Tyler (Everything)

Things Have Changed.

I can't believe the current predicament. I am angry with myself. I am angry with myself, and I'm in pain because I just stabbed myself in the hand.

I can't believe I am saying this, but I am considering buying an Apple PC. Ok I said that before. I'm still in a bit of shock, but I'm considering getting an apple *sigh* laptop. Honestly what is wrong with me? I hate Apple, I hate laptops. This makes no sense. 

Well I don' t hate Apple, but I hate the Apple Tax. You know, that thing where all their computers cost 33% more than they should? Now I hate laptops too... They never seem to perform as well as their desktop counterparts. Smaller cases, more heat problems... It's just a fact of life. Couple that with costing double... Death to notebooks!

So what has me in this current predicament of bowing to everything I hate? It's the current state of the computing world I would say. 

Here is the state of my world:

• I need a new computer, and probably sooner rather than later... This one is weezing... Honest to goodness weezing. I can hear it right now. This all started about a year and a half ago when I went to plug in an a USB drive, and there was a spark. Since then USB has been flaky... And memory has been flaky. On a few occasions I have had to swap the positions of the two sticks of RAM because the sizes are changing... Bad sign! And this was all before the lightning strike earlier this summer. Needless to say, its time.
• Last season I went back to coaching at Mont Ste Marie. This means being away on weekend in the winter. Couple that with spending ever more time at the cottage in the summer and well, a laptop makes more and more sense. Especially from the idea of being able to edit video on weekends and holidays to show to athletes. I am wavering and feeling like a laptop may be the best bet. I'll come back to this...
• Apple... Why thee of expensive aluminum chiseled case. Well there are a few reasons. First there are only 5 things I wish to be able to do on my home computer:
  1. Surf the web
  2. Edit photos
  3. Edit videos
  4. Run Apache/MySQL/PHP (AMP sounds cooler)
  5. iTunes to sync my phone/listen to music

  As well as those 5 things, I would like to run a 64 bit OS. What are the options for 64 bit computing? Really there are 3: Vista, OS X, various Linux flavours (Ubuuntu). Scratch linux for media editing. Next scratch Vista for being a piece of shit. Maybe I should tell a quick (and recent) Vista story:

  Alanna's parents just got a new computer from Dell. It came with Vista home. Her dad unbeknownst to him was the system admin, her mom just a regular user. Her mom wanted to be able to play some games from msngames.com. These games require installing an archaic ActiveX plugin. She tried to install the plugin, but it told her that she needed to be logged in as the administrator, and popped up a dialog with her husband's login, and a blank password field. Neither of them had any idea what the password could be and were left confused. This is where I enter to save the day... Or just get furiously annoyed.
  I go with my gut, and figure that the password is probably just blank. Click OK. Yep that works... We are installing! Hoorah! Vista ain't so bad... I have this licked. But wait, after the download completes, McAfee (also terrible I might add) pops up and says that this Microsoft signed ActiveX control can nay be trusted. And gives two options: Delete the foul code. Leave the foul code on the machine.
  There seems to be an option missing to run the foul code. I try to find this option. It's not there. I try to disable McAfee, also not an option.
  *Sigh*
  Logout, log into Vista/Crap (any clever ways to combine those two words would be appreciated right now!) as the admin user. At this point, I can disable McAfee and get everything installed. But as an experiment, I decide to run the same flow... Install Active X yadda... yadda... yadda... This time McAfee gives the option to run the foul signed Microsoft Active X control. This must be an Admin Only option. Needless to say I got the simple game working, after mucking with it for about 30 minutes.
  The flaw in the logic is that if you are smart and not running as the admin, you can not simply run an installer as the administrator and be done with it, because the virus scanner (that is not running as an Admin) can block that. Which requires logging out, installing the software as Admin... Re-assuring the virus scanner that it is alright, then logging back in as joe user and potentially re-installing the software (which is now trusted) under your profile.
  It's bad. That is all I can say. The solution for Alanna's parents? They are now both Admins, and their machine running a very secure Vista is now less secure, because they both have full access. Crappy solution.

  So long story short. Let me state here and now, loud and proud. I will never own a machine with Vista. (Windows 7... uggghhh maybe).

• Well crap... After that I can barely remember any of my other reasons! That is Microsoft's ploy! Oh wait, I have it! Back to why a laptop. As you can see, I have to buy an Apple, so now its back to Apple doesn't make a desktop that suits me. Either very expensive, Mac Pro, under-powered Mac Mini, or just right iMac. Accept the iMac isn't just right. It's a glorified laptop sitting on a pedestel. It doesn't have the benefits of a real desktop, more space, better heat reduction, not forcing you to buy a laptop. So that brings me back to the MacBook Pro. The power of a iMac (pretty much), the price of the too Mac Pro, but the portability that I somehow rationalized earlier in this overly long and annoying blog post.

So there you have it. I hate laptops, I hate Apple, and I'm probably going to be buying a MacBook Pro. I'm such a hypocrit. I hate this feeling, but at this point, I must say to all you Mac fanboys who I have ragged on for all these years... You still may not have been right... But neither was I. 

As an aside: I'm test driving a new layout... I'm not sure I like it.