I am amazed by the number of morons I’m attracting lately. I suppose the number is only really two or three since “Jason” and “Sam” appear to be the same person and Greg is the other one. Ah, whatever. I’d think they’d be better served surfing the intarweb looking for pictures of Britney Spears’ cooter, but I’m not their boss. Or they may be here hoping I’ll have naked pictures of myself online. Not happening (and I’m sure most of you are happy about that.)

My Mac laptop is still in the shop and I’m not real sure why Greg is so ignorant about getting computers serviced. In most of the world, people only have Dells and Apples. A couple of people have Sonys but they’re aberrations.

• If you need to get a Dell fixed, you call India and are put on hold until they can string a phone wire from the border to the call center to service your call and they tell you to reboot a bunch of times until they’re convinced you’re serious about getting your computer fixed. Then they might start to help.
• If you have an HP/Compaq, you just junk it and buy a new one at Staples or OfficeMax.
• If you have an IBM/Lenovo, you cry salty tears or just get your company to fix it for you because real people don’t own IBM/Lenovo computers, just corporations.
• If you need to get a Mac fixed and you’re lucky enough to live in a town with an Apple Store, you go online to make an appointment and then you show up, in person, to talk to a tech support person who isn’t really a genius but is called an “Apple Genius” who will at least look at your computer and see the problem first-hand. The face-to-face interaction is key. If they find something wrong they just take the computer in for repair right there. They can even ship the thing back to you if you want. Elapsed time is 2 minutes to fish around the web site for the appointment link, travel time to the store (15 minutes for me), wait time at the store (usually 5-20 minutes for me), time to talk to the genius (10-15 minutes), and travel time back (10 minutes for me because I don’t have to look for parking when I get home). Then I wait.

So, basically, it’s a lot easier for me to get my computer fixed, and I don’t pay extra for support. I know I’ve paid a huge premium up front, but I like the fact that I don’t feel like throwing the thing through the window like I do with things running Microsoft OSes. I even got my mom one. Or two, if you count the replacement MacBook Pro I got her this year.