I don’t really have any particular topic to write about today. Macworld San Francisco is coming up this next month, though! Like the Islamic Hajj, any Mac cult member is expected to make at least one pilgrimage to a Macworld conference, if he or she is at all able to make the journey. This shall be my second, though I must admit that my motivations aren’t completely Apple-related. I expect to see several former colleagues there, in between cruising for tchotchkes, mooching tutorials out of software vendors, and trying to decide whether to finally break down and buy an iPod or spend the money on a sandwich and a bag of chips at the convention center feeding trough. This being an Applecentric gig, I also expect to gaze longingly at horrendously expensive third-party gadgets of impeccable design but dubious relevance to my life.

I expect it to be fun, unless I happen to wander by the area that they’ve set aside for Mac games. Yes, there are a few contemporary games that are ported to the Mac, like UT2004 and Medal of Honor, but let’s face it, being a Mac gamer is almost as pathetic as being a Log Cabin Republican or, God forbid, a blogger. If I ever had to make a hard choice between platforms, I would have to go with the machine that took me through Half-Life and its sequel.

Speaking of Apple, though, our division must be feeling more flush than in it has in recent memory. The Christmas Scrupulously Value-Neutral Winter Cocktail Party (which I did not attend) saw some pretty decent door prizes being handed out, like a G4 iMac and an iPod or two. Not too shabby, considering that I think everybody went there pretty much expecting the usual piece of fruit and a new #2 pencil stuffed into a plastic sandwich bag decorated with a green twisty-tie.

Since I’m on the topic of the company I work for (and I am really glad to have a job, too: it’s a tough market out there, judging from some of the want ads in our local newspaper), I have to publicly protest against the encroachment of AOL-speak in intracompany e-mails. I mean, really. I know that a lot of what we send each other is dealt with on a very casual level, but it just plain looks like crap. Old favorites like "FYI", "ASAP" and "SOL" are relatively benign, but I actually got a message from somebody last week with both the clichéd "LOL" and the agressively illiterate "r u?". I wince at this stuff. Seriously, it makes the sender look like a rather low grade of moron. (Since this person has been otherwise unimpeachable, their identity will remain anonymous.)

I did get a case escalated to me by a departmental manager a couple of days ago that originated from our intrepid Sales department. One of our client sites has been having some trouble with their application, and the salesperson wanted someone to "f/u" with the client. Since the matter was dropped in my lap, that seemed to indicate that I was chosen to "f/u". I was rather surprised that they wanted the Sales request granted, but my lot is not to question, so I went ahead and fucked up with the client. I called him on his mobile phone at 4:30 AM, called him a stupid douchebag, reset his firewall rules to their default open settings, and purged all his server backups before selecting a half-dozen random tables in the production database and deleting their contents.

I mean- that is what "f/u" stood for, right?