Home Is Where The Mac Is? November 19th, 1999 I moved. I don't like moving. Wait, that's not true. I loathe moving with every fiber of my being. I would rather take a Mac SE/30 and jam it in my eye than move ever again. Heck, I would rather work on a 486 running Windows 95 while working on a 60 MB TIFF file in Photoshop 3 than ever move again. Alas, the gods of housing do not necessarily see fit to make that possible, so I am faced with moving. The key point about moving is when you feel like you are "home" in your new dwelling. Feeling like you are at home is a very important part of life. It is also an aspect of living that we ironically tend to not think about until we miss it. For me, it can sometimes take a while for a new place to feel like home, but this time it was different. I was originally scheduled to move on November 15th. This, of course, meant that I didn't have to start packing until about the 13th or 14th. I am afraid I am quite male in that way, and despite my advancing years I still put such things off. Sure, I had thought about packing, even planning as much as figuring out how many boxes I would need. I certainly had no intention on getting those boxes until I needed them though, say the 13th or 14th. I mean, who needs a bunch of empty boxes lying around until you need them, right? Right. So let's head back to November 6th, a full two weeks, and I mean a full two weeks, before I was going to be moving. Circumstances bestowed upon me the opportunity to go ahead and move in early, on the 6th. Being that there was that full two weeks before I was going to move, I certainly had not done any of that annoying packing, box gathering, or other preparations for the move. So here it was, a Saturday, late in the afternoon, and I started a process I should have started the moment I decided I needed a new place. <SIDEBAR> 9 days in the male-mind is the same thing as two weeks. This is especially true when it involves moving or anything else to which you are not looking forward. </SIDEBAR> You can probably imagine the misery I put myself through with all this ridiculous procrastination. It was great to move in early, but the lack of preparedness not only made the process take longer, it has made putting the new house in order far more chaotic than it should have been. I should have thought far enough in advance to have found a girlfriend before I moved! Women do tend to have such a talent for keeping things organized. At least that's my perspective as I look in awe upon the fairer sex. <SIDEBAR> Before the feminists of the world unite in a Holy Flame War to teach me the error of my ways, please realize that I am serious when I say that females are usually more organized than males. Men, or at least American men, just plain tend to suck when it comes to moving. Sure we handle all the box moving and such… Anyway, you may now commence with the flames… </SIDEBAR? So what the heck does this have to do with the Mac? Glad you asked. For one thing, I could write about how much the Mac helped me with planning the move. Alas, as there was no planning involved, I don't have too much to say on the matter. No, the Mac comes into this story at the point the column began. It's about feeling at home. I actually got enough stuff moved that first Saturday night to stay at the new place. It wasn't pretty mind you, but it worked. The next day I moved everything else. Boxes, furniture, paintings, and books decorate the house like flotsam from a flood. There is an order to it all, if you understand higher mathematics that is. Despite all this, and despite the fact that I still don't have everything set up, I do feel at home. More important to the point of this column, I remember when it was that I felt at home too. It was when I set up my Mac, the two monitors, and the Lava lamp. The Lava lamp wasn't the important part; it was the Mac. Despite the chaos and stacks of boxes that surround me, I felt at home the moment the lovely Mac chimes sounded for the first time. Those weird PC fanatics who read sites like The Mac Observer so that they can get into a frothing rage about how much Macs suck and-we-are-just-too-stupid-to-see-it will probably take great delight in my saying this, but this move made me realize that the most important material part of my house is my Mac. That's something I can live with. Your comments are welcomed.