No. 607 – The Window

Performer: Steve Miller Band

Songwriters: Steve Miller, Jason Cooper

Original Release: Fly Like an Eagle

Year: 1976

Definitive Version: King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents the Steve Miller Band, 2005

I’ve found lots of my favorite songs by sheer happenstance. One way this happens is when I find a song, or a couple of songs, that I like and play it over and over from the CD. Eventually, I get bored and let the CD run, only to find, hey, this next song is pretty good, too, after all. I got into Ten segmentally:  I started with Alive and worked my way out in each direction.

And that’s how I found this song. On the King Biscuit disc, I started with a couple songs and built out until I found this one. And right at about the time I did was when I bought my new computer—the one upon which all of this blog is created, until further notice.

In spring 2009, Laurie was unceremoniously shown the door from her job of 14 years in a financial downsizing (story to come). Her immediate idea was to move to freelance work, but there was one big problem: She needed a computer.

Oh, she had one—a dusty old PC notebook that hadn’t seen the light of day in years—but she really needed a new computer, because she needed to be online. Given her lack of technological acumen, I didn’t see the point in her spending a grand on something that had the latest whiz-bangs. Instead, I would spend the aforementioned cash for just such a computer and give her the iMac I bought in 2006 to replace the old clamshell. She agreed that was the best course of action.

So I scheduled a visit to Cincinnati to see Scott, Shani and the kids and to get my next computer, just as I had gotten my last one, under his supervision. That I also would enjoy the 6 percent sales tax in Ohio instead of Chicago’s nation-leading 10 percent was purely coincidental. This time I didn’t need Dad to bail me out financially at the store, thank goodness.

Scott and I drove over to Micro Center, which long has been Mac Central in Ohio. I went for the entry-level MacBook, which, of course, was about twice the computer for the same price as my last purchase, and Micro Center had a $100-off sale going on that model. Bonus. Scott thought it was such a good deal, he briefly contemplated getting one of his own but passed. I’m guessing he couldn’t sell the idea to the missus when he already had four other Macs at home.

When I got it out of the box at Scott’s, the new computer booted up right away, unlike the previous purchase, which, as I noted, had to be replaced the next day because it was a bad Apple.

Laurie took me out to an excellent dinner as payment for her new prize after I came back from my computer safari. But even better, she loves her computer and uses it a lot. I had to buy a new battery for it a while back, and it’s still going strong.

As for my computer, well, I’m starting to get that new-computer urge. It’s going on four years that I’ve had it, and the DVD burner crapped out; however, I use it so much that I can’t afford to take it in for repairs. Unlike previous times, I have no need to get a new one, so I imagine I’ll continue to hold off for a while. But it’s uncertain whether the computer with which I started on this musical journey still will be around when it reaches its destination.