and your SE?
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Ah, right. So. I got my very own SE in the mid-90s from an office that had upgraded to PowerMacs. I still use it to this day (though since I bought an iMac I haven't been using it as much). But the real story begins way back when I was around five years old--twelve years ago. My father used to bring his office SE home on weekends for us to use. I would type stories (I did say I was a writer, didn't I?) and play StuntCopter, Crystal Quest, and dozens of other entertaining (and some vaguely educational) games. Eventually the SE became ours to keep, and we started using the Internet about seven years ago. We used the Internet program Microphone for a while, eventually getting the much more high-tech Smartcom II program. Our ISP used Lynx, which I became extremely adept at maneuvering. The computer revolution of the mid-1990s completely passed us by as we happily tapped away at our 1987 Macintosh SE. At some point my brother and I got our very own SE's, so yes, we currently have three of them in our house.
But eventually, it turned sour, as most stories do. I was maintaining a website at Geocities, and I wanted to do more with it, but due to the limitations presented by the Lynx browser I couldn't even upload pictures (that is, if I had been able to make pictures to upload, I wouldn't have been able to do it). I was also sick of our dot-matrix printer, which was perpetually out of ink. So in January 1998 we got our blueberry iMac. I've been thrilled with the iMac and love it to pieces, but I still have a special place in my heart for my little SE.
Despite the iMac presence, I do turn on my SE occasionally. It has over one hundred stories that I wrote over a period of many years, and it's like looking back at my past whenever I turn the computer on. I think SE's have become nostalgia pieces that people like to collect--who could throw them out, really? That's why a paean to the SE was born--to assist people who still use these great computers in the course of their daily lives. And they are great--that my SE was made in 1987 and still works perfectly is a sign that it was simply made well to begin with. I haven't done anything with it--no hardware upgrades or anything. It just works.
Anyway, enough of me rabbling on. I hope you'll check out my FAQ and other resources that I've put up here. Thanks so much for stopping by!
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