If you regard a computer as nothing more than a box that can get you on Facebook to check out videos of cats jumping up and falling off tables, then this will seem very silly. If you can name every computer you ever owned like some people remember cars ("I had a Quadra 660 A/V tricked out with a passive telephony GeoPort modem; that baby could do zero to 300 baud in seven seconds") then you will understand.

First Tech's a long-time Apple computer store in Uptown, and they're closing their doors. When I read the news I thought: got my first Mac there. Fred sold it to me 28 years ago. What are the chances he's still there?

Walked into the store with a yellowed Mac Plus from the Reagan years, and got some looks: Bringing in a 1986 computer and asking if it can be fixed is a bit like requesting brain surgery for a parakeet. It was rather pathetic; it's like bringing your kid to the pediatrician's retirement party, except no one says "look how you've grown up! What do you have now, 64 GB of RAM?"

Anyway, there was Fred. I took a picture of the computer he sold me back in the Reagan years.

More computing power in the phone that took the picture than the computer the phone that took the picture.

PS: title of the blog post comes from a customer Fred recalled as the Best Famous Person to enter the store: Douglas Adams.

SWEET, SWEET JUSTICE Hysteria over violent video games is bipartisan folly; the California law that put a $1,000 fine if you distributed a shoot-'em-up without the proper sticker was signed by Arnie (R); when SCOTUS slapped it down a California Democratic who sponsored the bill trotted out this response:

Leaving aside the rote boilerplate outrage, it's amusing to note that Mr. Yee is this guy:

Everyone's noting his anti-gun stance, but the anti-video-game fulminations are just as delicious, especially since he has now become a character from Grand Theft Auto.

Votd Title: "Redneck Road Rage / Instant Karma."

I think he was giving her the finger because she was holding her phone incorrectly.