I spent the better part of six hours doing some computer consulting yesterday, for some folks who bought a new iMac and wanted to transfer all their stuff from the old machine. The process was lengthened by the fact that the old machine was running OS 9.2, and I had to remember where all the various crap used to live in the old OS (importing email from Outlook Express is a painful chore, like doing home dental surgery). The best part? I got to drag them from the horror of dial-up to the majesty of wireless broadband. When my client went to check his email on the old machine, and I heard the first shriek of the modem, I felt like I’d been transported back into 1998. The new iMacs are beautiful—the built-in camera on the bezel and the Front Row Media Center thingy is slick. (A remote for my iMac? Cool.)

His house is one block down from my old college apartment, so I walked up the street and tried to take some pictures of the place without looking like a pervert.

It’s changed considerably since I lived there (I called it “the Swamp”, and the backyard featured all kinds of broken TV’s, weird sculpture, and castoff art projects) but the front of the house still looks the same.

The current tenants have plastic over the leaded-glass front windows just as I did in 1992. The empty lot around the corner has been rehabilitated into “F Scott Fitzgerald Square”, with gaslamp-style lights, benches, and plantings. I’m going to dig through my archives and see if I can find a good picture of the place back in the day and compare it with yesterday’s photos.