For anyone that is feeling the pressure of this technology rat-race we now call normal life, I recommend getting a new laptop with Windows Vista. I have had my new laptop for about a month now and I can testify that with Windows Vista it’s like I’m back with my Tandy500. It really forces me to slow down and wait. From power button to actual interaction I’d say I have about ten minutes. A little longer than it takes my coffee to brew in the morning. It teaches me lessons like don’t take for granted that your computer is on and two programs are running at once. You never know when that black screen is going to come.

We have bigger problems though, sick and serious problems that will throw a black screen the size of ten million lives over us all if we do not post up. Today over a egg scramble at Millies, N told me that she has very legitimate information that we are going to be experiencing an earthquake of a seven or higher magnitude on the Richter scale within thirty years. Not maybe, just when. I usually find this kind of information liberating but not today. I’ve become hip to FUN: the Fierce Urgency of Now - which is not only an Obama campaign slogan adapted from a MLK Jr speech, but a training motto for the Ohio State football team. It is now the battle cry for the seven people I have assembled on my earthquake apocalypse team. Doomsday in a hopelessly un-evacuate-able city is a challenge not even Survivorman would take. We know we won’t have the luxury of choice or superior camera equipment so we have started to buy bottled water and Cliff bars. We have a pedal bike route to some off-the-grid hippy compounds in the desert and I am teaching myself general surgery and welding. I can only hope it is enough. We can’t all be Windows Vista all the time.