Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Dusting Off the Ducati

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Mike and I go for a motorcycle ride to Prescott.

Before I started flying, before I started horseback riding, before I even moved to Arizona, I was an avid motorcyclist.

Learning to ride a motorcycle was one of the four life goals I’d set for myself long ago. I was 29 (or thereabouts) when I learned. I decided it was time and bought a motorcycle. It was a 1980 Honda CB400 Hawk, black with a bit of chrome. A standard bike with an upright seating position.

The Hawk had belonged to a woman who had died of cancer within a year of buying it. She only put 941 miles on it before she stopped riding. Her husband, a motorcycle dealer, had stored the bike for 11 years, so it was in good shape when he finally decided to sell it and I came along. We replaced some parts that had succumbed to dry rot, gave it a good tune-up, and it was ready to ride.

Of course, I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle. So I enrolled in a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course. Mike enrolled with me. We took the course and got the proper introduction to safe motorcycling. And anyone who thinks an MSF course is a waste of time and money is, quite simply, wrong. I still use techniques I learned in that course every time I ride.

Mike thought that we’d ride together on my bike. That meant he’d ride and I’d be the passenger. I guess Mike didn’t know me very well yet. We’d only been together seven years at the time. But I made it clear that if he wanted to ride, he’d have to get his own bike.

So he bought a used BMW. It didn’t look good, but it ran well and he seemed to like it. Together we gained experience. We eventually joined a motorcycle club for long rides on the twisty roads in northern New Jersey and southern New York State. They were sport bike guys and liked to ride fast. I understood the appeal.

We went to Americade every year. That’s a big motorcycle rally at Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. Motorcycle manufacturers did test rides of their bikes there. That’s when I test rode a Yamaha Seca II, a “sport standard” bike. Like my Honda, it had a rather upright seating position. But it was sporty, chromeless, and faster. I wound up replacing the Honda with a Seca II.

Yamaha Seca IIWhen we went to pick up the Yamaha, Mike stopped in at the BMW dealer next door and fell in love with an end-of-year clearance BMW K65. He bought it. A week later we both showed up at a group camping trip along the Delaware with a pair of brand new bikes. A few jaws dropped that day.

That was in 1992.

We rode most weekends with the group and sometimes by ourselves. Our big trip came in the mid 90s when we took the bikes from our home in Northern New Jersey down Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway, then across to the coast and up the barrier islands. It was a 10-day trip that was mostly camping, with a few motel days thrown in to ensure a good night’s sleep. The roads were great, the autumn leaves were turning. We got caught in a thunderstorm in the Smokies, impressed folks at a campground with how much gear we could pack on two bikes, and rode three different ferries island hopping along the coast. Definitely one of my top 10 vacations.

Then one weekend we joined the group for a camping trip in the Finger Lakes area of New York. And that’s when I found the top end of my bike. There were about a dozen of us racing down beautiful farm roads, a ribbon of sport bikes zipping past cows and barns and green fields. We were going fast. Very fast. I was last in line and that was probably a good thing. Because when I twisted my throttle just a little more to keep up, I found that there was no more to twist. I’d twisted up to the stop and the bikes in front of me were easing away about 5 mph faster than I could go.

In a flash, I fell out of love with my bike.

Ducati SS CRI didn’t waste much time replacing it with the Ducati. I’d taken one for a test ride at the local Ducati dealer — the same place I’d bought my Hawk years ago — and had been impressed. The bike I test rode was a Ducati Monster — a 900cc bike with a standard riding position and not much fairing. When the front wheel came off the ground in what I thought was normal accelleration, I knew I had a powerful machine beneath me. I wound up with a Ducati 900 SS CR, a sort of half-fairing sport bike. Well, to be fair, “sport bike” is a bit of an understatement. It’s really a race bike. Red, of course — I think they only came in two colors.

This was in 1996.

I kept the Yamaha for touring. I’d invested in Givi hard luggage for that bike and longed for another motorcycle vacation. The Ducati was not the kind of bike you’d want to ride for 400 miles in a single day, as I later found out.

We moved to Arizona. The bikes crossed over on the moving truck. We went back to New Jersey with a trailer to pick up Mike’s bike and brought the Ducati along. We made one last trip to Americade. Then we brought all the bikes to Arizona, where they have remained.

We made a trip with Chrome Caballeros in the late 1990s. It was a motorcycle camping trip where the outfitters carried all the gear. I took the Ducati. Mike took his BMW. All the other bikers on the trip rode Harleys. It was a great trip, but there was one day when we rode from Zion National Park to Flagstaff. That’s a hell of a long ride on a Ducati. I was pretty sore the next day.

I tried to find the top end on the Ducati once. It was out on Route 71 between Aguila and Congress. I had it up to 130 before I decided that I didn’t really want to go that fast or any faster. The Ducati had more to give but I didn’t need it.

Time passed. I started horseback riding. Then I learned to fly. I bought a helicopter. I decided I liked flying better than motorcycling or horseback riding. I began building a helicopter tour and charter business.

Mike kept riding, mostly by himself. He had a mishap on Mingus Mountain. A fox ran out in front of him, just as he was approaching a curve. He swerved to miss it and the bike got onto some gravel at the side of the road. He literally jumped off the bike. The bike went over an embankment and got really broken, really quickly. Mike tore the back pocket of his jeans and had to thumb a ride back to Prescott. A few weeks later, he bought a similar bike from a friend.

That brings us almost up to today. My two bikes had been lounging in my hangar, gathering dust and drying out their batteries. They both needed serious work to get them running again. I put $1,000 into them for repairs. But the repairs would only “hold” if I kept riding them.

We rode to Prescott on Saturday. I took the Ducati.

One of the reasons we don’t ride as often in Arizona is that there aren’t any really good riding roads nearby. Back in New Jersey, we were about 20 miles away from Harriman State Park, with seemingly endless roads that twisted through the mountains and forest, around small lakes. Challenging riding, beautiful scenery, lots of fresh air. Even getting there was a nice ride, on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, which I believe was designed by Robert Moses. Here in Arizona, there are lots of straight boring roads through empty desert before the roads start to twist and turn a little. So you have to work a little to get to that reward. And with only four roads leading out of town, there isn’t much variety.

But the ride to Prescott is one of the nicer rides.

First, you leave Wickenburg on route 93 and bear right on route 89 toward Yarnell. The road cuts straight across the desert until just past Congress. There, a sweeping right turn gets you started at the bottom of what we call Yarnell Hill. In just a few miles, you climb 1500 feet up the side of a cliff on a road that hugs the cliff face. There are guardrails, but hitting one would only serve as a launch pad for a flight off the cliff into space, so care is required. As you climb, the curves get ever tighter. Finally, at the top, you’re in Yarnell.

From there, you cut across high desert terrain on gently curving roads. The scenery is magnificent on this two-lane piece of blacktop and there’s very little traffic. At Kirkland Junction, it’s time for a decision: twisty White Spar Road or not-so-twisty Iron Springs Road? We always take White Spar.

At Wilhoit, the real fun begins, with a 15-mile stretch of mountain road. Imagine a ribbon of asphalt twisting among the 6000-foot mountains, hugging cliff-faces all the way. The double-yellow line is there for a reason: you can seldom see more than 50 yards ahead of you. You pivot the bike left and then right and then left as you take the curves one after the other, spending more time in a steep lean than vertical. As you ride with the RPMs high enough to take advantage of engine braking in the tightest of turns, a rhythm builds up inside you. This is why you ride.

It all came back to me on Saturday, just before I caught up with the midsize sedan from Kansas. He was driving at about 10 MPH below the speed limit, using his brakes for every single curve. (Hey buddy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.) There were plenty of places for him to pull over and let us pass — most considerate drivers do when they see motorcycles or a sports car behind them on this road — but he was either oblivious to us behind him or, more likely, too inconsiderate to care. I finally blew past him on one of the brief straightaways. Mike blew past him on the next.

Understand that the Ducati simply does not like to go slow. It lugs at RPMs under 3000 if you’re in any gear other than first or second and it takes some serious clutch work to keep it running smoothly at speeds under 20 mph. This is not the bike you’d take to work and ride in traffic. Your left hand would seize up from all the clutching. It likes to cruise with the RPMs up around 5000 and has no problem approaching that 9000 RPM redline when you need a little extra power for passing. Sixth gear is pretty much a waste.

We had lunch in a new restaurant in Prescott. Nawlins, or something like that. Supposed to be New Orleans style food. The food was good, but the restaurant’s territorial style and Santa Fe paint scheme didn’t match. (The place used to be Zuma’s.) Still, we’ll go back.

We hit the Mall, more to give us something to do and see than to buy anything. We had dessert. We stopped at the airport to put the current registration sticker on my Toyota, which lives up there. Then we fueled up and rode home, taking Iron Springs Road back to Kirkland Junction. From there, it was 89 through Yarnell and Congress and back to Wickenburg.

We’d ridden about 140 miles. I was sore. I’m really out of shape and not the person I was 10 years ago when I bought that bike. But the ride made me remember why I’d bought it and why I liked riding so much way back then.

Mike and I need to go to Napa, CA in June. We’re toying with the idea of taking the motorcycles up. It’ll be the Yamaha’s turn to get out for a while.

The Eyes Had It

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I begin to lose my close vision.

It’s inevitable. As a person ages, he loses his close vision. Now, as I approach my 45th birthday, I’m beginning to lose mine.

My far vision has always been bad. I started wearing glasses in 5th grade and I’ve been wearing contact lenses since my college days. Because I seldom wear glasses, however, people assume I have normal vision. I don’t. My vision is very bad. At this point, I wouldn’t trust myself to walk five steps without my contacts or glasses on.

It always makes me laugh when I see the “corrective lenses” restriction on my driver’s license and pilot medical certificate. Do they honestly think I’m crazy enough to drive or fly without some kind of visual aid?

I’m fortunate in that my vision, although bad, is extremely correctable. That means that with my lenses on, I can see just as well — if not better — than most people who don’t have “vision problems.” In my life, I’ve had two friends who weren’t so fortunate. Their vision was not correctable. Both worked with computers for a living. I still remember sitting with one of them at his desk while he stuck his face up against his 21″ monitor — considered very large at the time — reading something onscreen.

(Apple has a software solution for this called Universal Access. I wrote briefly about it in my Tiger book.)

Two years ago, I got an eye exam. My far vision had worsened again. My doctor gave me an option.

“You can keep the prescription you have or go with a stronger prescription. But if you go with the stronger prescription, you might have some problems with your close vision.”

I didn’t believe her and I went with the stronger prescription. After all, I liked being able to see things off in the distance, especially when I flew. The air can be so clear up here, away from the city. Visibility often exceeds 50 miles. I wanted to see those 50 miles as well as I could.

But she was right. After switching to the new prescription, I started noticing a problem with reading small print. At first, it was just a minor problem that could be solved by adding light. But it seemed to get worse and worse. I finally broke down and bought a pair of “cheaters” — you know, those cheap reading glasses you can buy in a drugstore. They were a +1.25 prescription and they really helped.

The trouble with wearing cheaters is that the more you wear them, the more you come to depend on them. I tried hard for a long time to just wear them when I was reading in bed. But it wasn’t long before I found myself needing them other times, like when trying to read package ingredients in the supermarket or drug store. Add more light.

I had an eye exam earlier this year and my far vision prescription has gotten worse again. But I learned my lesson. So far, I haven’t bought contacts in the new prescription. I don’t want my close vision to get any worse.

The doctor told me that with my new prescription, I’d need cheaters with a prescription of +1.5 or +1.75.

Oddly enough, with my contacts and glasses off, my close vision is still incredibly good. I can, for example, read the microprint on newly designed $100 bills. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff is printed in those tiny letters all over our new money! Of course, at the same time, I can’t recognize Mike sitting across the kitchen table from me. Or read the page of a book more than 5 inches from my nose.

I’m not complaining. I still consider myself very fortunate to have vision corrections available to me. So many people have vision problems that can’t be fixed. Many of them are probably grateful for what they have, too.

I saw an episode of Scientific American Frontiers yesterday that featured a man who’d been blind for the past 11 years. They’d given him an implant and a special pair of glasses with a video camera built in, enabling him to see up to 16 blobs of light. (Think of a computer monitor with a resolution of 16 blurry pixels.) He was so grateful to have even that — the ability to see the way the light changed when something moved in front of him, the ability to see something bright nearby. I’m lucky compared to someone like him.

You’re lucky if you don’t have any visual problems.

Right now, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, typing this onto my laptop. I’m having no trouble seeing or reading it. Yet.

But I know what lies ahead. I’m not anxious to go there, but I know I can’t stop time.

A Penny Saved…

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I put Ben Franklin’s saying to the test.

Not long ago, I wrote a post explaining how someone could take advantage of a credit card introductory offer for a low (or no) interest cash advance, put the money in an ING CD (or some other high-paying, insured savings account), earn interest, and then pay off the credit card balance before the interest jumped up from its introductory rate. I calculated that I could earn about $700 on a $20,000 credit card cash advance.

Well this works both ways. Mike and I have a home equity line of credit, which we used a while back to buy our Howard Mesa property and a few other things. Back when we signed up for it, the interest rate was very low. But today, it’s 7.5%. Not exactly a great deal anymore.

Enter Capital One (for the sixth time in a week). This offer was 0% for purchases and balance transfers for a full year. Best of all, there were no balance transfer fees. According to the offer, I could get up to $30,000 of credit. And the balance transfer option could be applied to a loan.

You might know where this is going.

I did some math. What if I put $25,000 toward the home equity line of credit, thus reducing the balance by that huge amount? Over the course of a year, I’d save $1,875 in interest (that’s simple interest calculation, which is close enough for me). Then, before the credit card interest rates jumped into their double-digits, I’d write a check from the home equity line of credit to Capital One, thus paying off the entire balance before any interest could accrue.

Of course, I would have to make those minimum monthly payments to Capital One. But if I got into a problem with that, I could always use the home equity line of credit to pay that, too. Besides, my payments on the home equity would be reduced — perhaps by the same amount as the Capital One credit card. Wouldn’t that be a kick!

Understand that the net effect of this on my personal debt would be zero — I’m borrowing from Peter to pay Paul (so to speak). I’d just save a bunch of money in interest. And, like Ben Franklin said, a penny saved is a penny earned.

So I applied for the account with the transfer. Let’s see if I get it.

The odd thing is, I’ve been taking advantage of those year-long 0% interest offers for years. I usually have $10,000 to $20,000 floating around in interest-free debt with a credit card company. (I paid the last one off about six months ago, though, and haven’t applied for a new one since.) With all the credit information available to credit card companies these days, they must be able to figure it out. Yet they still offer me free money, I still take it, and I still pay them back in full before they can start the interest clock.

I win, they lose. And they keep coming back for more.

Go figure, huh?

What I’m Up To

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Maria Speaks Episode 24: What I’m Up To.

This short podcast brings listeners up to date on what I’ve been up to since my podcast suddenly stopped in November, along with a repeat of my pledge to keep coming up with new podcasts weekly.

Transcript:

I promised a new podcast every week and I’m trying hard to deliver. This week, I’ll bring everyone up to date on the things I’ve been up to. Of course, there are always more details in my blog at www.aneclecticmind.com.

I promise I’ll try not to bore you.

Work in Progress

About a month ago, I started working on a new book for Peachpit Press called WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide. I’m working with a co-author on the project, Miraz Jordan. Miraz lives in New Zealand, where it’s always tomorrow. I’m recording this on a Sunday evening and, at this very moment, Miraz is probably hard at work on a Monday afternoon. I think it’s kind of unfair that she gets an extra day on the deadline. Or is that one less day? Too much sangria this afternoon to think it out properly.

WordPress, for those of you who don’t know, is my current blogging platform of choice. I started using it late last year and quickly fell in love with it. Since then, I’ve sucked down all the information I could about it and I think it’s safe to say that I experiment with it daily. I love its flexibility most of all — the ability to build all kinds of features into a blog-based Web site and to have it look just about any way you like. But I felt I needed a seasoned expert to help me write the book, so that’s why I asked Miraz to join me. She’s been using the software for years and has over a thousand entries in her blog at mactips.info. Check it out.

My other current writing project is actually a DVD training video for macProVideo.com. It’s about Microsoft Word for Macintosh and, if I can figure out how to narrate while I’m performing tasks without sounding like an idiot, I might get it done sometime soon. I know that writing a script for each segment isn’t the way. I quickly discovered that I can’t read a script and perform tasks at the same time.

Computer Woes

If you follow my blog, you know that I had a series of computer problems this past winter.

First, my main production Mac’s hard disk got scrambled and required professional help to bring back from the near-dead. I backed everything up, reformatted that drive, and reinstalled everything.

Reformatting my main hard drive is a maintenance task I used to do every time I upgraded to a new version of the system software. Mac OS X’s time-consuming installations and hidden preference files made it a bit of a chore, though, so I stopped.

Reformatting and rebuilding a hard disk is like a massive spring cleaning. Imagine taking all the furniture out of your home, stripping out the carpet and tile, sandblasting the walls and floor, and putting brand new versions of everything you had back in. The benefit is that when you’re done, everything is right where you put it, all in one piece and easy to find. You also throw out a lot of junk you didn’t really need.

Moving is like that, too. You throw away stuff when you pack, you move the boxes you packed, and then you throw more stuff away when you arrive in your new place. Sometimes I think you should unpack at your old home just so you can throw away the second time without moving it first.

The second computer problem was way more serious. My Web server’s hard disk crashed. (There must have been something in the electricity this past winter.) The drive was a complete goner. And, of course, the DVD drive in that computer was already toasted. So I had both replaced and rebuilt the Web server from scratch using whatever backups I had.

Of course, I didn’t have everything backed up. This was my third hard disk crash since 1989 and you think that by now I’d learn. I didn’t. My two WordPress blogs (aneclecticmind.com and wickenburg-az.com) had their databases backed up — thank heaven! — but the theme files, plugins, and other stuff that makes up a WordPress blog had not been backed up. Neither were a bunch of the image files. Because the themes were so heavily customized (due to all that experimentation I bragged about earlier), it took a lot of rebuilding to get it back to what I wanted to see. wickenburg-az.com is still not 100% back — it’s missing lots of pictures.

It’s kind of weird because I was never really happy with my first version of aneclecticmind.com, but I’d put so much work into it that I wasn’t willing to change it. Then all that work got wiped away, as if my computer sensed my dissatisfaction and wanted to prod me into fixing it. So when I rebuilt, I made it more to my liking. I’m much more pleased with the current site. But I really wish my computer hadn’t taken so much with it.

Miraz and I will be covering backup strategies for WordPress blogs in detail in our book — or on its companion Web site. I don’t want any of my readers to go through what I went through. What a waste of time!

Flying

I’ve also been flying. A lot.

March was my busiest month ever at Flying M Air and I actually earned enough money to pay the helicopter loan for the next two months. I did charters to Sedona and the Grand Canyon, photo shoots at proving grounds and golf courses, real estate tours, and a charter to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. (Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, there’s an airbus on short final for runway 7 left. Do you have him in sight? Sure. I’d have to be blind not to see him.) All that and the usual round of 25 minute and 50 minute tours.

March was also a record breaking month in a bad way. In one week, two different passengers broke my record of no pukers in my helicopter. One of them puked in my lunch bag. (Watch the leather seats and the carpet! Move the microphone away from your mouth!) They were both kids, so I can still tell people that I’ve never had an adult puke in the helicopter. And I have a new policy: no flights over 1 hour long with kids on board.

Yesterday, I flew more than 90 people at an airport event in Buckeye, AZ. So I have June’s loan payment taken care of, too. Looks like I’ll be able to keep the helicopter a few more months.

I even flew today — two flights totaling an hour and a half. Where are these people coming from? And where the hell were they in January and February? And will they stay long enough to take me through the long, hot summer?

Listener Feedback

I got one bit of listener feedback recently from Justin. Or maybe it was Jason. I’m sorry. I accidently deleted your e-mail. Justin or Jason got a new iPod Nano and wants some iPod tips. I want some, too. I’ll have to look some up, put together a podcast, and record it for us. Until then, I recommend doing a Google search for something like iPod tips. I did it and found a bunch of sites. Unfortunately, I’m not prepared to comment on their quality.

If you have feedback about this podcast or my podcasts in general, send them to me at mariaspeaks@mac.com. I’ll try not to delete it before I commit your name to medium-term memory. I do take requests for topics. As Justin or Jason has learned, I don’t always get right to the request topic, but I eventually get there. This just hasn’t been the best week for thinking about new things. Too much old stuff to think about.

Thanks for listening. More next week.

Brew and Go

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I get a new coffee maker…again.

It’s disposable products all over again.

Brew and GoI’ve been using a Black and Decker coffee maker called “Brew and Go” (formerly, “Cup at a Time”) for about fifteen years now. I like fresh-brewed coffee every morning, but Mike doesn’t. It’s silly to make a whole pot — even if I do want a second cup, I won’t take it from a pot that’s been sitting on a burner for 30 minutes. So I make a single fresh cup every time I want one.

(And in case you’re wondering, I usually don’t drink brewed coffee in restaurants. Burner sludgification is one reason. The other is that most restaurants out here don’t know how to put enough coffee in the brew basket to make a strong enough cup. I think it’s because it’s pre-measured and it comes in bags. This is the same reason I’m avoiding those “pod” coffee makers. You can get decent restaurant coffee in New York and on the west coast, but in the midwest, southwest, southeast, and elsewhere, the only way I can get a cup of coffee that’s strong enough for me is to order a latte at a coffee shop.)

The other day, I bought my fourth or fifth one of these coffee makers. They work fine for about two years, then they start getting unreliable. The usual symptom is that they stop brewing before all the water in the reservoir has been heated and pumped up to the grinds. You wind up with a 2/3 full cup of coffee with leftover water. It isn’t a big deal to push the button again — usually that’s enough to get the rest heated and brewed. But experience has taught me that this is only the first of the pot’s symptoms. The next step is that button getting broken. And when that happens, the coffee maker won’t work at all.

So I consider the funky button a warning sign. I’ll need a replacement soon. So I went online and found a replacement for a good price on Amazon.com. (Note to my critics: Sadly, you can’t buy anything like this in Wickenburg, so shopping locally was once again out of the question.)

Oddly enough, they showed two models and the only difference I could see between them was the size of the machine. Since both were under $20 with only a $4 price difference and I figured that I could use one in my hangar, too, I bought them both. I was curious to see how they differed.

They arrived yesterday. Their boxes are identical with two exceptions:

  • One box says “Deluxe” (that’s the $17.99 model) and the other doesn’t (the $12.99 model).
  • One box illustrates and identifies a stainless steel travel mug (the $17.99 model) and the other one illustrates and identifies a plastic travel mug.

I opened the deluxe model and got a good whiff of the plastic aroma that accompanies many new appliances made primarily of plastic. I pulled out all the packing material, plugged it in, and brewed through some plain water. Then I decided to read the instructions for some tip to get the smell out. The instruction book only had four pages in English — not much to instruct.

Of course, the unit is made in China. I’m not sure if the original “Cup at a Time” was made in China. It was a long time ago. It was probably Taiwan back then.

I brewed up a cup of coffee using the built-in filter basket. I usually don’t use that thing because grinds get through it into the coffee. I like my coffee very strong and usually grind the beans to the first “Fine” setting on the machine at the supermarket. The “gold” filters that come with many coffee makers simply aren’t fine enough to prevent the grinds from going through. But I figured I’d try it a few times. If I could make a good cup of coffee with the reusable filter, I’d save a few bucks on paper filters — not to mention the time it takes to cut the #2 cone filters down to size. I’ll experiment over the next few days and maybe even get some coffee ground a litte coarser.

The first cup of coffee tasted a bit like the plastic I smelled. Or at least I assume so — I don’t make a habit out of tasting plastic. There’s a puddle of finely ground coffee at the very bottom of my cup, like mud on the bottom of a pond. The first problem will be remedied with time, the second will probably require a grind or filter change.

But the coffee maker performed flawlessly, using up all its water and making a nice, hot cup of coffee.

The old coffee maker is now sitting in the trash like the three or four that came before it. As we all know, it’s usually more expensive to get these things fixed than to buy a new one. That’s how the disposable economy came into being.

A little side story here. Our original DVD player only lasted about 5 years. We tried to get it fixed and everyone we brought it to quoted us a price to look at it that was more than the thing was worth. Then we tried to give it away to a school or electronics repair training facility so the students could use it to learn about the machine and/or how to fix it. No one would take it. Mind you, this isn’t a machine that had been abused. All of its parts pretty much still worked. It just didn’t play DVDs anymore. The only option was to throw it out.

I recently sold two very old Macs (an 8500 and a beige G3) on eBay. I got 99¢ for one and $9.99 for the other. Plus shipping, of course. Although I’d spent a total of more than $5,000 for the machines years ago, I was willing to take the money. Not because I needed the $10.98 but because I didn’t want to take the two machines — which were still perfectly functioning — to the landfill.

I guess their new owner will do that one day.

It’s time for another cup of coffee.

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