Don’t Be Jealous

Well howdy there folks. This is just brief blog about my scrumptious day. I live such an interesting life. I don’t want any of you to feel that you have to keep up with me. Some of you reading this may feel your life pales compared to mine so I’m going to give you but a few hours of my day so as not to make you feel badly about yourselves.

Today I woke up around 6:30 and made coffee. I have a Bunn. If you don’t know what a Bunn is – never mind. Anyway a Bunn makes coffee in 3 minutes so while I was making coffee I headed to the bathroom to do something. When I came back, I was disappointed that the coffee was not done. I should take more time in the bathroom I guess. So I fiddled around in the kitchen, killed a couple of ants, and looked in the refrigerator for nothing in particular.

Three minutes of my day were already in the can (no pun intended) and the coffee was done. Now I’m not one of those mamsy-pamsy guys who drinks fluffy coffee, cappuccino, latte, or other such yuppie-inspired crap. I don’t have earrings and I don’t drink women’s coffee. I drink black, full-bodied coffee with an extra scoop. And no, I don’t buy $15 cans of Starbucks’ coffee in cans in the gourmet aisle of the grocery store. I’m lucky I can spell gourmet.

I always drink a cup of coffee before I brush my tongue and teeth. My dentist doesn’t think so much of my teeth, but she really loves my tongue. She says I have a great tongue for my age. She says that I have the tongue of a 30 year-old.

My dentist: She’s a card!

Anyway, there’s a couple of reasons that I don’t brush my teeth and tongue before I have coffee. Oh, you really need me to explain that? OK. One is that it makes no sense to brush your tongue and teeth and then drink coffee. Coffee does a really good job of covering up morning-breath – so a good tongue and teeth cleaning isn’t necessary at that hour. My cat really doesn’t care what my breath smells like – and frankly, at 6:30AM I don’t either. The second reason is that toothpaste and mouthwash make coffee taste terrible. So if you’re the kind that brushes your teeth and tongue first thing in the morning than you’re not my cup of tea.

After I finished my first cup of coffee I did the tongue and teeth thing. And then I went back and grabbed the Bunn and poured a second cup of coffee because I wanted one – and yes I know what I just wrote; my memory is not that short.

I took my second cup of coffee into the living room where I have my laptop set up on a cheap TV-tray (no, I’m not kidding) and I logged on to my laptop and was immediately angered by yet another stupid Windows Update. I made a mental note to buy a MacBook. So all the the things I was working on last night when I went to bed – and there were many, but I’m not going to tell you what they were because you’d be jealous – I left open so I could start working on them this morning. And to make a long story short – all the stuff I didn’t save was wiped out by Microsoft’s goofy updates.

I got to thinking that if Microsoft has billions why don’t they just hire all the hackers in the world and pay them to sit around and hack Windows BEFORE Windows is released? It woud do two things: It would get the criminals off the streets, and end all these crazy Windows Updates which are nothing more than patches for holes that Microsoft employees couldn’t find a few weeks ago, but some sleazy poverty-stricken hacker working on a used Commodore 64 computer in his basement somewhere in Lower Slobovia found in 15 minutes.

I decided that was enough. Next time it’s Apple for me. I clicked on Control Panel. I laughed. Control Panel? Control Panel controls nothing as far as I can tell. Any in Control Panel, I set my Windows Updates to download automatically but not to install them until I install them when I’m good and ready.

Frankly, I’m tired of Microsoft ruining my work. They do a good enough job of ruining their own work without coming ’round and ruining mine too.

After I did that, though, I got a notice that there were MORE updates to install. What? Microsoft just installed a bunch of them overnight and then ruined my work by shutting down my computer. I had to start up from a cold boot this morning.

I lost a lot of work over this – and I’m not happy – but I go ahead and let the darned MORE updates install. After annoying me for about 10 minutes I got a message that the update could not be installed. I have no doubt – I have no doubt because Microsoft already installed the same updates during the night but now they wanted to punish me for switching my updates to “let me decide when to install them”. Microsoft doesn’t like it when you do that. It empowers them if they can shut off your computer while you’re sleeping – they can ruin all the work you didn’t save when you went to bed.

After fooling around with Microsoft stuff for about 40 minutes, I gave up and started checking email. First there were a few angry emails which I dispatched with my typical sweet replies; there were some interesting news items I briefly scanned. Not too much going on this morning so I started thinking maybe I’d have some cereal for breakfast. After cursing Microsoft, sending a few really sweet emails in reply to nasty ones, scanning a few editorials and news items, I was famished. All that work and excitement made me hungry. Strawberry Morning sounded good. It has lots of little dried up slices of strawberries that get all puffy in milk. I like that. I also like it when my milk turns pink. Now really. I meant the milk in the bowl.

I’m just kidding about switching to Apple – maybe if Steve Jobs were still alive, but not now. Apple, once always coming out with the next biggest new thing, simply makes the once new biggest thing, bigger. And I don’t mean bigger as in “idea”. For instance, iPhones used to be small enough to hold in one hand, now you have to use both hands just to hold one.

Microsoft and Apple – two fruits from the same tree, I tells ya!

I’d go on with this but you’d all be jealous if I told you what happened after I finished that big bowl of Strawberry Morning. I really don’t want to make your life seem meaningless and boring compared to mine, so I’ll be nice and stop here.

But I will tell you…