Some Mac and <p>s
Back in February, not long after the Intel iMacs came out, I decided I needed one. I’d been using a limping Windows desktop as a stereo, and a not so limping Windows laptop as an everything-else, but I’d idly wanted another Mac ever since my 512K “Fat Mac” died in 1991 or so.
Getting one hasn’t turned out to be the best idea I ever had.
It’s a delightful computer, quick and smooth and elegant, that part’s not a problem. But, now I’ve got a Windows laptop to my left, the Mac directly ahead, and my old Windows desktop turned to Linux to my right. I’m building Firefox trunk on Windows to see if I broke anything with a patch, typing this post and being less funny than I think on IRC and reading email and trying to figure out how to patch the appearance of readonly XUL textboxes on the Mac, and building Firefox branch on Linux, though I’ve already forgotten why and what I’m supposed to test once the build finishes. Most of the time, I think that three computers has made me one third as productive, but sometimes, when I can’t remember what I was doing on any of them, I think it’s worse than just arithmetic.
Generally now I’m working on two machines, my Powerbook to the left (which has another monitor plugged into it) and a duel-head linux machine ahead of me. With synergy(.sf.net), I can share a keyboard and mouse between them, which is awesome.
It means I can be less funny than I think on up to six IRC channels at once…
I solved this problem handily by getting my siblings hooked on World of Warcraft. That means that all of the other computers in the house are occupied except for the PowerBook, which I subsequently get real work done on. Works like a charm!
Now take that trio combo and throw in a large selection of confused and angry users, employees, etc. demanding technical solutions for a myriad of problems, some of which you never even imagined could happen on a particular machine or OS.
Yeah, I don’t miss it.
Only three?
Oh, snap!
crackle! pop!
Shelley: a few nights ago I dreamt that you had opened a new weblog (complete with a redirect of the Burningbird feed) and I went there all excited and there was a string of welcome-back comments on your inaugural post just as long as the one on Burningbird’s goodbye post. I really don’t know what this means, particularly as I never remember my dreams – not this one either, but I had a “flashback†when I saw your comment here and realised that the BB feed hasn’t changed and is as quiet as ever since the farewell.
Wow Aristotle, even my ex-husband never dreamed about me. I’m both flattered and weirded out, at the same time.
(just teasing)
Coincidentally, today is the first day I can claim to use all three operating systems on a (presumably) regular basis. At the moment I’m not sure what my ultimate preference would be, but I know Windows is my time-sink because it’s the only one I play World of Warcraft on. When it isn’t down for maintenance anyway. *fidgets*
I actually blame that game for contributing to the lack of posts here lately but I’ll avoid going into my tenuous reasoning for that. Heh.
“A digital magpie.â€
Nice to see both you and Shelley poke your heads out of your shells.
I recently went through this when the kid needed a computer to use for school projects. At his school they use Macs. But I resisted the force, and repurposed an old laptop with Knoppix, because I’m the house MIS dept, and the idea of supporting a Mac as well as two flavors of Linux and 3 flavors of Windows was too much to bear.