- 2006.07.27
We all use our computer day in and day out for some
task or another. But what happens when we shut them off or put them to
sleep at the end of a long workday? Well, gentle reader, put you mind
at ease because you're about to hear a story that those of us at
Vintage Mac Living like to call
The Secret Life of Computers
Once upon a time, in a house far far away, there was a computer lab
filled with Macintosh computers.
The two oldest machines were General McCoy (a Macintosh 512K) and his wife
Lisa (an Apple Lisa, just
in case you didn't guess that), and their 13 children: Pulses (a
Mac Plus),Little Seezers (an
SE), Big Seezers (an SE/30), Classy (a Mac Classic II), Elsie (a
Mac LC), Porty (a PowerBook 170), Vicki (a Power Mac 8600), Fred (a 9600), Gee (a Beige G3), Blue (a Blue & White G3), Bondi (a
Bondi iMac), Indy (an
Indigo iMac), and Jay
(a Sawtooth G4).
One night, after their owner had turned them all off and gone to
bed, they all turned themselves back on and decided to play a game.
"What game should we play?" asked Indy.
The computers looked at each other, knowing that Jay would step in
and suggest a game that he could play better than the rest of them.
"We should play Quake 3," said Jay.
"No way!" said
General McCoy, "We should play something that everyone is good at! I'm
too old to play anything like that, and so is your mother."
Of course, everyone already knew that!
Bondi didn't really want to play that game either; her old Rage Pro
Turbo graphics couldn't hold a candle to her brother Indy's Rage 128,
let alone Jay's AGP Radeon 7000.
"Okay" said General McCoy, "Pulses, Little Seezers, your Mother, and
I will play a networked game of Chess."
"All right. Why don't Big Seezers, Classy, Elsie, Porty, and Vicki
play Spectre?" asked Jay
"That sounds good," said Vicki
"And the rest of us can play 4x4 Evolution," said Bondi.
So it was decided, and everyone was going to play a game that they
were good at.
They all opened their programs, and disaster struck! General McCoy
crashed!
He got the infamous "Sorry, a system error has occurred"
message.
So he restarted himself, and it came up again on top of the "Welcome
to Macintosh" screen.
So he restated himself again, and this time he managed to start
up.
"Boy, do I have a headache," said General McCoy. "I think I need to
backup and make a new startup disk".
"Do you want to do it now?" asked Lisa
"No, I don't need to do it now. I'll do it tomorrow.
"Come on guys, lets have some fun!" said General McCoy.
So they all opened the games once more, and everyone started
playing.
General McCoy and Lisa started playing their game of chess, as did
Pulses and Little Seezers.
General McCoy was really good at chess, and easily beat Lisa,a nd
they both had a good time.
After they quit the game, they both went online so do a search for
other games that they could play.
They both liked Missile Command and Pac Man. They downloaded both
games but decided to save them for another night.
Pulses and Little Seezers got bored with chess and decided to play
Pac Mac.
Pulses wasn't doing too well while Little Seezers was doing great.
But then Pulses went online and got the cheat codes to the game. He got
though the entire game in just three minutes.
So Little Seezers logged into Pulses via AppleTalk and moved his
System File onto the desktop. Needless to say, Pulses crashed and
couldn't reboot.
General McCoy was angry at Little Seezers for what he had done to
Pulses, so he told Little Seezers to shut himself down.
So he Shut Down, but before he did, he apologized for what he had
done to Pulses.
General McCoy was upset about what Little Seezers did to Pulses, but
he knew there was nothing he could do. His owner would have to fix
him.
General McCoy was tired, as was Lisa, so they decided to shut off
for the night and let the kids finish the games that they were
playing.
Meanwhile, Big Seezers, Classy, Elsie, Porty, and Vicki were all
playing Spectre, an old first person shooter.
Vicki was the fastest machine playing that game, so she was doing
the best. She was shooting everyone in her path and grabbing the flags
faster than anyone else could. But after a while she got bored with the
game and decided to shut down for the night.
Big Seezers won, because he had played the game a lot more than the
others had.
While all of this was going on, Fred, Gee, Blue, Indy, and Jay were
all playing 4x4 Evolution.
It was a short race, only 5 laps.
Jay thought he was going to beat everyone else, so he drove a Ford
Excursion with an automatic transmission.
Blue decided to do something different. He decided to drive a custom
car that his owner wrote for the game, a 1990 Acura Legend with a
5-speed manual transmission.
Indy ran a Chevy Blazer with an automatic transmission, Bondi ran a
Lexus RS300 with an automatic transmission, and Fred ran Nissan Xterra
with an automatic transmission.
The race started and, as expected, Jay took off in the lead. But
that only lasted for a few seconds, as Blue started gaining on him and
passed him in just a few seconds.
That 5-speed Acura Legend has a big advantage, and Blue knew that.
He had read all about Acura Legends, because his owner is always
reading about them in online forums and email lists.
Soon Jay and everyone else were left in Blue's virtual dust.
Jay tried to take a few shortcuts to get ahead of Blue, but he ran
into a bunch of trees, slowing him down more.
Fred, Bondi, and Indy knew that this was a war zone, so they left
the game and shut down, leaving Blue and Jay to go head to head for the
last two laps.
Jay managed to gain on Blue in the last half of the last lap, but
then they hit a hard corner. Jay flipped his Excursion, which reset him
to the last checkpoint.
He started to gain on Blue again, and Blue saw that.
It was the final stretch of the race, only about two city blocks to
go. Jay was right on Blue's tail when Blue hit the NOS button and raced
far ahead of him, winning the race by about 100 feet.
Jay was really mad and wanted a rematch, but Blue declined.
Blue was tired and said, "It's almost time for our owner to get up.
We should both get some rest."
Jay agreed, and they both quit 4x4 Evolution.
But they were too late. By the time they had gone to sleep, it was
already sunrise, and their owner was getting up to check his email.
Their owner went over to Jay, only to find the Games window
open.
"I wonder what kind of mischief you have been up to," said the
owner. "I swear sometime I think you're all alive."
