bio: "I was born on a far distant planet, which exploded when my father found out. Making my escape in a rented spacecraft, I found my way to Earth where I was raised by Earth parents. Trying to pretend to be a normal Earthling; I went to school, got married, and had three children.

"I am still waiting for my super powers to develop.

"Actually, I have led a rather ordinary life with interests in analog photography, philosophy and using personal computers to pretend to write a best seller while wasting time updating software, fixing disk permissions, and the like. My first computer was an Apple IIc, and I still own (and use) a sage iMac G3 DV. Just recently I have been recycling a Pismo Powerbook G3 and have been thinking about converting my record collection (kids, that's an audio media before cassette tapes and CDs) to AAC files. Anything to avoid writing.

"I am, of course, a promoter of using vintage computers to accomplish simple, ordinary tasks. I blame my father, naturally. My father lived through the Great Depression and, as a result, I lived through it as well. Our first television was given to us - it was the size of a washer or dryer. The screen was about as large as a big paperback book. It had tubes (kids, they used those back in the day when dinosaurs ruled the earth), and I thought my father was going to have a heart attack when the man in the electronics store told me that they no longer made vacuum tubes and that they were being replaced with transistors. My father went out and bought a transistor television (black and white, since 'you don't really need color, you can imagine colors'; which served us into the 1970s when my brother just couldn't align the picture tube anymore. My dad bought a black and white portable.

"Long after my brother and I had left home, my father bought a color wide-screen TV. When I discovered this while visiting, I turned to my wife and said, 'Honey, back the van up to the door, I'm taking that television!'"

• A very Pismo Christmas in April, 2008.04.30. Everyone maintaining a vintage Mac should have a parts donor, and sometimes the parts machine may have upgrades for your old Mac.
• Apple QuickTake digicam found, but how can you use it?, 2008.04.10. The old IT guy never threw away anything, the new IT guy found a QuickTake 150 while cleaning, and it won't work with modern Macs.
• Designing a better laptop: Look to the past, 2008.02.27. Modern Apple notebooks have less expansion and upgrade options than G3 PowerBooks from a decade ago
• Stupid Pismo tricks, 2008 edition, 2008.02.20. Six uses for the weight saving device and how to use the Pismo as a DVD player.
• The Mac vs. PC debate, 2008.03.06. The debate has been raging since 1984, and the simple truth is that both types of computers do the same kind of thing, just a bit differently.
• Power your recycled laptop with a rebuilt battery, 2008.02.20. Old notebook computers usually mean old batteries that may be dead or on their last legs. You can buy a replacement battery, or you can have your old battery rebuilt.
• Recycle old computers by repurposing them, not retiring them, 2008.02.12. Old computers, especially Macs, may have a lot of life in them when we're done using them. What if we reused them for those who otherwise would have no acces to computers?
• Could a wireless dock be in the MacBook Air's future?, My Turn, 2008.02.11. The MacBook Air is too limited in terms of connectivity, but what if Apple thought outside the box and created a MacBook Dock that connected by WiFi?
• MacBook Air: What do you do when there's no WiFi?, My Turn, 2008.01.22. Every modern PowerBook had ethernet and a modem, but how do you connect the MacBook Air when there's no WiFi service?
• This old Pismo, John Hatchett, My Turn, 2008.01.08. Tips on upgrading a used Pismo for better performance under Mac OS X.

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