A Lobster, an Apple, and Some Pineapple Compote; Or Ten Hours with Vista and I Can't Ctrl+Alt+Delete My Way Out of This One...

Hooray for the longest and seemingly nonsensical title in the history of this blog.

I should start by saying my household has one phenomenally amazing new member -- this gorgeous iMac I have the pleasure to currently be working on. All tricked out and snazzier than the rest, by far. So, tonight, with my new, unbelievably capable machine in front of me, I should be happy. But I'm not.

Why?

Maybe it started with the words of doom "Please wait a moment while windows prepares to start for the first time..."

During the very, very, very, very first time in history when those words flashed across a screen -- did the world throw up a little just in the back of its throat? I believe so. Just as I did earlier today.

What I did was pretty much near all-out blasphemy at the highest level. I subverted the sheer beauty of this machine by partitioning its hard drive and installing the antichrist of all OS's -- Windows Vista. You'd think it isn't that bad, but, honestly, IT IS.

Now, to be fair, the very act of running Boot Camp on this heavenly machine made me feel like the first time that I ever cooked a lobster on my own. I have been eating lobster since I started solid foods and never thought twice about it until I decided to boil one up for dinner one night in college. There I was all apartmented-out totally grown up and away from home. I boiled a huge pot of water. Picked up my lovely little friend and tried to put him (or her?) in the pot... Tail flapping, claws outreached, I nearly fainted from the knowledge that I was about to drop a living thing in boiling water. It was horrendous. I did it, but I couldn't eat.

Running Vista on this brilliant machine is the same thing, I installed it, but I don't think I can live with keeping it around. The level of subversion -- of total degradation of a thing of beauty could only be equalled by Lise's fondness for Pineapple Compote.

Finally, after half a day, those Mac - PC "deny - allow" commercials ring true. It's not so much even the soul vs. no soul question -- I run Boot Camp (with XP) on my laptop and don't feel nearly as chilled or nauseous as today's adventure in Vista has left me. But, it's true, what happens in that advertisement. You cannot do anything in Vista without receiving a pop-up requiring you to "allow" the action... Not that I ever would expect an efficient product from MS, but still, do they have to be so blatantly barbaric about their inadequacies?

Vista's getting two more days. If I can't deal, my beautiful iMac is getting an honorable discharge from the service and I'm going to rock on with my bad self in a less cumbersome, cluttered world.

p.s. The more "Apple"-like the MS interface becomes, the more I feel them failing to achieve anything close to worthwhile.