…or why do I subject myself to the muck flowing from MicroSoft…
In writing another post (about Chrome), I mentioned using Windows, and I know some of you are likely wondering “why would someone like me be using Windows??”. And if you have known me, you know that the short philosophy 101 style answer is “not willingingly”. Over the years, I have referred to it in countless negative (put mildly) ways, even to executives at places I have worked such as CompuServe. But the simple fact comes down to this… it is a highly successful platform, regardless of all its flaws. So, as unpleasant as I view it, I must equate it with the cow manure I knew growing up in farm country… a necessary evil. It “works” for countless folks like secretaries, accountants, HR specialists and tech support folks to do all the varied tasks which they do. And because much of what I do ultimately ends up used by those folks and others like them, I have to make sure that what I create will work for them. And this means using things like IE, Firefox, and Chrome on Windows to view the stuff which I work with on some UN*X server, to make sure it looks like what it is supposed to look.
There is a flipside to this as well… because of that multitude of users, it is often necessary for me to use a browser on Windows, to say watch a movie, play a game, or sometimes even to run the vendor-specific VPN software to access work. It has been so long since I tried to listen to streaming music or do some of those, that perhaps I can do it today, but then… I know some files are encoded and require software which is not available on Linux without having to pay $$. And so, for right now, using it also is a path of least resistance.
Does it change my dislike for Windows… no more than the nice corn, tomatoes and other things fertilized with cow manure have made me dislike the manure any. But then, it is just another case of putting up with something bad to get to do something good, and so, I continue to use what I have in some of my kinder moments referred to as being a “cross between a cattle lot and a virus incubation environment”, and write it off as yet another imperfection of life.
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