OT: Mac vs Win partisanship is unnecessary

[Richmond]

On 07/22/2010 08:06 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote:
> <snip>
>
> It has escaped my notice all these years, until recently, right about the time that my testosterone began to wane,
>    

I wonder how long it is until somebody realises that computers, computer 
systems, mobile phones,
hybrid tech monsters such as the iPhone and the iPad are just 
cough-cough-cough extensions
under an awful lot of circumstances, and often cough-cough-cough 
substitutes for those who, for
odd psychological reasons, feel that they may be cough-cough-cough 
inadequate in some sort of
way.

I think this first came home to me in 1984, when, at the age of 22, with 
quite a lot of fairly stagnant
water under the bridge, I joined a computer course at my University 
(Durham, England) full of
'boys' who were 18.

We did all our work in a seriously depressing room underground with 
serried rows of blind terminals.

One day I came in and found all the 'young chaps' clustered round 
another chap (come to think of it,
I remember he was called 'Richard Blue' - Ashkenazy from London; 
brilliant mathematical brain, even
fewer social skills than I had . . . err, have) with something that 
looked like a Geiger counter: a personal
computer, no less. Of course, as a 22 year old I wasn't going to be seen 
dead going "Ooh" and "Aah"
with the 18 year olds; but internally I was churning with envy.

This was all "completely ridiculous" of course; unlike those 'babies' I 
came complete with girlfriend and
all the maturity that 4 more years could chuck at me (and quite a lot 
had been chucked at me). But there
I was green with envy, and somehow feeling inadequate.

3 years later, when I was working at a school for maladjusted kids I 
bought a fake, hollow, plastic car-phone
that I strapped to my bike . . . enough of my embarrassing true 
confessions for now:

Let's hear yours . . .  :)