in progress for 10 years (in its current form—20 years since its most original inception), because the oldest chapters and paragraphs are so different than the newest stuff. And who I am now as a storyteller and writer is so different than when I was originally writing this stuff.

But it is coming together, I promise, and I'm pretty excited to get some new people to read it who have never read any previous drafts.

I have unpublished all the Skytrails books from all the online stores, I think, and I'm planning to publish it all fresh as new books in a new series on all platforms. Which I think is best, as last time around the handful of reviews, mostly on Amazon, were not great. (My fault, since I published it as a sequel to Greysuits, which was false advertising. Also it didn't really have an ending. Readers, including myself, tend to like an ending at the end of their books.)

If you've read all this, you may be wondering why I'm no longer planning to publish the story as one book with the name Skytrails, as was the original plan. To be honest, I might still do that. But I'm also trying to view this as an opportunity to experiment. And three small books allow for much more experimentation than one medium-sized one.

What I'm Into

Apple Laptops. Okay, I know this one might seem like a stretch. And for some of you, this will cause uncontrollable shaking of the head and/or rolling of the eyes. Which I fully understand.

But, let's take a journey...

When I was a teenager, I was hopelessly nerdy. Unlike the more flamboyant nerds, I mostly kept my nerdiness to myself. (And still do.) I was into computers, role-playing games (reading the rulebooks more than actually playing), comic books, and video games. Today, it's cool to be into that stuff. When I was a teenager, it was just about as cool as wetting your pants.

The first computer that lived in my room and which I treated as my own was given to me by one of my parents' coworkers. It was an Apple Macintosh. One of those early light grey boxes with a square screen and chunky mouse and keyboard. I mainly used it for the paint program. It bit the dust when another of my parents' coworkers borrowed it for a writing project.

Later, we had a Packard Bell desktop computer, which I fully took over in late middle or early high school. I remember saving up and buying my first high speed modem. My friend Jon came over to help me install it. We liked to cruise the bulletin boards. Glory days.

(I recently took a side trip with the family and a close friend into what has to be one of the last remaining dedicated brick-and-mortar computer stores left in America, Micro Center. Even though I know next-to-nothing about modern computers, I instantly had this feeling of, like, aaah, I'm home—these are my people.)

I took a self-imposed break from computers when my brain started thinking in WoRdS LiKe tHiS in 16 different colors—hard to believe now, but that was a trend. I was in too deep. When I got back into computers, the internet was in full bloom. We had websites now instead of bulletin board systems.

I was more into multiplayer gaming with friends and a little less obsessed with the nuts and bolts and details of the machines and their operating systems. I still enjoyed fiddling and tweaking, but mostly as it pertained to playing and having fun.

Eventually, I grew up and got married. Soon after, we had an opportunity to move to Thailand with a non-profit (and non-paying) organization and went for it.

(Moving to the other side of the world during the first year of marriage: would not recommend. Also: no regrets.)

It was in Thailand I first encountered something like an Apple Store at the local mall. This was 2004, and it was more like a kiosk, but those shiny, white iBooks with their curved edges looked so cool. Even back then, Apple had an amazing ability to make you want their stuff. Those laptops seemed so much more exciting than the boring black box we watched DVDs on every night, and on which I was learning to build websites using HTML and CSS, and keeping up with our friends on MySpace and a self-hosted forum I set up while away from home. (Are you getting the level of nerdiness now?)

I came close to buying a used iBook then, on Craigslist I think, from a fellow expat (expat—informal; noun; short for expatriate; a person who lives outside their native country). But we couldn't justify the $800 price tag. That was like 200 meals in Thailand! Or 4 months rent!

A couple years later, we were overseas again, this time in Jerusalem. We were students in a school run by a different non-profit organization, and, in order to finish up our end-of-school projects, I borrowed another student's adorable little 12" Apple Powerbook. I was smitten. With the computer, not the other student.

After we returned to the States from that trip, we worked and saved up some money and found the same adorable little aluminum 12" Powerbook G4 on Ebay and we bought it and never looked back. It's been Apple laptops ever since.

Skipping ahead several generations of computers—all the way to the present—I got the itch recently to upgrade to a new laptop.

Did I need a new laptop? No.

Was my current computer doing a totally satisfactory job with all the things I needed it to do? Yes, absolutely.

Had it slipped up with some weird and slightly concerning behaviors recently, like booting up to just an icon of a hard drive with a slash through it, or suddenly making very loud rattling noises? Sure, here and there.

Has it been over ten years since we last bought a computer? Well, yeah.

Did we just file our taxes and discover we'd be getting a decent tax return this year due to buying a house last year? Yeah, as if that has anything to do with the weighty and adult decision of purchasing a very useful and versatile tool. Geez...

(Also, are we worried tariffs might make all big purchases much more expensive in the near future? Aren't we all?)

So after months of researching and discussing and agonizing, I finally pulled the trigger (with Wendy's blessing) and bought an Apple Certified Refurbished 13" M3 MacBook Air.

Whew.

I can't believe it.

I'm typing on it right now and I love it.

What continues to astonish me about Apple as a company, is, even after Steve Jobs, they have maintained the essential recipe that made them great in the first place. Well designed, beautiful, intuitive products that get faster, sleeker, and more capable from one iteration to the next (with, from time to time, some mishaps). I keep waiting for them to screw it all up, like big time, and while I think they have occasionally dipped their toes in that murky water, I continue to like Apple stuff so much more than the competition.

Even my Windows-for-life friend is starting to give in.

Anyway, there is my Apple computers love story. If we were talking about the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad, that would be my wife's story and I wouldn't be able to do it justice. But for me, it's their computers I still love most.