The Final Upgrade

Today during lunch I decided to clean the fishtank on my desk since I needed something mindless to do after a long trying week. I have 3 orange mickey mouse platysnamed sed, awk and cat. I find that the fish are good company as they are often peering out of the tank at me, especially when I'm eating my lunch or listening to music. I think we bonded when I found they liked The Style Council and Paul Weller unlike my top-40 coworkers.

The funny thing about the Mac Aquarium though is that it draws people into my cube as they ask about the fish, their names, what they eat, what kind are they, etc. Even today when I was cleaning the tank, people would stop and ask where the fish were, how often I have to clean the tank, and comment on how relaxing the fish must be.

A while back I bought an original Mac Plus keyboard from someone on eBay to add a more authentic touch and have successfully tricked a few people into thinking I had one heck of a realistic screensaver on the Mac :) I often miss the flying toasters, the fishtank and lunatic fringe game [ which continues to inspire even now ] screensavers of After Dark and even the original Pyro! It is a pity that the age of the screensaver is gone leaving nothing quite as exciting in its wake. I think the MacAquarium is a lovely tribute to such an underappreciated part of the history of personal computing. I think it would be cool to research the history and development of the screensaver and After Dark....

I was thinking, too, that maybe geek guys who are looking for a way to talk to women might consider getting a MacAquarium for their cube to have some late night company on maint windows/coding jags and to lure the female of the species into their cube. There is even an iMac model available now. :)