I’m seeing blogbuzz about Oregon Trail nostalgia.
Couldn’t help thinking of this 4-strip Achewood series on the topic.
Month: March 2005
Little Dose Of Reality
And while I was here at the King I talked to a young woman who was going through orientation, for her new job at BK, for minimum wage (she was frustrated to be starting at minimum after working in fast food for years), cause she’s got a baby and she couldn’t afford to buy baby wipes last week cause she was totally broke. She asked about my job programming, mentioning that her boyfriend knew a lot about computers; she was wondering if he could get a job like that. I told her how I did it, by starting with technical temp work like tech support, and moving up job by job to positions of greater technical responsibility… Even starting temp tech support isn’t bad pay and it is a good way to move up. She thought that sounded like a good idea.
The manager wasn’t sure what he was going to do, because he’d wanted her on drive through but she had an ear infection and had to have an earful of cotton and antibiotics because of an infection. He asked her for a doctor’s note about how long she’d have to have that and she said she’d try to get one but it might be tricky cause she was broke and had no insurance.
Humbled me and made me more grateful for the luck I’ve had, without particularly deserving it.
Pingin from the King
This is the second West Michigan Burger King I’ve been in which has wifi. FREE wifi, not for-pay Wayport Wifi like McDonalds.
I’m at the Burger King on 28th street near Woodland Mall.
While I was at the one on 44th street just west of US 131, I happened to meet a local boss dude — an owner or regional manager or something. He asked me about the connectivity and I gave it a thumbs up. He explained that they had just decided to put in the wifi — they have DSL in all the local stores and he was like “why not throw in a $100 router and spread the love?”
Apparently the love has also been spread to the 52nd and Broadmoor store and a couple others, but I haven’t checked that out.
Between free wifi and the Enormous Omelette Sandwich, BK is indeed sharin’ the love.
On the other hand…
All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple’s low point in the mid 1990s. They’re about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get.
The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know?
Both this and the previous article are via Ranchero.
Tim Bray ponders unswitching
ongoing � Unswitch? is an interesting little entry about why someone would bail out of the Mac world.
The main reason would be: Apple tends to act like total bastards from time to time.
The main reason not to would be: Life tends to suck more when you’re using Linux than when you’re using OS X, and Windows is not even a realistic option once you’ve lived without it for a while.
I sympathize, but I won’t be unswitching anytime real soon.