These are the Fables

March 1st, 2006General2 comments

I have a lot of personal fables. I.E., stories that could not possibly be true, yet their essence rings so true that they’re still relevant. Plus some of them contain elves.

For instance, when I was a kid and I didn’t want to get up in the morning, my mom would tell me a story about an older cousin of mine who didn’t want to go to school either.

“Okay,” his mom said, “You don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.”

So he didn’t, ever again.

“And he’s a grown man now and he still lives with his mother, and he doesn’t know how to do anything.”

That story always made me get out of bed.

I think this little fable set a lot of ground rules in my life.

#1: It sucks to not know how to do anything.

#2: It sucks to be thirty years old and be woken up by your mother.

I think that these are some of my primary fears. Visits with my parents are like those car-crash videos they show you in Drivers’ Ed: Frightening reminders of what could happen. In this case, if I screwed around too much and were forced to move back home.

I can picture the announcer’s voice saying, “IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!” in an accusatory tone.

Randy’s Garage.

I missed this awesome show at Randy’s Garage on Sunday (had to leave early) because of work. However, I dropped by just long enough to drop off some KFC hot wings in an attempt to purchase Rick’s friendship. I hope it worked.

There’s something unsettling about working on a Sunday. I could feel God standing behind my shoulder tsk-tsking. “I Rested On Sunday,” His voice boomed out, “Why Don’t You?”

(When you do God’s voice you have to capitalize everything.)

But I had stuff to do before the end of the month, so it couldn’t be helped. There was a database that needed tending. At least I got some facetime with my buddies before I left the garage. Plus whoever brought the cookies should be given a bag of happiness. Where did those come from? They were pretty darned good.

It says here that Microsoft is going to release six separate versions of Vista (the next Windows).

This is what they are:

• Vista Business
  
• Vista Enterprise
  
• Vista Home Basic
  
• Vista Home Premium
  
• Vista Ultimate
  
• Vista Starter

WHAT?! First of all, of the two versions for the home consumer (Home Basic and Home Premium), only Premium comes with the new Aero user interface. Basic does not. So right off the bat you’re going to have consumers using an operating system that is segmented into two different looks on different machines.

This question will soon be asked a lot: “Why does your Windows look so much cooler than mine even though I have Vista too?”

“Because you’re a cheapskate” will be the official answer.

Next, “Home Premium” sounds like it should be the top-of-the-line distribution for consumers. But no, “Ultimate” is.

“But I bought the Premium version,” people will say. Then glasses will be pushed up as the phrase “You should’ve gotten the Ultimate” smugly comes back as an answer.

Even worse, “Starter” sounds similiar to the “Home Basic” version. But no, “Starter” is “for developing countries”. Not only do Home Basic users get ripped on the user interface, but third world users get a more stripped down version of Windows than even the Basic users do.

So what does all this mean for you?

It means don’t call me if your computer’s broken.

I don’t know what’s going on here.