End of another era?
Not sure what this means, but recently, I’ve had to rethink and re-evaluate my various positions, placements, and previous working arrangements.
Through a satellite set-up, Apple had a “buy back” program. In my immediate circles, older tech got passed down to various family members, but I started to accumulate material with no new home. I had a rather dated Apple PowerBook, and I recycled it to Apple, along with out-of-date iPads, no longer serviceable in my line of work.
One iPad was a 2015 model, and it still served to function well enough, but its time has arrived. I’d long since popped the SIM card out of it, so it was WiFi only, and that hampers and hinders the arrangements.
End of another era?
I erased an old drive that held the back-up material leftover from that laptop. There was a lot of music, all the images have been rescued, but the files I miss the most? Old client/chart files. Just the data itself, and it was tucked away in proprietary format, never to be used again, so it didn’t matter.
Redundant security: I zeroed-out (three passes, one to zero, zero to one, one back to zero) the laptop drive, too, missing and not missing some of the data. I am sentimental about the astrology program that no longer worked, as I had more than twenty-five years, a career’s worth of files therein, just a name, date-of-birth, time-of-birth (when provided), and a place-of-birth. Individually, not that significant, but over time, that was an onerous weight, and a special kind of tool for research and analysis.
I used to get “waves” of a particular sign when I would sit down in public for readings.
astrofish.net/travel
Still kind of a thing, but not that often, and for now, my appearances are rather limited. Looking forward, I’m thinking that I’m headed to a totally tablet-based arrangement. Can’t do that now, and I’m loathe to invest in too much “virtual” structures, as I’ve seen that go away with the blink of an eye. Flip one switch wrong and there’s nothing. All gone. (Ask “bubba” about missing a payment to a hosting company.)
Wrestling thoughts into print?
Wrangling the ideas and thoughts that are part of this process, thinking while typing, heading in a direction, it helps to feel this out, what goes where, and how this will fit, now, and in the future.
Sort of assuming there is a future.
End of another era?
By 1997, or thereabouts, I was enough of wandering-minstrel, or wandering-wastrel, astrologer that lived on an Apple laptop. When I left the trailer park in South Austin, I would have my files, everything, all in one place. All on a laptop. When I would arrive home in the trailer park again? I would plug the laptop back in, and it would start backing up immediately, keeping a carbon-copy clone of the files, all backed up into the closet, or a hard drive, sort of tucked out of sight.
The first few iterations, I would have a floppy disk, and swap the files back and forth, from laptop to desktop, but that shifted, and I eventually moved to a wholly laptop arrangement. Worked great, and that’s been 25 years now, at least.
Life on a laptop?
One way think about it.
End of another era?
As it is, I use the free Apple cloud thing for the most recent images, but I don’t store anything of value in the “cloud,” because, as we’ve discovered, the cloud is merely another computer, someplace else.
The automated off-site backup is nice, but there’s a price attached, and the hidden fees are what get to me.
For many years, what I considered important, my list of contacts? Names, addresses, for mailing. In our more modern variation, that’s not a list I even use. There are the most recent dozen or so who called, but that’s about it.
What this is about, in the years ahead, facing the challenges, and anticipating what technology will do, and what that looks like, and, on top of that, considering what it is the consumer, my customers, what my services look like to those people.
Narrowing it down, I read charts. Some days — for fun — I read cards, but mostly the charts. What that means, I like having a chart program, and way to record audio, as I’ve always thought that a live reading should be recorded.
The last class I taught, the feedback was, “He’s a fast talker.”
End of another era?
I currently still have a portable Macintosh computer, a PowerBook 145. It was the less expensive version of the first trio of Apple’s “Macintosh Notebook” whatever they are now referred to as, computers.
It was heavily traveled and heavily employed for a several years, and there’s a sentimental point where I can’t let it go yet. While I was well on my way, I opened up this career on it, and I still have the actual hardware itself.
Battery life was all of about two hours, and computational horsepower wasn’t too great. I had a set of files, word processing documents, that was the “current work load,” and a small set of files for chart files, and that was it, swapping data back and forth.
A large swath of mid-nineties is a blur: I was in South Austin. Best I got. What’s left over is notes, horoscopes, and images.
Considering that old laptop — that I still have — and how I used to carry a few files on it, then swap the files back and forth? That’s a lot like my current arrangement, only, those few files, a few astrology charts, the current crop of images, and a handful of working documents — articles that in varying phases of completion? That’s shared across the devices, but not much else.
Just like the old days?
End of another era?
Selling off that laptop, it was 2012 model, that was the end of another era.
astrofish.net/books
Recycle, and reuse…
the Portable Mercury Retrograde
Portable Mercury Retrograde – Kramer Wetzel
Portable Mercury Retrograde: astrofish.net’s Mercury in Retrograde
