Powerbook – Boolie

Ten Years Gone

Templeton died just over ten years ago on December 8, 2007. This little fellow changed my life. I took this picture while he was recuperating from surgery in January 2006.

In May of 2004 my new laptop arrived, a 15″ Apple Powerbook. It was a big step for me in two ways, I was not only switching full-time to the Mac but also to a laptop. Previously I had a smaller Apple laptop for the train and a Dell desktop for photo work, but my delight with a 12″ Apple Powerbook purchased months prior convinced me to go full-time with the bigger laptop. It was a good decision, that laptop remains one of my all-time favorites and I used it daily for years. All these years later and my current laptop is but a refinement of that classic design.

I’ve stayed a laptop-only user pretty much since then (I do have a Mac mini I use as a file server), but each time I’ve replaced a computer I’ve debated if I should go back to a split setup. I’m going through that again as it’s time to replace my aging laptop, although I’m leaning towards getting another 15″ one. The only reason I’d even consider a desktop is that lovely display on the iMac, but I’d have to go back to working at a desk at times instead of doing all my work on the couch covered in cats.

Speaking of cats, the lovely little creature who came out to inspect the new box was my beloved Scout, she and Templeton always liked to inspect new boxes.

The Master At Work

All three of our current cats are spot stealers but nobody can hold a candle to Templeton, master of the art. On this night he was recuperating from surgery so I was in the guest room with him and when I stepped out for a moment, not long enough to bother putting his cone back on, I came back to find him sitting at my laptop.

The Guest Room

Looking at this picture from 2006 of Templeton recuperating in our guest room reminds me of the role the room has played in the lives of several of our cats. He spent a little time here in isolation from our cat Scout until he recovered from surgery to remove a sewing needle in his stomach. Two years later after he died, we adopted Sam and Emma and they spent time here before we were ready to introduce them to Scout. Now little Trixie is in the room after we adopted her in January, we’re just beginning her introductions to the rest of the family. Boo never spent time here after we adopted him as it was July and we don’t have air conditioning and this room gets rather hot during the summer.

The picture above I was surprised to see I had never put online before, the pictures below have been but I’ve recently re-edited them. Templeton was amazing and completely changed my thinking about cats, all the cats that have followed owe a debt of gratitude to this charming and occasionally mischievous little fellow in a handsome gray tuxedo coat. The pictures aren’t posed, I had been editing pictures on my Powerbook and got up for a moment and Templeton did what he always did — he stole my spot.

Mr. Ambassador

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my home office lately, but it isn’t just my physical life that’s getting organized. I’ve been shooting digitally since Christmas of 2000 and over the years my pictures ended up pretty scattered around. Worse yet I have gotten hopelessly behind in sorting and editing. Worst of all I wasn’t sure which ones were properly backed up.

So it was time to start getting my digital life in order too.

Thanks to a few days of drudgery, all my pictures are now stored in a common directory format on one big hard drive, loaded into Aperture, and being backed up onto a second hard drive as I type. While loading in my older pictures, I couldn’t help but take a break every so often to play around with a few.

For some reason I never edited this picture of Templeton back in the day, he was inspecting my 15″ Powerbook shortly after it was delivered in May of 2004. I’ve written about the two of them before, so it was kind of funny to see them together at the moment the laptop arrived. I was rather ambivalent about cats until I met him, but he was such an ambassador for the feline kind that I can’t imagine my life without them now.

What a wonderful little creature he was.

Love & Loss

After the long writeup about workflow in the previous post, one more thought about tools. This is a picture of Templeton with the 15″ Powerbook I referenced in that post, my favorite computer of all time until my current MacBook Pro.

The picture was taken in January 2006 while Templeton was recuperating from surgery to remove the sewing needle he swallowed right before we left on Christmas vacation. He had to be kept from running and jumping, and isolated from Scout, so one of us stayed with him in the guest room while the other stayed with Scout. He had to wear a plastic cone to keep him from pulling out his stitches, but we gave him supervised time with it off so he could relax and clean his fur away from the incision.

I left the room for a brief moment and came back to find him sitting at my laptop, paws on the trackpad as though he was settled in for work. What he had really done was an old Templeton standby, though.

He had stolen my spot.

Templeton and my 15″ Powerbook. I loved them both. I miss one. Important as they are, tools are just tools.

A Return to Normalcy

I’ve always loved that President Warren Harding made up the phrase “A Return to Normalcy” as his campaign slogan and it stuck, so now people seemingly talk about returning to normalcy after every disaster. At least something good came out of Harding’s administration.

Things are starting to return to normal, both cats went to the vet this morning and had good reports. Templeton has mended pretty well from his stomach surgery and the only real issue is the possibility of early stages of kidney disease. One of the little tidbits that came out of his emergency surgery is that we learned he only has one functioning kidney, as one of them never properly formed.

I’ll give you one of mine if you need it little one.

The picture above probably seems like it was setup so that it would look like Templeton was working on my Powerbook, but it wasn’t posed. He was still recuperating at that point, isolated to the guest bedroom, so I had spent the evening with him on the bed while I sorted through some pictures I had taken. I went downstairs to get something and when I came back up, Templeton had moved to where I was sitting and plopped himself down in front of the keyboard. He likes to take my seat when I get up for reasons I don’t quite understand, but it can get a little comical in my office when he steals my seat the moment I get up.

Templeton is zonked out in one of my office chairs as I write this, with Scout sleeping on the floor below him. Just like the old days.

Tag: Powerbook