short takes

[cellio]

On Christmas, it is customary for Jews to go out for Chinese food and a movie. I'll have you know that Dani and I are not so stereotypical: this year we are going out for Japanese food and a movie. So there. :-) (Tomorrow should be a glorious day for getting work done. There were only about six people in the office today.)

This discussion of teaching INTJs resonates in many ways. Speaking of siderea, check out her surrealistic junk mail. (I have had similar "WTF?" reactions to some of the junk mail I get, but she articulates it better.)

With spammers lately trying the "random sequence of 4-8 letters in the subject line" gambit, it was only a matter of time before a Viagra ad was cloakced in coherence. The one that got me had a subject line of "junit" and was sent to my work address.

This eBay auction (link from _subdivisions_) takes an old prank to a new level:

I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do. During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing. These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.

I am not especially surprised that he was able to find a market for this. I am surprised by the winning bid!

A coworker passed along this XP review. Fun stuff:

I have finally decided to take the plunge. Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP, and this afternoon I will be doing the same to my laptop. [...] All I can say is "wow!" You can see that a lot of work has gone into making XP more reliable than its predecessor. The random program crashes, and hangs appear to be a thing of the past.

It's snarky and over the top, but I got some giggles from it. (I have never used Vista.)

Comments

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

My immediate reaction to the default XP UI theme was that it would be great for elementary school kids.

I am not an Apple evangelist per se but I have to say I've been quite pleased with my Macbook Pro. If you don't like the UI there's always the Unix guts, all my favorite open-source apps work okay, and the screen is really nice.

[cellio]

Not an evangelist (nor an expert user) here either, but it seems fine for most things and that Unix shell makes up for a world of unfamiliarity. If I can't figure out how to do something in the GUI, odds are good I can do it the old-fashioned way. :-)

I don't need another laptop, so when the time comes to buy I'll be looking for a desktop machine, which probably means the Mac Mini if I go the Mac route. (There aren't a lot of desktop options; that one seems like the right fit.) It's rather pricier than the corresponding PC, especially once I add in Parallels (essential), so this isn't certain, but I'm really getting sick of the Windows environment.