Sent from your pretentiousness

It’s been with some shock and amazement that the computing community has been given the news that Steve Jobs won’t be giving the keynote address at MacWorld this year. For the uninitiated, MacWorld is the annual trip to Mecca (otherwise known as the Moscone Center in San Francisco) for the Mac faithful. On top of that, this is the last year Apple will be part of MacWorld, so Steve isn’t even coming to say goodbye.

*sniff*

Why on earth should anyone act surprised by this? Most people that don’t have an ego the size of a larger solar body would certainly want to give a last tip of the hat to the cultish followers that drive their company’s success. But Steve is not in the category of smaller-sized egos. He does things on his own terms. He strikes new paths. He blazes trails. Even Chuck Norris is scared of him.

And Steve makes sure everyone knows it and promotes it by infusing four little words into an ever-increasing number of people’s lives: "Sent from my iPhone".

Those four little words just bug the bat-crap out of me. I work with no fewer than three people now (it started with just one, like a Lay’s potato chip) who have iPhones. Sometimes they’ll fire off an e-missive…yes, that’s mine and you’ll have to pay to use it…using their little bundle of joy when they’re out and about. I don’t mind that part. But I mind that every e-missive comes with the four little words tacked on at the end.

Says Steve Jobs, "This guy just sent you something from this really cool phone I made, and I want you to know about it. I want you to feel inferior for not having one, and to go by one."

I say, "I have a phone I think is way, way more cool than your iPwn. And it lets me install anything I want on it. And when I send an e-missive from it, there’s no chance of something thinking I’m a pretentious iPwn user. Because there are no little words appended on my messages. For that matter, you won’t even know if I’m on the road, sitting at my desk, or sneaking up behind you to choke you with the cord to the crappy headphones that came with your iPwn."

Says Steve, "You can buy better headphones for your iPwn now. They’re from Apple, which means they’re great. And they’re only $99."

Says I, "Didn’t the crappy headphones come from Apple too?"

I believe in good marketing, design, etc. etc. but geez. Maybe now the cult will simmer down a bit that Steve won’t be giving people "one more thing" each January.

Mad Men

So no, I haven’t watched the show. I’ve heard “Mad Men” is really, really good though. So what does this post have to do with that if I’ve never seen it?

This is why people don’t want me to write their ad copy…

On my way home from work, listening to the radio, and an ad for some anti-aging cream comes on. It’s blathering on, and somehow its connection of words and thoughts causes this to come out of my brain.

“For skin so soft, you’ll have a face like a baby’s bottom!”

I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.

Pure as the driven snow

There are some things in life that just make you feel warm and fuzzy. Some of them particularly so if you’re a geek. I would be considered by some to be a geek (just ask my daughter!) and so I have a warm and fuzzy to share…

My blogging software finally works properly on my desktop PC.

Sure, that may not seem like a big deal. But it’s never worked right on this machine, so whenever I would blog it was always from my laptop. I have a very nice laptop, but it just isn’t as convenient as sitting down at my desk where my machine is always on and inviting with the ice-blue LED glow of power lights. As an aside, why does everyone think such a piercing, blinding color is appropriate to use anyway? I’ve actually disabled some of them on my machine because they were so overpowering. Anyway…

So, what the problem was I’ll never be sure. But I was having trouble getting Word to run lately, and if that isn’t going to work for me then it’s just time to get down to business. So I did something else that gives me warm fuzzies, and that I haven’t done in a long, long time. I completely reformatted and installed my machine again. It had been through a few upgrades to the operating system and various software, and somewhere along the line a hairball got stuck in its processing craw.

So at this time of year, when we’re all remembering the small things that make us thankful, remember me. A humble computer dork getting warm fuzzies over taking hours of time to re-install a computer to fully working order. Because then when you’re wishing you somehow had more to look forward to with your life, you can think "Wow, at least I’m not that guy".