Given the legendary fanaticism of Mac users, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Windows administrators can be just as bigoted and hidebound as the worst frenzied, puritanical Mac zealot.

Case in point: My current classmates. A discussion thread was posted by the instructor (I’m taking an online class) that set up a hypothetical situation wherein the CTO of a company announced a plan to replace all Windows workstations with Macs; the class was supposed to discuss possible cutover issues.

Instead, what occurred was a wave of visceral phobia and disinformation. One student stated:

MAC’s [sic] do not follow the same IEEE standards that IBM compatible desktops and networks follow. Although networking hardware required by MACs [sic] is already built into the desktops, the cabling system needed will need to be reconfigures [sic]… In addition, speed and transmission rates are slower and end users might experience performance issues…

She cited as her source the entire University textbook library. When I challenged this information as outdated (circa 1996), and asked her for a precise source, she ignored me. A particularly rabid student then posted his answer:

If this were a new CTO at my company I would go straight to the CEO and ask he fire the CTO immediately! Seriously. My company has 50 seats running NT, 10 running UNIX and 3 running OSX… The MACs are for the graphics department and those guys are the only ones who know how to use them… I’d have to transition from Exchange to Linux Sendmail… as Active Directory wouldn’t be of any use… I can’t think of a good reason to do this, even if the new boxes were being offered for free. What a nightmare!

Notice that this fellow never even answered the question at all, just ranted. I challenged him, too, noting that OS X can be integrated into AD, that Microsoft themselves sell a perfectly viable Exchange client for the Mac, that only the workstations were to be transitioned, et cetera. I held my tongue about the fact that NT is, what, a nine-year-old OS? One that even its developer declared dead three years ago? Again, I got ignored, and, while some of the class engaged in some "hear, hear!" backslapping, not one of them responded to my documented challenges to their knee-jerk reactions.

I fully admit that Mac zealots are just as bad, worse, probably, in their blind loyalty to their chosen platform. I’ve seen some pretty frightening forms of simpering, sycophantic adulation at Macworld conferences, let me tell you. My classmates’ fatuous answers and cowardice aside, however, the answers to the teacher’s question are pretty revealing, when the question itself is boiled down into its most basic form: "You have been told that a major change is coming. How do you prepare for it?."

The distilled essence of their responses was "Fight it. Deny it. Refuse it." Not exactly what you’d call intellectually supple, is it? I wonder if some of these folks know what they’ve signed up for, seeing as how they’re studying to earn a degree in IT, perhaps the most notoriously and treacherously shifting field there is these days, outside of holding public office. Would you really want to hire somebody like that?

A few years ago, when I went to work for Dantz, I had to learn how to use a Mac. To my great surprise, I found that I actually liked the things, even when they ran the ancient and now officially denigrated OS 9. I suffered, like everybody else, through the horrendous 10.0 and 10.1 releases, before arriving at the stable, zen-like computing Nirvana that is 10.2 and its successors.

At any rate, as I began to drink increasing amounts of the Cupertino Kool-Aid, I remembered that I had a half-dozen old Apple stickers buried in a box in my closet. I’d held on to these things forever, for no particular reason at all. I was a big-time PC man, after all. They’d originally shipped with a Mac IIcx, and had lain disused for a little over a decade in my possession. I decided to throw a small one on the back window of my car, to, well, flash the colors, yo. Not only could I consider myself a publicly declared member of this computing cognoscenti, but the old-style logo allowed me to put on some old school airs, since I’d cut my teeth on 8.6. Proper.

The problem was that, almost immediately, I began to take shit from friends and family over it. Not because it was an Apple logo (though some of my geek acquaintances did roll their eyes), but because of its many colors. I’m talking about the fact that many of our queerest citizens have adopted a rainbow flag as their rallying banner. I hear all sorts of crap like "Gay for Macs, now, huh?" or "I like your sticker" (said with a swagger and a lilt). My beloved curmudgeon of a father suggested that I was "spending too much time with that lesbian" (a reference to former colleague from Dantz, who, if she’s reading this, I would like to point out to that she never fucking bothers to write me any more).

The last straw was today, when my neighbor made some lame comment about how hard it is to type on a keyboard with limp wrists, even if the machine itself was, well, the favorite of artists and writers, you know? That was it. I’d had enough, and made a rather crude and overmacho comment regarding his wife, mother, and any potential female siblings he might have, which was probably a bit much, considering he has only just dumped his wife for sleeping around. Still, though, you can fuck with a geek’s machismo, virility, or masculinity, but don’t keep talking shit about my machines, bitch.

To make a long story short, the old (and somewhat faded) rainbow sticker is finally going to come off this weekend, to be replaced by a brand-new, Steve-approved, plain white Apple logo. As admirable as it would be to keep flying that rainbow flag for all the boys and girls and boygirls and girlboys in the Castro, it’s old and tired, and it’s time for it to go. It’s looking rather… quaint out there in the Apple parking lot, anyway.

…And I’d better not hear any smack talk about the new one, or I’ll hold you down and fuck you in the ass.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but I’m not a "support engineer" any longer. Haven’t been for a couple weeks now. Believe it or not, I now get paid to push words around. I’m paid to be a writer. Granted, it’s not anything even approaching the glamorous, as technical writing often deals with extremely dry subject matter. But still.

I no longer have to listen to uncomprehending users and their incomprehensible explanations of improbable situations. Gone are the days when I cowered in abject terror at each ring of my desk phone, that dread harbinger of impending servility. Lo, I have shed the onerous and chafing mark of my thralldom, and am born again. Hallelujah!

You have probably already heard about how our valiant allies in the struggle to spread liberty and tolerance across the globe deal with St. Valentine’s day. Here in decadent and debased America, however, not only do we celebrate this vilest, most prurient of festivals, we’re now beginning to discard all the pretense of romance and dewy-eyed sentimentalism, and getting down to the brass tacks. I’m talking, of course, about coitus. Bumping uglies. The pickle tickle. The nasty. Gettin’ yo’ freak on.

Not only that, but, through the wonder of contemporary Internet capitalism, it’s even cheaper than ever before. Observe the image below, if you will, which arrived in my inbox the other day from eBay. I mean, wow! At that price, I’ll take several dozen. I’ve been previously used to the auction style, but I’m definitely attracted to the prix fixe idea. Of course, I imagine this bears further checking out; there’s no indication, for instance, whether the purchaser or the seller is the insertee, nor the precise parties involved. I’m sort of hoping that they’re some sort of generally applicable voucher, you know, "valid with all participating persons and orifices".

If they’d only thought of this when I was still on the market. Damn.

Our iPods arrived today. Productivity plummeted, as practically every person in the building queued up to get their free, sleek little talisman of style from our office manager. Incidentally, the things happen to play music, too. Like most everyone else, I took my Podlet back to my cubicle, admiring it in its package for a few moments, before opening it up, savoring the acrid whiff of plastic that accompanies new electronics. Ahhh, iPod. I removed it from its impeccably stylish packaging, and plugged it into the free USB port on my G4’s keyboard.

Aaaa! No iPod! The computer didn’t recognize it, not even registering it as plugged in.

I ended up having to fumble around in the back of the G4 to plug it into a powered port before it was recognized. It’s funny how un-Apple Apple can be sometimes. Despite, for instance, being recognized as usually occupying the pinnacle of industrial design savvy, they still just can’t get their shit together with things like this. This means that in order to charge my iPod, I have to either buy a dock, buy a powered third-party hub, or unplug an existing USB device from the back of my work G4 or home iMac so that I can awkwardly plug it in there, amongst the tangle of USB, Firewire, and network cables that live back there. Come on, Apple. Get a clue for once. Provide power to the USB connections in the keyboard hub, and maybe put an extra port or two on the keyboard itself.