The Adventures of Jessica Sideways

Transition is important, I will not lie. But it is also important for me to have a computer so I can start blogging every day. It’s also important because when I go to Thailand for my surgery, I want to have my own music, games and everything available to me. That and, well, I have too much paper around my house and I really need to purge some things, so it would be good to have a computer. And I’ve already picked out the kind I want - the 1.5ghz 12″ PowerBook G4. Yes, it’s a minimac and it would do me well running around Denver, especially tucked away safe and secure in my purse. But one might be a little curious as to why I am interested in replacing my old powerhouse MacBook Pro with a computer that is essentially a blast from the past. I have a few reasons and I assure you, they aren’t all about how cute having a small laptop would be or how long the battery life is. But those are things I will touch on in this post.

I am going to be in Thailand for 3 weeks for surgery - When I go over to Thailand for my sex reassignment surgery with Dr. Pichet, I think that the majority of the first week or so, I won’t be feeling too up to snuff and even though I will try to get out and about, there are certain realities (such as the pain and swelling down there causing me to waddle like a duck) that will keep me in bed rest. As such, I’d like to have my own music library and Internet access so I can listen to my music, chat with my friends (both offline and online) and blog about what’s going on with the surgery, being in Thailand and all. As well as, well, just being able to read my e-mail and keep up with the various webcomics that I follow. And when I am getting back, I really don’t expect to be up and about once I head back home to Boulder. I assume that I am going to be largely incapacitated and really just unable to move about much so I will stay in my room, hurting, in pain and using the wifi networks that are around Boulder.

I am tired of the K2 design on this site - Yes, I am tired of the K2 design which so graces this website. K2 is a very versatile and nice theme, don’t get me wrong. And I believe that it is one of the best free themes to be customized and used on many sites, given it’s AJAX abilities and numerous other features that I love. However, it’s a stock design that I am using on this blog and I have a design idea in my head that I want to use. Seriously. So, in order to use the power tools that I would need to make this design manifest (Photoshop, CSSEdit, et cetra) I have to have a computer of my own, let’s face it.

I am tired of blogging at other places… - I am tired of blogging at responding to e-mail at places where I cannot go when I wish, or places that are near to my physical location. True, it’s a few bus rides away but that’s inconvenient when you are on a tight schedule and you really don’t have time for 30 minutes of bus travel (round trip time from where I live to Auraria Campus). And since I am working, I will probably have to write up days of posts in advance and use the scheduled posting feature in WordPress (which is an awesome feature, I really have got to say!). But I like blogging on my own computer and at my own convenience and within my own time frame. These are things that I thoroughly enjoy and miss deeply.

… and checking my e-mail on my cell phone - I can do some internet things on my cell phone and even then, they are pretty limited. I can use Google maps, I can Google search, I can browse some websites with minimal difficulty and these are not really “problems” for me. However, checking e-mail on my phone is. Whenever a comment is posted on this blog, it goes into a moderation queue where I manually approve or delete each and every comment that gets through the spam filters. When I check my e-mail on my phone and click the link to approve the comment, it won’t let me log in. There is probably some javascript component to the login process of WordPress or something that the phone cannot do. This means that the comment has to sit in the moderation queue until I can drag myself down to Auraria campus to approve it. I’d like to allow open commenting, but I have decided that it does not work because there are some people out there that know my old name and, for now at least, I’d like to try to keep that as private as humanly possible.

And let’s face it - other people’s computers suck! - If you are a big fan of Firefox or Flock and you use someone’s computer, the chances are that they will be using Internet Exploder. And most public computers are PCs and not Macs, which is irritating for us Macheads. So, when I say that other people’s computers suck, I am talking about those of us who had really good computers that we enjoyed using. Computers that were configured the right way and can be used in a way that we need them to.

The PowerBook can run Leopard - There are many 12″ Powerbook G4 computers that have been loaded to the maximum amount of memory (1.5GB), have the fastest processors (1.5GHz) and have brand-spanking new hard drives (many at 160GB) so they can run Leopard pretty damn well.

I have been looking at eBay and I have decided that this is the place where I would seriously want to get my PowerBook, as many of the people selling these on eBay are PowerBook owners. They have all the software I want and have configured it to a way that is pleasing to me. They have maxed out the ram and hard drives because of the fact that these computers were their personal computers before they decided to give up and buy an Intel Mac of some kind.