244 life after laptop

2020 has been a year of introspection and change for many people. Some are hard, like death. Some are fun, like a puppy. (Although...)

Back in January, my laptop died. It was the second time, a few months earlier I spent about $500 reviving it, with a new OS, ram and an SSD.

The second time, I opted to give it a break. I can do a lot on my phone, I reasoned, and I just wasn't sure about the laptop anymore.

I've had Macs since the early 90s, and was very proficient at some software, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Final Cut Pro. This was my fifth laptop, it made it eight years. It was fully loaded when I got it, the top of the line.

But then the touch screen happened. And while Microsoft moved their laptops to a touchable interface, Surface, Apple decided to have a laptop and a tablet, with different OSs. 

Looking at the landscape of where technology is going, and taking in my own ethics of trying to reduce the pile of crap I leave behind when I die, and thinking about the cramping hands, sore shoulders and broken ass I had acquired over the previous three year's struggle to write the great American novel, I did nothing.

I didn't fix my laptop, or get a new one. Instead, I got a bigger phone with a better battery.

And it was ok, by and large, day to day. It can handle smaller word docs just fine. I even did two drafts of my musical, although editing them was a bit excruciating.

Anyway, I proved to myself I could definitely live without a MacBook. Ten months on a phone only really wasn't that bad. 

But now, as the end of the year looms, I'm looking at putting together my annual book of poetry, and another draft of the musical, and a couple other things that are kinda begging for more screen space.

So I bit the bullet and bought a tablet. When tablets first came out, I thought they were a toy. I'm still slightly afraid of that. But here's the thing: nobody ever said a PC would be the beginning and end of computers. We think of laptops and desktops as serious work machines, but that's only because that's what they have been. But really, now, they're dinosaurs.

The keyboard was invented because hitting a key was a convenient way to push a lever so it would strike an impression through a carbon tape and onto a piece of paper. We reorganized the keyboard from ABCD to QWERTY because it helped keep the levers from getting stuck.

And this little bit of pre-existing infrastructure has stuck with us, to the point that, yes, I ordered a Bluetooth keyboard for my new tablet. But...

Our ability to input data has come a long way. We have audio, video, touch and gestures, and the one that got me... Pressure sensitive styluses.

See, I have another stuff problem. I make art. And while I use recycled materials, and try to sell or otherwise get rid of as much as possible, the art just keeps piling up. One thing I can do is stop making art, but I like making art.

So here we are. Looking at a new computer. A big phone, basically, with a pen.

The stylus was my basic need, but of course, when I started shopping, I realized I could either buy a cheap, kind of crappy experience, or for twice as much, I could buy the best, latest and greatest.

In the end, I could have got a cheap MacBook for what I spent on an Android tablet. A risky bet, I guess. I could have had all my old familiar software. But nah, that was then, and this is now.

I'm looking forward to checking out some of these apps, especially Clip Studio. The new, illustrated Wake and Blake is coming soon. (Or whatever I get up to.)

We skipped orange entirely.

Not sure what the word is on movie theaters.

The third wave is here.

Back when my brother was buying 50lb bags of rice, I'm not sure even he expected this to go on so long and so slowly.

Don't worry, Joe, there's still going to be plenty of pandemic to worry about come January.

(FYI, that's a joke. The time to act is now. The person to act, however, is busy having a golf tantrum.)

You know, because there's no chance they might get anyone else sick.

File under: what I didn't buy

At top is Daisy, age 18, seeking out the tiny sliver of sun from our only south facing window, which for a few minutes a day in the winter makes it all the way to the carpeted livingroom.