The Crud, Vista, and a new fruit

*sniffle*......

The most dominant creature on the planet is The Common Cold. There's really nothing common about it anymore. I've had this one for about two months now. Sometimes it's there, kicking my ass and evident... *sniffle*...... and sometimes it's just under the surface, like a gentle undertoe you can't see. But it's still there, all the time, never goes away. Today, obviously... *sniffle*..... it's in full effect. Coincidentally, Winter has finally decided to make an appearance over the past week. Isn't cold weather supposed to kill bugs? On with the post.

I've used Microsoft Operating Systems and compatible hardware since I started this personal computing experiment some fifteen years ago, and I've always hungered for the latest and greatest updgrade for whatever I was using. This is no different for Vista. I've got disks around here with the ISOs for RC1 and RC2 that I played with on this laptop before tiring of the debugging software giving me dialup-like response time. It was okay. I mean, it was pretty. Umm.... okay, it's not pretty enough for me to shell out $400+ for a copy of the final release, but I'll be okay if ever and whenever I get a new laptop or PC, right? Of course, now I'm hearing about all these DRM measures in place that are a result of Microsoft's cooperation (grudging?) with the megalomaniacal Hollywood corporations to pander to their paranoia over High Def digital content piracy. Oh, and let us not forget the semireliable Windows Genuine Advantage. Probably the nicest thing I can say about it is the instant search and IE7. Oh wait, you don't really need Vista for IE7. And, the best thing about IE7 is that it has finally adopted the features I like in Firefox and Opera. Still, the next PC, right?

On the hardware front I decided I wanted to move my webcam from my PC to my laptop today. That's going to be a bit of a hassle. See, when the puppycat was more of a puppy, she thought wire and conduit was very very tasty, ableit a bit deadly. So, I spent an afternoon under my desk making some sense out of the rat's nest assembled there. There's the power cord for the PC, the power cord for the monitor, the DVI cable for the monitor, the USB cable for the mouse, the one for the printer, the power cord for the printer, the connector for the keyboard, the peripheral USB cable for the digital camera, the connector for the speakers, the connector for the mic, the network cables from the router to the PC, the work laptop, this laptop, power cords for each laptop, etc, etc, etc. Anyway, now they're all bundled and wrapped and tied off and safe from the puppycat........and I'll have to undo half of that to get the webcam. And, it's dusty under there which just... *sniffle*..... compliments my cold.

Tonight, I'm looking at Macs.