A comment Erbo Evans left me reminded me of the Epyx FastLoad, which I had plugged into my Commodore 64 for the better part of its life. I booted so many games up with that Cartridge just sitting in the back, riding along… making things load faster. If only we had such a wonderfully accelerative peripheral today. I'm of the persuasion who also remembers Connectix RAM Doubler and how it got ***** (five freakin' stars!) from Macworld magazine. Related utilities like Speed Doubler would follow suit.

We're blessed to live in an age where even an entry-level computer can do a great many things. It may not perform the latest 3D games adequately, but that doesn't stop people from trying — as I've witnessed watching all the folks on an integrated Intel graphics chipset attempt to get onto SL, despite them not being supported. Bless 'em, each and every one.

We hear it in the news often too: faster computers, all this talk of popularizing dual-core, then quad-core come this winter. And the counterarguments that run parallel to those, about increasing the quality of computing, or on the front of acquiring information, saying "We have all this data, but what are we going to do with it?"

Before I continue, I want to share a sad moment I had this morning. I sleep with my laptop, a MacBook Pro. Woe and behold, I was a careless sleeper and flailed around my arms, sending it crashing onto the carpet and bumping into the base of my lamp. The damage could've been much, much worse and I'm thankful it wasn't, but now it sports a dent in the back. After muddling around and searching for suggestions before work this morning, I may want to put a sticker. *sigh*

But I know what some of the voices in my head tell me, and that is that I'm so very fortunate to have not just a computer, but to have owned several computers through the course of my life thus far, and there are prolly even better ones ahead. For ear-to-ear grinning amusement, I like to play with NCIX's PC Builder to keep up with developments and plan my next desktop rig. It wasn't yet been a year since I got my current one, tho. So it's more of a luxury than a need. We shall see.

Sometimes I think of all the people in the world who've never been on the Internet before. Or those who want to but can't afford the means. And those who've never heard of it — I have dreams sometimes of showing my favorite websites to some aboriginal peoples. Sometimes, I actually envision myself visiting my Hakka ancestors in their funny homes, and showing them what their great-great-grandson lives like.

I have these strong feelings, that someday someone else with Hakka roots who doesn't know me yet, will build one of the distinctive "funny homes" in Second Life, and I will find it, my eyes will open wide (wider than they normally are), and I will have made a new friend. I'm sure I'll cry too. Perhaps that is a foremost wonder of the Internet, connecting human emotions across time and space… helping you to realize that as fast things go, as much as life changes, you can take your fondest memories: your past, your culture, your heritage into the future with you.