2002-03-21 -

Bring On the Human Shield

Work today included a belch (it was unworthy of the term blast) from the past: Working on an IBM UNIX machine. My stomach hurts. It's not that IBMs suck utterly; they don't. Alas, IBM decided that their version of UNIX should be highly customized to make it easy for users and poorly trained tech monkeys to use. That meant they hid most of the guts, so nobody would notice that UNIX wasn't user-friendly at heart. But guess what? I like guts. I want to get down and dirty with the machines I support. I want to be able to say, "Hey, Mr Vendor, your install procedure would embarass the guy who invented the VIC-20, so I'm gonna write my own." And IBM's UNIX doesn't let me do that, so I want no part of it.

Except for one thing: I think Sun is taking our company for granted these days, and I want to bring them in sometime and walk them past a row of people happily computing on IBMs, just to remind them to work for their cash.

Anyway, on a non-work-related note, Liralyn finally made friends with Danno today. She did shy before dinner was served, but just after dinner, a game of tag broke out. Nobody can play tag in a shy fashion. By the end of the evening I think they were friends.

I, on the other hand, finally revealed my true colors. We were playing tag with no tagbacks. Liralyn tagged Danno. Danno came after me. I picked up Liralyn, whom he could not tag, and used her as a human shield for about thirty seconds. Heheheheheh.

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