Try not to laugh too much at my tragedies. My friends always do but I'm careful to select for friends who delight in my pain. Sometimes I gave rolling road reports to friends as I drove about the highways and byways and I called to report a speeding ticket in Ohio. I called Kannafoot from Pennsylvania a few hours later to report, yep, got another speeding ticket. I was mortified to hear his laughter, of course.
Note: those were two speeding tickets out of five in eight months my Chrysler Sebring Cop Magnet. Here's the beauty part as most of the tickets were in different states so I never lost my drivers license although they did cost quite a bit of money.
For this tragic tale, it, at first, begins well because I was ecstatic at taking delivery of a new Mac Pro super bad-ass desktop computer. In those times and probably now as well those were the far and away best for video and audio processing and both of which, in my view, are the only useful applications for computers anyway. Some may say gaming is the most important application for computers and who am I to disagree.
Note: I loathe computer games and never play them because ... if they're available then I will play them ... and waste another half a day or so before returning to something which might even be (gasp) useful.
The new Mac Pro and the Mac Pro I had already were real hotrods as I had the jingle jack in those times to get the full kit with max memory, max power, and all the video processing goodness I could manage. Video processing takes big compute power and now there were two of them standing proudly on each side of my desk.
In-between the computers was one of the last really big CRT monitors, fat, heavy, and quite large but such a great image. There was also miscellaneous kit for network mayhem and whatever other devilment I required. There was also a smaller monitor now relegated to the original Mac Pro which was still highly fire-breathing since it was barely two years old.
Perhaps I neglected to mention my desks were not quite as lavishly appointed as my computer kit and was, in fact, trash I could dredge up from anywhere. The full elegance of the desk kit may be appreciated in knowing it consisted of two file cabinets at opposite ends and a junked door as the desk table upon them.
There is one teeny tiny problem in using a door for this purpose since it is much wider than the cabinets which support it. Likely you will deduce from that fact alone what came next but don't tell the rest of the audience.
As I sat there in awe and reverence of all this computing magnificence, the computer desk started to list toward the rear. The movement was slow as the desktop moved downward and there was no move except to scramble to my feet to try to prevent it.
Visualize, if you will the glorious moment as I'm leaned over the desktop, holding it back and trying to prevent it from slipping further. This was futile because consider the leverage. The weight of all that computer kit was slipping to the back of the desk and it became more and more difficult to hold it up.
There wasn't much to be done since I needed both arms to hold up the desk so I couldn't use my cellphones or the desk phone which was also right in front of me ... on the desk. There was no-one else living in my apartment and trying to shout for help was pointless because there was only a hateful old biddy in the next apartment and she would bang on the wall if anyone so much as passed gas in mine. Maybe you get like that when you're old and rich but didn't get much sex while accumulating all that filthy lucre.
(Ed: what did you do?)
What did I do? What DID I FOOKIN' DO???
I had to let it go. I was fresh out of options and had no move. Checkmate. Those computers goin' die.
Oh, by the way, did I tell you about this apartment ... and how much I hated it. The Mystery Lady wasn't there. It was so clean it was as sterile as an operating theater and I had the Harridan next-door.
But, yeah, the view over Narragansett Bay was beautiful. Apart from that, I was just a rat in a research lab and this was not one of the highlights of my life.
So there I was and all of the kit hadn't so much as bounced off the wall but rather came to a nasty effect as they whacked into the wall behind it.
The big CRT monitor had almost no chance and those big tube monitors back then were damn expensive. I think it would be about a grand to fix it so that is the same as it's too far gone to save.
The new Mac Pro did surprisingly well and survived relatively unscathed where as the original one didn't fare so well and at least one disk drive inside it did not survive. That was most unfortunate since that disk was also a repository for much of the music I had been making for the last ten years or so.
For most or all of the previous decade I had been using the Opcode Vision sequencer for building up tracks for songs with a mix of MIDI and analog tracks. None of the songs I made during that time survived and it was never possible to resurrect Vision because Gibson bought the company ... and promptly ran it into the ground. The end for ten years of music.
There was also video I made during that time and most of that expired as well.
There is only one Fraser response to such a situation and that's to make more music to get things going again. That did happen and it hasn't stopped to this day although it may be (i.e. definitely is) faltering just now.
So, if'n you want some computers you love trashed beyond recognition then y'all give me a call, you hear? (larfs)
Sure it's funny now ... but the story was about fifteen years ago. It wasn't precisely Top Ten Comedy at the time, as I recall.
Note: those were two speeding tickets out of five in eight months my Chrysler Sebring Cop Magnet. Here's the beauty part as most of the tickets were in different states so I never lost my drivers license although they did cost quite a bit of money.
For this tragic tale, it, at first, begins well because I was ecstatic at taking delivery of a new Mac Pro super bad-ass desktop computer. In those times and probably now as well those were the far and away best for video and audio processing and both of which, in my view, are the only useful applications for computers anyway. Some may say gaming is the most important application for computers and who am I to disagree.
Note: I loathe computer games and never play them because ... if they're available then I will play them ... and waste another half a day or so before returning to something which might even be (gasp) useful.
The new Mac Pro and the Mac Pro I had already were real hotrods as I had the jingle jack in those times to get the full kit with max memory, max power, and all the video processing goodness I could manage. Video processing takes big compute power and now there were two of them standing proudly on each side of my desk.
In-between the computers was one of the last really big CRT monitors, fat, heavy, and quite large but such a great image. There was also miscellaneous kit for network mayhem and whatever other devilment I required. There was also a smaller monitor now relegated to the original Mac Pro which was still highly fire-breathing since it was barely two years old.
Perhaps I neglected to mention my desks were not quite as lavishly appointed as my computer kit and was, in fact, trash I could dredge up from anywhere. The full elegance of the desk kit may be appreciated in knowing it consisted of two file cabinets at opposite ends and a junked door as the desk table upon them.
There is one teeny tiny problem in using a door for this purpose since it is much wider than the cabinets which support it. Likely you will deduce from that fact alone what came next but don't tell the rest of the audience.
As I sat there in awe and reverence of all this computing magnificence, the computer desk started to list toward the rear. The movement was slow as the desktop moved downward and there was no move except to scramble to my feet to try to prevent it.
Visualize, if you will the glorious moment as I'm leaned over the desktop, holding it back and trying to prevent it from slipping further. This was futile because consider the leverage. The weight of all that computer kit was slipping to the back of the desk and it became more and more difficult to hold it up.
There wasn't much to be done since I needed both arms to hold up the desk so I couldn't use my cellphones or the desk phone which was also right in front of me ... on the desk. There was no-one else living in my apartment and trying to shout for help was pointless because there was only a hateful old biddy in the next apartment and she would bang on the wall if anyone so much as passed gas in mine. Maybe you get like that when you're old and rich but didn't get much sex while accumulating all that filthy lucre.
(Ed: what did you do?)
What did I do? What DID I FOOKIN' DO???
I had to let it go. I was fresh out of options and had no move. Checkmate. Those computers goin' die.
Oh, by the way, did I tell you about this apartment ... and how much I hated it. The Mystery Lady wasn't there. It was so clean it was as sterile as an operating theater and I had the Harridan next-door.
But, yeah, the view over Narragansett Bay was beautiful. Apart from that, I was just a rat in a research lab and this was not one of the highlights of my life.
So there I was and all of the kit hadn't so much as bounced off the wall but rather came to a nasty effect as they whacked into the wall behind it.
The big CRT monitor had almost no chance and those big tube monitors back then were damn expensive. I think it would be about a grand to fix it so that is the same as it's too far gone to save.
The new Mac Pro did surprisingly well and survived relatively unscathed where as the original one didn't fare so well and at least one disk drive inside it did not survive. That was most unfortunate since that disk was also a repository for much of the music I had been making for the last ten years or so.
For most or all of the previous decade I had been using the Opcode Vision sequencer for building up tracks for songs with a mix of MIDI and analog tracks. None of the songs I made during that time survived and it was never possible to resurrect Vision because Gibson bought the company ... and promptly ran it into the ground. The end for ten years of music.
There was also video I made during that time and most of that expired as well.
There is only one Fraser response to such a situation and that's to make more music to get things going again. That did happen and it hasn't stopped to this day although it may be (i.e. definitely is) faltering just now.
So, if'n you want some computers you love trashed beyond recognition then y'all give me a call, you hear? (larfs)
Sure it's funny now ... but the story was about fifteen years ago. It wasn't precisely Top Ten Comedy at the time, as I recall.
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