It's Windsday! Or er.... Tuesday

The wind has been absolutely howling all day, it began early this morning in the wee hours and I could feel my camper shaking and swaying back and forth. All through the day it came in large gusts. I actually enjoy the wind as long as I'm not outside getting "dried out" by it while working. It does have a tendancy to chap the hands of a chap. *yuk yuk*

Today was my easy day; This morning I did some preparation for my chemistry exam tomorrow and I actually feel prepared for this one, hopefully I don't clinch when the time actually comes to take the exam as I did last time. Some of the problems I missed were because I just blanked and thought "Oh no! I don't know how to do this!" And afterwards when I looked at the problem again I was ready to beat myself up because I DID know how to solve it. Interestingly enough, the problems that the instructor said that most people missed, were all ones that I answered correctly. So it wasn't necessarily that I didn't know the material, I just did some dumb mistakes and panicked in a way. I hope this test should be better because I feel confident. Last night I went to an extra session the Instructor gave, to help refresh some aspects for the exam and the questions that were being asked were very simple and I was surprised because even I knew the answers (imagine that). If that's any indication of what is going to happen, then at least I'll be above most of the class. Not that that alone is my goal of course! I want to ace the test and get the bonus question as well but let's not let optimism turn into rash overconfidence.

Today, while doing some e-mail correspondance I was reminded of a funny little article I saw a long time ago (shared by Psy-duck with me) and I found it again and thought I'd post it here. Of course, it's most enjoyable by computer-saavy people who dislike Microsoft but..........

"If Microsoft Built Cars

At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "if GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors made the following contribution to the debate: "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the car windows, shut it off, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this, restart and drive on.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you'd accept this too.

5. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

6. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a "Car 95" or a "Car NT". But then you'd have to buy more seats.

7. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

8. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.

9. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.

10. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.

11. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft petrol and lubricants but the packaging would be superb.

12. New seats would force everyone to have the same size rear.

13. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

14. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.

15. They wouldn't build their own engines, but form a cartel with their engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 1 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.

16. There would be an "Engium Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.

17. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft Cassettes.Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use existing stuff.

18. Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don't own anyroads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars free,including IBM.

19. If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11),then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to drive muchfaster, and on more roads!

20. If you couldn't afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrow your friends, and then copy it.

21. Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganize the ignition for a few days before it worked.

22. You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to each other.

23. Every time Microsoft introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

24. Microsoft would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Automobile Association Road maps (now a Microsoft subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more.

25. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off."

And along the same lines, I watched a short video today of an old Micro$oft press release, when they were showing the new plug and play features of Windows 98, the guy plugged the device in and said that Windows would automatically install the drivers for it and suddenly, the Blue Screen of Death popped up. The entire audience went into hysterics (as I did myself).

Some may wonder why I dislike Micro$oft, well, I used to really like it before I knew any better. It doesn't bother me at all that Mr. Gate$ is so rich, I would say he is an excellent business man but the manner in which it is accomplished sometimes bothers me. And the fact that most of their products are pretty sloppy. I read once that Excel 97 (I believe it was) made it past all the screening and was shipped with a full flight simulator game hidden inside the programming. How you can look through the code and miss something that large is beyond me! In other words, they probably didn't look very closely at the code.

Microsoft is always saying how they are having these new, great features coming and people just are amazed! Such as firewire, I remember when people were talking about how great it was, this new firewire was going to be on Windows and it was very fast etc. Turns out that Apple had used it for the past 5 years...... Another person said that some Windows PC's were now coming out with a slick new feature to free up your USB ports, the mouse would connect to the keyboard so you didn't have to plug it into the port on the computer itself (USB can be connected like a daisy chain, one device can be connected to the other and so on). Mac computers have had this since....... wow. A long time ago. Then there is the fact that Apple came up with the idea of using different windows, then Microsoft thought that was great and decided to use it and even called their new operating system: Windows way back when.

In fact, almost all of the software I see coming out of Microsoft is just bought from another company and modified. Even the original DOS was bought from another computer company by Bill Gate$.

Here's a kicker, I was shocked at this:
I read that a few weeks ago, Micro$soft contacted a man who had an online program called Windows Defender. It apparently would help guard your computer from bad websites. Anyway, a couple of lawyers contacted the man and told them that unless he signed over rights to the name, they would have to pursue legal actions against him for trademark abuse. Now it turns out that Micro$soft owns the name: "Microsoft Windows" but not just Windows, that's not commonly known though. This man wasn't using the program for profit anyway and rather than go bankrupt trying to fight something that wasn't extremely important anyway. So he did so.
Two weeks later, Micro$oft announces that their new Anti-virus program (they bought out the company and then modified the code supposedly) is going to be called Windows Defender. How is that for cheek? They purposely mislead the guy, bullying him into signing over the rights to a name because they want to use it. *sigh*

One last thing before this entire post turns into a Micro$oft rant:
Micro$soft made the news a while back by becoming the first company in the United States to offer marriage benefits for sodomite couples. That reason is good enough for me to not support that company in any way possible (which is one reason why I hope to buy a Mac next year). Why do I dislike Micro$oft do you ask? Read the above.

Okay... so now that I've explained that.... I apologize. I didn't mean to go into that much depth, though certainly more could be said. The above paragraph is very important though, as to why I don't want to support the company in any form.

The other day (Saturday I think it was) I was feeling chipper and needed some exercise after being inside so I went out and shadow fenced for a little while *dies laughing at pun*
It really made me want to start a class just to pass on the knowledge and also sharpen myself. Iron sharpens iron, in like manner will fencers, through practice, sharpen themselves and become more skilled.

The afternoon was filled with some interesting things. I went to my Java class and dropped off a sheet of paper with some funny programming stories for the Intructor. I left it on the podium since I had arrived early. I addressed it to him and made no identifying marks on it so it would be completely annonymous (unless one of the few other students there beforehand was observant and tells him). I didn't want it to seem at all like I was trying to butter the teacher up or make him like me, I just wanted to share something I had enjoyed. And leaving it annonymously was a good way to do so.

He came in, fixed the lights, arranged the equipment, arranged his papers (he gets there a little early as well, he's a great instructor) and I was peering up quickly every once in a while to see if he'd "found" it yet. He finally did a smile crossed his face as he read through them (and that is rare for him) and that made it very rewarding. He has no idea who it was and I don't know if he'll attempt to find out, but I don't care. I fulfilled what I set out to do and no one can accuse me of buttering up the teacher (not that I need to butter up the teacher). It was sure a pleasure though. I was afraid at first he'd miss it when looking over the podium and think it was for someone else so I had addressed it to him at the top.

Also, because the wind was blowing so hard today, lots of leaves and such were all over the place. And... a shirt. It was actually a nice shirt (if you like black) with a collar, button up front, short-sleeves, and a collegiate emblem on the front. I looked around but it was kind of in the parking lot on the grass in between the parking lot and road. My guesses are that it dropped out of a car, or someone was hanging out laundry to dry and it just...... blew away. But what am I supposed to do? Will someone come looking for their shirt or should I go around asking people if they've lost a shirt? I don't think so. Should I have left it there? If so, then it would have made its way into the road and been run over I'm sure. So I weighed my choices and took it home. I'll certainly be glad to return it to the proper owner. I can just picture "Lost: Shirt" posters everywhere on campus.......


I guess that's about it for today, tomorrow is a new day with new dangers! Sorry for the lack of content on this "post-it note" entry :)