A Hot Night in New Orleans
Dear HiHo Lounge,
It was Friday night. I had some friends coming from out of town and I wanted to show them a good night out. I had heard that Clockwork Elvis and the Billion Dollar Baby Dolls Burlesque troupe were going to be on the same bill, performing at was one of my favorite clubs before Katrina. Yours.
It was going to be a night to remember, one of the best local bands playing a gig with one of our city’s best burlesque troupes (my wife and I are friends with at least three of the girls in the group) at one of the greatest music halls in the New Orleans area. I couldn’t wait.
When I first arrived there, everything was fine. We were about thirty minutes early, meaning we showed up when the band was supposed to take the stage, and the place was empty. But after standing around for a few moments, we noticed something, it was dead hot in there.
We brushed it aside though, got some drinks and took our place for the show. However, our decision to stay was one we’d quickly regret. As bodies packed into the room, thing went from uncomfortable, to dangerous.
The High Cost of Mac
Dear Apple,
I love your computers I’m sitting here right now hammering out this post on OS X Tiger with Safari, checking my email in Mail.app and generally lapping up the entire Mac experience. I love you guys.
I also recommend you to my friends, at least the ones I like. My friends and family all get wonderful tales of how great my Mac is, so much so that I’ve been banned from giving any toasts at get-togethers and endured an intervention from my parents two weeks ago.
But my recommendations to them are not just because I love Macs, but because I’m a selfish bastard. Among most of my friends and family, I’m the computer guy. They have a question about computers, they come to me. They get viruses, spyware, a hard drive crash or leprosy of the motherboard, I’m the guy they call.
And they call a lot.
From my father who can’t understand the intricacies of broadband to my coworkers that don’t grasp that an out of date virus definition is bad, I get a lot of calls.
I figure that my Mac has given me the least trouble of any system, it comes with great support, if I can shovel these otherwise intelligent people over to Mac, I’ll get less calls and that gives me more time for Desktop Tower Defense.
However, despite my speeches, praise and those snappy Mac ads, I haven’t been able to convince one damn person to switch. Why? Well, they’re just too damn expensive.
Need proof of the problem? Let me see if I can shed some light on the situation.
In Search of a Close Shave
Dear Shaving Companies,
I am a man. Since I don’t want to look like a Scottish bagpipe player, I have to shave at least somewhat regularly.
However, like most men, shaving remains one of my least favorite morning rituals, ranked somewhere between bathing in scalding hot water and drinking burnt coffee in the list of things I’d like to be doing after I wake up.
Yet, the other day, as I was taking a Bic razor to my freshly prepared face, a thought flashed across my mind. In the past fifty years, man has been to the moon, we’ve turned the “supercomputer” into a “personal computer” and built this whole newfangled Internet thing, why the Hell do I still bleed after every shave?
Then it dawned on me, it’s YOUR fault shaving companies. You, the purveyors of foams, gels, razors, lotions and more, you are the reason shaving still sucks. Your laziness and/or incompetence has kept this ritual of manhood every bit as painful and violent as it was hundreds of years ago and, dammit, I want that to change.
It’s time you got off your collective asses and brought real change to this industry. If you need some advice, I’ve got a few suggestions.
Smooth Move coComments
Dear coComments,
I leave a LOT of comments. Outside of my charm and good looks, of which I have none, comments are probably my favorite means of promoting my various sites and blogs.
However, keeping track of all of those comments is a huge pain. I don’t want to leave a comment on a site only to have some troll take a snipe at me unscathed. No, I want to return and bring down upon him the wrath of a nuclear flamewar using language that would make the Angry Video Game Nerd blush with shame.
Actually, I’m just usually just saying thank you for the help, but it was nice to pretend I’m some kind of comment warrior.
Anyway, as I was saying, keeping track of those comments is a major pain. So many sites, so little time. In that quest though, your service is, or at least was, a complete Godsend. It was like a little inbox for all of my comments. It was great and it beat getting an email from every comment follow up I got.
However, your “V2″ of the comment system shares a lot in common with the famous V-2 Rocket, a tactical failure that never should have left the launchpad. You’ve taken what was one of my favorite Web services and squandered that goodwill, sending me, and others like me, running to the competition.
But since I’m such a nice guy, I’ll give you my thoughts on it and a second chance, but first, I want these issues fixed.
Falling Out of Love With Linux
Dear Linux,
I love you, or rather, I used to love you. However, lately I’ve been having an affair.
You knew that I’d been keeping Windows around, He’s like my drinking buddy. He plays all my games and we like to hang out on the weekends. It was never a “love” thing between us, just a way to escape. Besides, he’s one of the guys.
But no, lately I’ve had a new fling. I met Mac.
Actually, we’re old friends, I knew her all the way as a baby Apple II and we practically grew up together. She’s always been dependable, stable and competent, but she also grew up into something quite beautiful. We started dating a few months ago and, well, it’s getting serious between us.
Sure, she’s not perfect and I can’t say if I really love her or not, but we have to face it, things aren’t the same between us anymore and, well, she and I have been enjoying each other’s company a lot more these days.
Still, I am a gentleman and, as such, I have to be honest with you. Perhaps you can grow from this and, perhaps, some day, we can get back together again.
But first you have to listen to me.
