Well…here’s a little bit of news for the interested and the browsing. In about.. oh… three days, I’ll go offline. And, barring an unforeseen miracle, will remain offline for quite some time.

You see, I’m currently online by virtue of a computer that my Dad has borrowed from his work… he’s a school principal, and the only mac user at a school full of PCs. His school won a pair of eMacs in a competition, and were at a loss at what to do with them - so he appropriated one for his office, and one for work at home.

Needless to say, I adopted the eMac rather enthusiastically. But, a new term is about to start at school and one of his teachers has asked if he might have the eMac for a term, might even be thinking of switching, perhaps. Which, of course, deprives me of the eMac.

But, you might cry, surely you have another computer, one of your own? Well… yes. I have an iMac DV 400… which as a blown modem. I tried to get this modem fixed once, when the machine was under warranty. The first time I sent it to the shop, the tech returned it and said, ‘Configuration problem.’ Since I was using a borrowed iBook with the exact same configuration, I politely said ‘bollocks’ and returned it to the shop. Then the tech, apparently deciding I wasn’t quite as gullible as he’d hoped, returned it saying, ‘primarily a software/configuration problem… not to worry, I’ve erased your hard disk, so it’s all clean again!’

I didn’t send the machine back to the shop. Not after losing a month of data. Anyway, I then kept the aforementioned iBook for a year… but my Dad changed schools, and the iBook was returned. And then, I obtained the eMac… but in between these two events, I decided to purchase an external modem (I wasn’t taking my machine to the shop again) to serve me as my internet minion, as I wasn’t to know about the eMac, as it hadn’t yet been won.

Nice modem. Shiny. USB-like. Small problem… it stays online for, on average, about ten minutes. Which, when using it for anything other than a quick email check, results in a lot of phone calls. Which, as the bill showed, isn’t good. The tech support guys were really nice about it, even ended up replacing the modem as nothing else seemed to work… but no dice.

So, when this eMac is returned, I’ll have a machine that can stay online for about ten minutes at a time (twenty if it’s in a good mood), and as such, my internet surfing/downloading is more or less over. I’ll still try to keep on top of my email, and probably will manage to keep updating this journal… just don’t expect to see me around as much, especially not on any IM services, be it AIM, MSN or IRC.

Maybe… maybe the USB modem, having had a rest for, oh, what… three months? might even decide to stay online. But I’m not holding my breath.

-Andiyar