How Windows Users are Conditioned

We went out to breakfast at the local coffee shop this morning. While we were there, we were chatting with our waitress, and as part of that mentioned that we wrote about computers and technology, and that we were mainly Mac users.

She didn't know much about computers, and she had heard of Macs, but didn't know that they were the same thing as Apple computers (no, she was not thinking of Apple IIs; she's too young for that). But when I remarked that I liked Macs because I never had to worry about viruses, she got animated.

"My husband got a virus on our computer, and I lost everything!" she said. "All of my schoolwork for college, all of my papers for English, they were just gone! It was terrible."

It was the way she said it that struck us; she was kind of resigned to it all. Sure, she was unhappy that she had lost all that work. But she didn't connect that outrage with Windows; she may not even know that she's using a Windows box, and that a bad operating system that's easily exploited by malware led to her loss. She simply seemed to feel that losing data is what a computer does. It was like a tire puncture or something; just one of those things that happen. And that's what I find so pernicious about Windows. It's conditioned tens of millions of people to the idea that computers are unreliable and a huge pain in the ass. And that things that go wrong just can't be helped.

The Votemaster Fires it Up

Here's a site to bookmark if you're interested in US politics and haven't seen it before: Electoral-Vote.com. This has been one of my favorite hardcore political sites since the 2004 election. Its signature feature is a daily updated map of the US, showing the current electoral vote totals for the Democratic and Republican nominees, based on the latest polls in each state (here's the 2004 final map, for instance). Of course, there are no nominees yet this year, so at the moment, the front page map shows info from and about the primaries and caucuses. If you're interested in knowing when a contest will be held, this site will show it to you quickly. This year (as, I think, in 2006), the site will also track polls for totals in the US House of Representatives and Senate.

Run by The Votemaster, who was anonymous throughout most of the 2004 election season, but eventually revealed himself to be a computer science professor living in Europe, it's one of the most interesting sites for people who want to know the current state of play in US elections.

Happy New Year!

From the two of us here to you and yours. My resolutions:

1) Lose that remaining weight; I'm still down about 15 pounds total, but during the holiday season, I've gained back about 10 pounds from my low. If I can lose that again and still get down to my goal weight by March, I'll be very happy (target date re-calibrated from January. Oh, well.). On the good side, I think that I'm over the hump on exercise; I no longer quite dread going to the gym. And it's nice feeling stronger.

2) Seriously clean out my office. Too much junk and mess there for my taste. Time for eBay, Craigslist and Freecycle to help out.

3) Better integrate some organizational method into my life. So far, OmniFocus is really working well for me.

4) Fix this darned sticking E key on my MacBook's keyboard. Anyone know how to do that?