Jimmy

I’ll admit that I find the new “I’m a PC” ads from Microsoft annoying and all that, but what I find most annoying is the reactions that they’ve been inciting from people. Everyone from the people declaring that little “Kylie” was gonna make PC sales skyrocket (OK, don’t flame me: I know he didn’t actually say that in his post, but it felt like the subtext) (because everyone likes the idea of a 4-year-old being able to use a computer so well. [/sarcastic] I don’t know about anybody else, but I kinda find the prospect of a 4-year-old being that good with a digital camera and laptop to be quite scary) to the people who got so bent of of shape about the newest ad in the series featuring “Lauren” who says she’s “just not cool enough to be a Mac person” (reaction in my living room when that ad first came on: “huh?” from every direction) all the way to the people yelling about the people doing the yelling. (Isn’t the blogosphere grand?)

I should say that I am a Mac user (in case that wasn’t clear already). Having used Windows at home for nearly 12 years I finally went Mac last fall when it was time to upgrade my laptop (I’d been using Macs at school for digital media work for 2 years) and since then I’ve brought three more MacBooks into my house, as well as Time Capsule and several iPod Touches. I am very happy with my 13.3-inch MacBook and wouldn’t give it up for a PC if you paid me (OK, if you paid me a LOT of money I probably would, but I digress). My point is: I know computers, I’ve used and enjoyed Windows computers (although I will never remember fondly the 4.5 years I used Windows ME) and I’ve used and enjoyed Mac computers. I obviously prefer Mac as my primary computing environment right now, but I still use Windows XP on a daily basis at school and on my old laptop at home. I’ve only had the BSOD twice on my little Dell Inspiron 6000 and I’ve never had a major failure in the 3.5 years I’ve owned the machine. I’ve abused it so much I’m very surprised it is still running, so I don’t actually have a lot of bad to say about XP. I think it’s a wonderful (if not a little dated) OS.

So it’s this background that I’m coming from in saying: chill out, everyone. Seriously. Arguing about Mac vs. PC pricing might be fun (I’ve had the debate many a time) but it’s just stupid. When deciding between Mac and PC price is a consideration, yes, it may even be the primary consideration for most computer buyers (especially during a recession) but comparing Mac vs. PC on a price level or a spec-for-spec level or any kind of level is futile. It’s like comparing apples and oranges (hey! An unintended pun! Yay!): they’re both fruits (computers) and have a lot of the same properties (hardware components), but they taste different, act different, cost different, have different amounts of varieties and have different fan clubs. So Lauren has a very specific set of goals she wants in a computer. She doesn’t seem to care what OS she uses and she couldn’t find a 17-inch computer under $1000 from Apple. She found one at Best Buy with Windows on it so she bought it. So what? There’s no way to argue it around that she could have or should have gotten a Mac. She didn’t seem to need or want one. People who want a really powerful 17-inch laptop with screaming graphics and all the bells and whistles might very well end up with a MacBook or MacBook Pro but that doesn’t mean that just because Lauren wanted a 17-inch computer that she needed to buy a MacBook. She didn’t. People are yelling about how amazing the ad was because it showed somebody who “should” be a Mac Person buying a PC. Well, color me surprised that someone doesn’t fit into a random stereotype. News flash folks: PCs are still used by 88% of computer users, so I’ll bet you can find a LOT of people in that 88% of the population who “should” be using a Mac based on some arbitrary definition of “Mac users”. Do I think that some of those people might end up using Macs in the future as Mac OS gains market share? You bet! But that decision will be theirs personally based on price, hardware specs, the “coolness factor” and a host of other things. That doesn’t mean computer and OS makers shouldn’t advertise their stuff using whatever tactics they think necessary. It doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t continue to debate what computer they like and why, but I do think that people should cool it with the holier-than-thou “ye gads they used the PRICE argument” outrage. Face it folks: Windows computers, on average, are cheaper than Mac computers, and Microsoft is going to milk that for all its worth. Calm down Mac Loyalists: our OS is still gaining market share, despite the recession and the “I’m a PC” ads.

OK, climbing down from my high horse on top of my soap box now.

Cheers.

-j

I need Steve’s t-shirt in today’s Questionable Content. Seriously. I NEED IT.

Time for bed now. (I hate DST, it’s 3am but only feels like 2am. 6 hours of sleep suddenly becomes 5 because from the perspective of my body my entire Monday class schedule has been moved up by an hour. Because it kind of has.)

Cheers.

-j

P.S. Annnnd for some reason the time stamp says it’s 2am, though it is, in fact, 3am Eastern Daylight Time. No time to figure that out tonight, though. Wordpress I both love and hate you. Why can’t you figure out DST automatically??

I need the last panel of today’s Schlock Mercenary on a t-shirt. SERIOUSLY. My life will not be complete without it.

I love Petey so much.

That is all.

-j

Just one tonight, because it’s oh-so-important: Pirates of the Caribbean 4 is a go, with Johnny Depp and (so far) nobody else. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are not going to be in it, no word on the other big or little stars. Personally I hope Gibbs returns. I like him.

That is all. Unless you want to watch Ruslana music videos on Youtube. (Finding new music after the first exam week(s) of school is so TOTALLY WIN.)

OK. That is all.

(“Go to bed, Jimmy” he muttered to himself as his mouse pointer hovered near the “Publish” button.)

Cheers.

-j

2 weeks ago I found the wonderfulness that is The Online Comic Space Opera Schlock Mercenary (I believe I may have mentioned it at the time, filed under Cool Stuff) and began reading the 8-year, 3000+ comic archives.

Tonight I found it necessary to stay up waaaaay past my bedtime and complete that reading of the archives (granted I had already read all but about 100-200 strips…), and all I have to say is that Schlock Mercenary is better than sliced bread. It’s funny, it’s smart, it’s sweet and it’s just the right shade of dark.

Yummy.

That is all.

-j

So my computer has been showing signs of fatigue lately. Like, it seems like it’s gotten a lot slower just in the past few weeks. Even after reboots and stuff. I’m not sure what the issue is, but it’s annoying (could be related to XP SP3? But I think it started acting up before than). I should probably run a full scan for viruses and malware, but I don’t have much hope. One theory that has some credibility is that I’ve just been increasing the amount of stuff I’m asking my computer to do at once and I didn’t notice it getting slower until it hit a “break point” in my mind when it started becoming unacceptable. Probably trying to run FireFox, Google Chrome, Thunderbird, iTunes, BitTorrent and the program connected to my weather station all at once on a 3-year-old mid-range Dell laptop with only 1GB of memory is not the best idea. I tend to buy the least computer that I can get away with for what I want to do, but it tends to become outdated within months. I think if I finally admitted to myself that I’m a huge power user and bought accordingly I might not have as many issues. It also might be a good idea to not try to overload a laptop with more tasks than a laptop is designed to handle and to actually buy a desktop computer to handle some of my tasks (like managing my weather station and BitTorrenting stuff) to free up my laptop to do what laptops do best.

[sarcasm]So, the next time a cool $2000 drops into my lap I know what I’ll spend it on. Because that happens all the time.[/sarcasm]

Three years, I’ve heard, is the useful lifespan of most computer networking equipment, so I don’t see why I (who uses my computer probably just as much as a network switch at AT&T gets used…in terms of percent of how much use each piece of equipment is designed to handle, I mean) shouldn’t upgrade after 3 years (e.g. this fall) as well. Note to self: beg family for new computer. Living at home in college does have it’s perks. Mostly, laptops. I’m not sure I’d be able to convince them to buy me a desktop computer as well, though, so I’m probably on my own for that. Heh.

Anyway. Another school week is done and I’m so dead tired it’s not even funny (actually, I find some things more amusing when I’m tired, namely the webcomic Schlock Mercenary which I just found the other day and which has contributed to my current lack of sleep since I’ve been reading it when I should be doing others things, namely sleeping). I really, really need to do something about getting more than 5 hours of sleep before my 9am classes (which I have 4 days a week, luckily I don’t have a class until 3pm on Wednesdays so I can sleep in to noon or beyond) because it’s really not good to get less than 30 hours of sleep during an entire school week.

I also have more homework than I’d like to admit for this weekend, including finishing modeling a temple in 3D by Monday evening and a ton of other smaller things also due on Monday (plus my weekly CS homework that’s due online on Saturday night). (Side note, for whatever reason I don’t find it possible to do small or medium amounts of homework before about 12 36 hours before it’s due, so even though you could make a very valid argument for me not getting annoyed about homework due on the weekend when I have most of the week to do it after my weekly Tuesday class, for me it just doesn’t work and it rubs me the wrong way. Deal with it.) The 3D homework probably won’t take any longer than the CS Saturday homework, but the thing with it is that I can only do it in one of the two DMA Computer Labs on campus which is half a mile away from my house and it takes an extra bit of scheduling to get myself over to campus to do homework rather than just sitting in my room doing homework. So time-wise it might not even take that much more time, but in terms of brain and emotional space it takes a lot more energy. Eh. I’m just being whiny. Welcome to my blog, where I whine on occasion. Heh.

Hmm. I wanted to blog the hurricanes before the 11pm NHC Advisories came out, but alas this post took up all that time. Oh well. Time to adapt to the changing times and write a post that incorporates the NHC data.

See you over in a new post about the tropics.

Cheerio!

-j

Hello one, hello all.

I’ve collected a few Cool Things that I would like to shear with you this evening.

First is a list of webcomics that have come across my radar over the last couple of days. Most of them were linked off of QC, I think, but some of them may have been linked off of one of the ones linked off of QC. I guess when it comes right down to it the world of webcomics is all connected, right?

• Gunnerkrigg Court, which appears to be a spoof of Harry Potter and other such things…but whatever you call it, it’s very amusing and very fun.
• Diesel Sweeties is a very strange yet very addicting (one of these days I should probably just face the fact that I find most all webcomics addicting and leave it at that…) webcomic that’s 8 years old. I’m not really sure how to describe it.
• Afterstrife is a very disturbing yet pretty entertaining webcomic about two people spiritually linked in an afterlife/hell dimension.

One last non-webcomic Cool Thing is Google Chrome. I’ve been using it for a few hours now and it’s seriously cool. I love the UI, I have a little bit of an issue with some things seeming actually slower than they are in FireFox, but that could very well be my computer that I haven’t rebooted in several days. So far, I give Google Chrome two thumbs up.

Cheerio!

-j

Monday’s Doonesbury comic is pretty funny. I’m 90% sure that Garry Trudeau supports Hillary and I always find it amusing when he goes after Obama and the DNC. I was kinda worried in June, actually, since I’ve come to really love Doonesbury’s commentary but if he was going to just fall in line behind The Chosen One I was gonna be sad. Luckily for my emotions, Trudeau started going after Obama in small ways.

I’ve got a lot of things to say this afternoon, so expect several posts all in a row over the next few minutes/hours.

But first, something to make you think a little bit: today’s Joy of Tech comic is oddly disturbing…at least to me.

Next up we have today’s daily Cow posting, and then one or two posts about everyone’s favorite subject: Tropical Storm Fay!

Yays.

-j

Today I ran across this blog called Where Is Bob? about the wacky antics of the author’s boss. It’s really funny. If you like Dilbert, you should enjoy this.

————

That is all for now. There might/should be a political post later tonight. Right now I’m listening to “Conflucians Say” on Blog Talk Radio (until 11pm EST), which is pretty interesting.