Years ago, I worked at a job where we had these Mac Pro Towers, and mine was always solid with everything. No matter what graphics we had to manipulate, my Mac Pro was always up for the job, and actually spoiled me as it was faster than my big 27″ 2009 iMac at home.
My first few jobs in the graphics industry involved getting by with as little computing power and technology as possible, so this Mac Tower was something I always appreciated every time I worked with it.
A few years ago, I was talking to a friend about this, and he happened to have a tower just like the one I used to have, and he needed to find a good home for it. I don’t have any urgent need for one as my 2018 Mini fulfills my workload just fine, but that tower was a work of art, like most Macs were to one degree or another after 1997.
I do have some upgrades in mind for this tower, maybe a few projects I can put it to work on, but at the moment, I just like having it around. Having lived through the beige plastic era of computing, the design of this Mac Tower inside and out is something nice to have on display, I have no plans to ever let this one go!
I think this is a scam to get someone to click on their link; very clever. I never looked at the links that zoom conferences came from, when I used to use Zoom, but I doubt that “tinyurl” is legitimate. If somebody’s mailbox is full of these, it would be easy to click on it, leading to who-knows-where.
Driving to downtown on Colfax, I came across the ugliest building I’ve ever seen. They could have at least created something that would blend in, if they weren’t going to make the effort to build with a beautiful design, something uplifting, but no. We get a melted-plastic look.
I have read comments about the building, exclaiming that “at least it is different”. Just because something is different, doesn’t automatically make it good. Also, nearby, there is a courthouse that couldn’t be more cold and dystopian, as opposed to the one by the Capitol which is based more on Roman/Greek architecture.
This only makes me appreciate beautiful buildings that much more, as this monstrosity is the most shocking contrast between good, and bad. What they could have done with the money poured into this horrible idea is a missed opportunity to do something good for the millions of people who will pass by this building over its future.
More: This is the Populus Hotel, with 265 rooms. It is supposed to look like an aspen tree. I don’t have anything against the hotel itself, and don’t know if it is excellent or not, just that it is really ugly on the outside. I never thought for a moment of an aspen tree when looking at it.
When I see something advertised that is neat, or just a good deal, I take a snapshot, label the file, and save it in a folder. Recently I have had the need for some new shirts, so, I went to my Folder of Deals. In the time since I saved these (pictured) deals a few years ago, they have disappeared from the internet because they turned out to be scams. They would have taken my money for nothing, or given me some low-quality shirts. (According to posts I found about these “companies”.)
Also:
– Years ago I purchased a pack of six Apple-compatible charging cords; the quality of which was really, really bad. Eventually threw them into the trash.
– Last year I almost bought a VCR-DVD player that was advertised as able to record DVDs from VCR tapes. I researched that a little bit and it turns out it was a scam, but I was close to getting that. Too close.
– I few years ago I bought a USB stick that was claimed to hold 2TB of data, when in reality it just continuously overwrites existing data to give off that impression. It works, but putting too much on it is a bad idea.
However:
I’ve found some fantastic things out there as well; My Baerskin Tactical Hoodie is fantastic, my ReadFive Designs Star Wars Toy Guide is one of my most valuable (and rare) books, my Pale Blue Rechargeable Batteries are fantastic and my ZSA Moonlander keyboards have been outstanding. There are so many great products out there, but it pays to listen to your Spider-Sense when it starts going off. Suspicion and paranoia aren’t always bad things!
Randy Eric of the House Rydberg, First of His Name, Rightful Heir to the Full Shelves, Master of the Divine Husky, Pilot of Birds of Thunder and the Eighth Mark of Lincolns, Assembler of the Grand Library of House Rydberg, Slayer of Russian Checkers, and Patron of The Finest Scores Beethoven.
This Macintosh Quadra 605 from 1993 is my first Mac. If I remember correctly, with the monitor (CRT, I don’t have that anymore. Who does?) it was around $1500. Back then, in order to buy a Macintosh where I live, one had to go to this specialty store near downtown Denver. At the time, I had to pay with cash, so I went with a buddy who terrified me when he wanted to go to Burger King in this bad part of town that we had to drive through to get there… while I had this money in my pocket. But, we did accomplish the mission safely.
I did buy an Apple Laserwriter shortly after this for around $600, and used it for a very long time. That was a great printer, which still worked well when I eventually let it go for a $60 printer with more features.
Before this Quadra, I had a Magnovox PC running a system called GeoWorks, a competitor to Windows. I’d purchased it instead of a Macintosh in order to save $300 or so. While it was okay, it was lacking any software to do anything other than word processing, and simply token versions of anything else. I did a lot of writing back then, so that was okay for a while, but eventually I had to give in to the fact that paying a bit more for something that could do vastly more in return, was worth it. Poor GeoWorks, I remember watching an interview with the creator of that system, he was so frustrated with how Microsoft bullied them out of the market when they had a better system (supposedly) than Windows.
I upgraded the processor on this Quadra with one that had a co-math processor (or something to that effect), added more than the official maximum RAM, and an ethernet card. There wasn’t much more that could be done at the time. There was a PowerPC card for this, but they are extremely rare, I’ve never seen one since they stopped making them. These days, I’d buy one just because I could have the best Quadra 605 possible. Eventually I’d like to add a solid-state drive. I took the start-up battery out so it doesn’t leak and damage anything.
This Quadra has been in deep storage, in a cool area completely out of sun light. However, the beige plastic has a small amount of yellowing to it, I’m not sure if this is from the when I was using it back in the day, next to a window, or if it is just happening regardless. Super Nintendos do this, they yellow badly no matter what. I really don’t want to take the thing apart and soak it in that solution (I forgot what it was, hydrogen peroxide?) to get it back to it’s normal beige blandness. Yellow is much worse than beige!
Warcraft II would slow down quite a bit as any given network game progressed. Sim City 2000 could only go so fast, but was very playable. QuarkXPress ran well, but could bog now with big documents. It was a good Mac at a good price for the time, but it wasn’t for big programs in work environments.
The concept of having a computer like the new iMac that is so much smaller, cheaper, and more capable than this Quadra, it blows my mind how far we’ve come!
randyrydberg.org 