C-C-C-C-COCAINE!

No joke.

I ran for city council once, and one of the items on my platform was more OSS software in the city. I was contacted by a MS sales rep that told me he could offer us hosted exchange servers for $4@user per year. Office for $5 a seat, and free OS upgrades.

Obligitory Aliens History Channel Reference

Wish I wasn't on the mod ban list, I'd throw an upvote your way.

However I've done back breaking work in tech. I was laid off in 2001 and went to work for a bar (not backbreaking) During the day though I was a IT consultant, my own company.

One customer had these giant mini fridge sized IBM netfinity servers that needed to be rack mounted. My partner couldn't hold his grip, so (unwisely) I told him to let go and let me carry the load. I slowly felt something in my back rip. I couldn't breath deep breaths for almost a year after that. It took years of struggle to get my back to the pain free status it is today, but it still makes odd pops and clicks whenever I stretch.

Can't tell if trying to insult me, or recruit me.

I started thinking to myself, "Wow, I only live a mile from where they pick folks up, and they drop me off about a mile from work" Maybe SF should take into consideration that non-goog-app-fac employees might want to ride on the same line. These companies should consider allowing non-employees to pay a fare to use the busses.

I remember when WD caviar drives were the most replaced component on systems I serviced. Seagate was the top contender with their SCSI 10krpm drives.

I hang out with the old nullsoft guys in IRC. General consensus for most of them is "We've moved on" The other concensus is, "There are so many good media players these days"

There was a time when Winamp mattered. There was no decent media players (in some regards, it was a new concept) Winamp brought skinning, plugins, visualizations and a whole slew of things that most folks never even knew they wanted or needed.

Funny that they mention Songbird today. One Nullsofter went there after the AOL buyout. He's now at google.

As far as Frankel, he started working on a DAW called Reaper. It's a swiss army knife for audio.

So instead of peacefully letting the tech workers board somewhat environmentally friendly busses that are subjected to stringent emissions regulations, they harass google and others to the point where they have to ride a boat with NO emissions regulations to and from work? Not to mention the fuel economy of boat vs wheels is horrible.

Sometimes I *like* something because I want to follow it. I might not like some of my local politicians, but I still like their pages just so I can follow what train wreck policy they might be putting to a vote that week. Liking it makes it conveniently show up on my newsfeed.

I see it as the only way to compete with android. Just give it out, completely free. Still charge for the server level OS's and support, but for a desktop, MS makes money from plenty of other areas. Office is still a cash cow. Xbox is a profit center.

Google makes its money from their "free" OS through the app store. They also have a pretty neat ecosystem and various ways app makers can make money (in app advertising) They control the entire ecosystem. If MS could do the same with windows, I think we'd see the desktop come back.

I spend more time in IRC than I should, but often we crack jokes about how a product "Has aids". I won't go into all the other things we talk about, but it's like a bunch of 30-40 year olds pretending to be 14 again. It's all jest, and in good fun. Doesn't mean we're homophobic (one of our regulars is Homosexual) but even he takes all the jokes in stride, because we're all friends.

I know folks from the last generation, before political correctness became so steeped in our culture. They give each other shit for fun. A venerable fountain of racial slurs and epitaphs flow freely from them, with no concern for peoples feelings or political correctness. It's a short form of hazing, to see if someone can congeal in the workplace, put aside differences and work well with others.

Those days are gone. What we have now is a work environment of walking on egg shells and carefully measuring each word for fear of offending someone. We spend an almost equal amount of time worrying about in office politics as we do actually working. I don't like it.

I buy used Dell's from Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale.
http://www.weirdstuff.com/

I have a few projects that require a windows OS and can't run under wine. By buying a Dell from weird stuff, the OS is licensed to the machine. So it's little more than a convenience thing for me.

For those that don't know, the record was done at Fort Funston. A lot of us that fly RC gliders in the bay area go to FF because of the unique topography there. It's basically a seaside cliff.

Wind rushes off the pacific, hits the cliff, and with no other place to go heads up, creating lift. (Sometimes called slope effect)