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Yesterday, I traded in “Fighterjet.”

I feel pretty raw about signing away the title for my 1998 Subaru Legacy GT 2.5 Limited. (Frankly, I’ll never remember the correct order “GT,” “2.5,” and “Limited” are supposed to go in, even after 10 years — 3273 days, to be exact — of car ownership.) Looking back, I took delivery on July 1, 1998.

What do you say about a car you owned for 122 months? A vehicle that was there to transport you through the highs and lows of life?

Well, the brochure for our new car says, “Few things connect to your life at more points than your car.” Amen. I’ll take a stab at a few notes in haphazard arrangement, below.

This will all seem melodramatic, and it is. There are, I’m sure, people who don’t get attached to their cars. My wife and I are not those people. However, I am beginning to realize that you can only really get attached to one car, and thereafter you realize you simply can’t do that again. This is my struggle this morning, and my usual tendencies to hang on are amplified by how long I had that Subaru.

Fighterjet was the first car I ever picked out and bought myself. The two cars before it dropped into my lap, by the generosity of my family, and being young, I did my level best to destroy them quickly. The Subaru had 40-some miles on it when I bought it, partly because I drove it a few times and partly because the test drive area around the dealership was so large.

Every girlfriend I had in my adult life rode in Fighterjet. One of them helped me choose it. The car outlasted all but one of them.

My wife and our first son rode in Fighterjet. In fact, it was the car that Aaron and I had to rescue from the snowy parking lot at work — its door had been jammed open by ice so the alarm was sounding — so that I could collect the bags we’d left at home and return to the hospital with them. The baby was born a day later, and perhaps we’ll be more prepared in the future.

Fighterjet didn’t have LATCH anchors. Oops.

When I bought Fighterjet, I didn’t have any music in MP3 format. Having an iPod connection was unheard of, because the iPod wouldn’t ship for years yet. But it had a CD player and a tape player, not to mention weather band radio. (Weather band radio is really dull.)

Luckily, I had obtained my first digital camera nine months before Fighterjet, so I was able to document the car pretty well.

The month I brought Fighterjet home, I went to Macworld Expo in New York City. It was the first of five such expos in New York (and that was a particularly whirlwind trip), but it was even more memorable for a big product introduction: the original bondi blue iMac. Fighterjet, meanwhile, was “Rio red.”

Hearing about the color of my car, Kristi laughed and said, “Oh, it’s pull-me-over red!” I got exactly one ticket with Fighterjet.

The Sabres had only been to the Stanley Cup Finals once in their history when I started driving Fighterjet. Now, they’ve been there twice. And had a few conference finals appearances, too. (Did Aaron and I drive Fighterjet to that playoff game with Philly? The one that created the wall of sound in the atrium of HSBC Arena? Correction: Aaron says it was this game against Ottawa.)

I drove to a lot of Ultimate games in Fighterjet. Cleaning it out, I had a regulation Frisbee in the trunk. Along with a wiffle bat and some wiffle balls — you never know when an impromptu game would break out.

I spent one long day in Fighterjet, stuck on the New York State Thruway (I-90) for about 15 hours, one winter. There was a big snowstorm. Some of you lived through it with me, and others have probably heard me talk about it, so I don’t think I need to say more. At least that time, I was prepared.

That incident taught me that if you can’t tell your car from other snow-covered cars in the vicinity, you should probably stay home.

Fighterjet drove through a lot of snow, and barely broke a sweat over it. There were a few close calls, though. Once, I hydroplaned through the turn from 96 onto 332 — no wheels gripped, they only slipped. There was one Christmas morning, driving to Cuba, where we spun 180 degrees together; thank goodness the next car was so far behind us. Another morning, going to work and sliding slowly, sideways, into and kissing a (thankfully) snow-packed guardrail.

I didn’t have a cell phone when I bought Fighterjet.

Baxter was in Fighterjet when I hit my second deer with the car, and, as a dog, he was pretty freaked out by the sudden ordeal. I really thought that was the end of the line, but the insurance didn’t total the car. I haven’t taken Baxter with me to get take out since, as I recall.

The car got its name from the view I got sitting in the driver’s seat, looking back through my regular and oddball lane-changer mirrors. It reminded me of the rearview cameras you see in fighter jet films on TV, looking back on the tail of the plane. Dumb, yes, but I couldn’t think of a better name.

I can’t remember how many sets of tires I put on the thing. The first one involved a lot of anxiety while reading reviews on the Tire Rack Web site. The Dunlop Sport SP2s, later, were utter flops.

Fighterjet helped me move between apartments and houses. Thrice. And, I think it helped move Lloyd’s family once, and maybe others. I forget.

I drove it to Pittsburgh and the Adirondacks and other places, but I also think of destinations I never went.

After giving up this car, I wonder how many cars I have left in me. How many more will I own? My sense of mortality is briefly heightened.

I miss Fighterjet, but it was time to move on. I feel like I’ve abandoned a friend — but that’s silly. Hopefully that feeling will fade, because, after all … it was just a car.

I got a new monitor at home. I broke down at the CompUSA going out of business sale, spotting a deal I was happy with, and bought the Gateway FPD2485W. It’s a flat panel LCD monitor I’ve been eyeing for a while and the price was acceptable. I was willing even though I was leery of purchasing an expensive new display without the possibility of return (“absolutely no returns,” CompUSA’s signs read) and without having a modern computer to connect it to.

See, eventually I’d like to get something like a Mac Pro with a large display. Actually, I’d like to have a computer that could handle two large DVI flat panels, just for the overkill factor.

I like the 1920×1200 resolution on the 24-inch LCD panel. I think the picture quality is excellent; compared to other 24-inch monitors on the shelf at Best Buy when I first discovered it, I felt it was the best. I like that it is supposed to handle HDCP for HD content; that makes it more future-proof in my mind, along with its bevy of digital and analog ports, including component video. It doesn’t hurt that its design gets out of the way, looks similar to a black plastic version of Apple’s aluminum flat panel monitors, practically glides on its elevation-and-swivel stand, and has a 90-degree screen rotation feature. It’s also wider than my chest!

I had concerns yesterday evening after unboxing it. The on-screen display (OSD) controls were driving me nuts; Gateway had decided to equip the monitor with touch-sensitive controls, and they weren’t responding well to my commands. The response was sluggish and instead of the main menu, I kept getting the Product Tour popping up on-screen when I pressed the admittedly-cool blue-backlit “buttons” that dim when not in use. Things were going so badly with these buttons that I wished with a sour feeling that I hadn’t gotten the monitor. I filed a support request with Gateway while I attempted to sort it out myself — because I knew that they wouldn’t care if I couldn’t get it working with a five-year-old Power Mac.

Today, I hooked the monitor up via VGA to my Athlon PC — and even though it has a similar GeForce 4MX card as the Power Mac I tried yesterday, using DVI, the OSD controls worked! Trying it on the Mac again, it appeared to work with both VGA and DVI.

However, I still haven’t quite figured out whether it plays nicely with the Energy Saver settings on the Mac and I still haven’t decided on VGA or DVI. I have some quibbles with its operation in both modes, but that could be due to the old computers or the Belkin KVM that’s in the loop. I’m hoping when I get a new computer, this will all work itself out.

It’s when, not if, that we plan to get a new computer. I just don’t see the point of getting today’s Mac Pro towers, when they may be replaced at any minute. But, in the meantime, this display makes me feel as if we already have a new computer; it’s bright enough to light up the room it’s in. It reinforcing my view that a good display, especially one with a higher resolution, can really change your computing experience.

I plan to write a full review at Epinions in a bit.

Update 03/08/2008: Just for reference, I did get a second one … along with a more modern computer.

Wow, Apple bought the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) back in February, and the announcement has just come out. (I have to wonder why the delay … perhaps it has something to do with Leopard?) The software continues to be licensed under its regular terms.

Michael Sweet, one of the principals behind Easy Software Products and developer of CUPS, is now an Apple employee.

I’m sure this all means something.