G4 Dies: New Museum Computer Needed
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 19th, 2010
Since the beginning of my time writing for Cryptomundo, my old reliable G4 has carried me through thick and thin. Sadly, that 2004 vintage G4 tower died, officially, last Thursday night. This computer has been the source of over 6000 blog postings!! Seeing it slowly fade away was quite upsetting.
Now, temporarily, I am working at writing my blogs via my son’s old hand-me-down 2004 or 2005 iBook G4, which is like trying to fund a navy by having a bake sale. Please have patience with me until a replacement computer arrives. I will not even go into the panic attacks and lack of communication links I am having with the loss of so many e-addresses, snail mail contacts, images, files, email archives, and book/article docs that appear to be frozen within this dead tower! Forgive me if you have been trying to reach me.
A friend passes away!
If you would like to help out, and assist with the purchase of a new computer dedicated for the International Cryptozoology Museum and Cryptomundo columns, please think about making a holiday donation this week! Click below to contribute even ten bucks. It will help!
Click above and give anything you can. Thank you!!
In the meantime, I am debating what to do with this expired G4 tower.
Should I turn it into a mailbox? (It scares me a bit to see that Boing Boing was discussing what to do with converted G4 towers in 2006! I guess I really got some mileage out of my machine.)
A planter?
A hamster cage? A very small cryptid cage?
A historical example of an object used in early 21st century writing, to be installed in the museum?
Any ideas?
Thank you for your support and condolences.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I understand, I’m still using my ’98 G4.
Condolences for your sad loss
A Klingon rite of passage? Look skywards and scream in anguish (as you no doubt did many times when trying to use it) at the passing of its spirit. Then discard the outer case as ‘just a shell.’
Alternatively return the silicon that made it work to the very soil from whence it came.
As a fellow Mac user, I commiserate with you in your time of loss. The same thing happened to me last summer. However, there is some consolation to be had in the thought that “he is not gone, just gone before.” Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, silicon to silicon. . . .
Hello Loren,
This will officially be my first posting since I registered. I do computer repair and sales as a hobby. [Personal message of advice, concern and sympathy deleted.] Happy Holidays and God Bless!
Regards,
TCN
I would suggest a cool diorama with little plastic cryptozoological figurines.
My sympathies Loren,
Last September I lost my PC to a really bad power surge, it bypassed my surge protector, and fried my video card. Being a poor student currently, it took me several weeks of computer labs and borrowed laptops before I could replace my hardware.
During those weeks of no daily Cryptomundo or C2C ; I almost went crazy! At one point in my youth I swore-off technology as a great evil (lol), I was saddened to realize how dependant on my computer I have become!
I certainly hope you can be back up and running soon.
-Mahalo X, Deep in the Oregon Wilderness
Loren you should be able to turn the drive in the broken computer into a slave on a new computer with a new drive and operating system. Then you can possibly get your information off.
Those data loss panic attacks are a real pain. You could use this opportunity to look into computer programs such as acronis and also a regular external data back up system. Having been through this before I put the data safe necessary actions together and back up my computer weekly so if any hardware or software problem does occur, the biggest inconvenience would be reloading programs onto an entierly new computer and copying across data from an external drive.
A program like acronis that copies your entire hard drive gives great peace of mind. Should a virus attack, you just boot up a rescue disk and in about 40 minutes your computer is working like it was before the inconvenience. No more virus, no more problems. Acronis should be used once a week and multiple copies of the hard drive kept over time in case a time based trojan is the cause of infection.
My backup systems give me so much peace of mind. People should have extensive backup systems in place before they suffer this sort of panic but like myself only do it once the problem has caused considerable anxiety.
Hope you don’t lose any of that data. Good luck with it.
Sorry to hear about the PC, Loren.
When the G4 finally quit, was it singing “Daisy”?
{ahem}
;~)°