still listening to GeekDad

Time just seems to be flying by these days. And the more things fly by, the more difficult it is to actually step back and think where you are going. You just get into a default position of reacting to stuff, rather than actually controlling your own agenda.


I suppose marketing plays on that, wrong footing you with buy now, time limited offer, so you allow yourself to be bounced into buying something you don't really need.

I have fallen prey to a couple of marketing efforts recently, the recent MacHeist offer on Parallels for half price, only available until the end of the month, and TalkTalk broadband available free for the next twenty years if you sign up now.

PARALLELS
I'd done a bit of research on Parallels before, so I just bought it, it was not much. However on looking at just how much a Vista/XP license would cost, and just how much of an anorak you would need to be to install and run Linux, I've not got any further. I'll maybe get a Linux install as a cover disc for one of the magazines, and I'll keep my eyes open for cheap Windows OS.

Never actually having been in the business of buying software for a PC, I foolishly assumed that it was all pretty cheap, as PC owners do tend to focus on the inordinate expense of running a Mac. However I was really struggling to find an Instal OS disk for less than £100, there seemed to be a million Amazon pages with slightly different versions, at widely different prices. And of course, you have to remember that however wonderful the OS actually is, it does not actually do very much, you still need to buy the actual software that you might want to run, the price for full set of Microsoft Office is at the kind of level that I would associate with the price of a second hand car.

Bearing in mind the fact that a load of CDs and a box cost virtually nothing, and practically every computer in the world seems to run Windows and Office, the surprise is that Bill Gates is only as rich as he is, he is not just sitting on a goldmine, it is like having won a whole set of licenses to print money, he is probably the one person that could afford to buy his own planet!

Being peevish, it is obvious that money does not buy taste, he certainly does not dress well, his offices look like somewhere that sell bulk office stationery, he has not acquired the aloof snooty sheen of academics or the meritocracy. However, as a Mac user, the script is to hate Bill Gates, but he is actually reasonably likeable, probably mildly autistic, and fiercely competitive, he has taken the intellectual stance of pursuing the game as ruthlessly as he could, and the fact that regulation failed to check him is a failing of legislation rather than him. I suspect that he simply does not look at things in terms of decent fair play, just as I cannot conceive of the meaning that a mathematician would see in numbers. Being different is not being bad.

TALKTALK
Having rambled on about Parallels, the other marketing blandishment that I fell prey to was someone phoning me to try and sell me free broadband for life with TalkTalk. As ever, the person was probably phoning from Dehli, and is probably a really lovely person, who just happens to be annoying me. Of course the offer sounded tempting, but it was difficult to get a word in edge-ways, and they were starting to tell me things that I knew were not true, like that there would be no problem curtailing my current broadband contract. You kind of get a feel for when people know less about something than you do, though they don't always have the sense to talk less simply because the know less.

Anyway having had to politely hang up, family stuff going on, the poor guy still grinding out the sales pitch, I checked out the reviews on that interweb thingy. I suppose that Broadband reviews will always tend towards the extreme, this service sucks so hard, that it is creating an anomaly in the space time continuum, stole my kidneys and had sex with my gerbil. However even by these hyperbolic standards the reviews for TalkTalk seemed ‘mixed’, in fact I do rather wonder if the few good reviews came from Charlie Dunstone and his immediate family.

Getting broadband running is about as much fun as doing open heart surgery on yourself, I think that I can find it in myself to pass up on the chance of free broadband, with some of the worst reviews going.


Anyway, having wibbled on about nothing, time to go find something useful to do.
I'm posting the odd photo to Flickr, and starting to think about what makes a good photo, basically it only has a few things it in, so it is not a distracting mess of detail.
Still listening to Geekdad,
....

PS - lame joke
why did the vicar have a Mars bar on Sunday morning?

because a Mars a day, helps you work, rest and pray.

PPS
I had to explain that to my daughter Megan, still not sure that she got it