Wrangling wireheads

A good friend stopped by after dinner last night. He had ridden his bike for about 30 minutes to get to our house, and he carried with him a backpack containing his on-its-last-legs laptop. This time he didn't come for beer and casual conversation; he wanted his favourite wireheads to look at his machine and make some recommendations for a replacement.

B is a great guy. He visits our house often, sometimes several times a week. He is also one of Ron's clients and was a co-worker back in the day. Ron sees him as a serious business dude. I see him as a creative type who brings a whole lot of right brain thinking into his business life.

Therein lies the rub.

Ron's recommendation was that B purchase a high end Dell or HP laptop. My recommendation was that B get a smallish ruggedized laptop (note the first paragraph wherein B rides his bike onto our patio with his laptop in a backpack) and buy a second machine for home--a high powered Mac that can run both operating systems.

My thinking was that B throws his laptop in his truck, carries it with him when he is out in the oilpatch, and takes it with him when he stops by for a cold one at places that need bouncers. He also has this other, softer, side. I've seen it in creative multimedia presentations and reports he has written for work. He's also done some great design work.

In any case, I recommended a Mac. And my husband heard me. As you can see, I survived to tell the tale.

B actually liked my idea. He went so far as to say that he thinks Macs are sexy. At that point, I thought Ron was going to take the beer out of his hand and toss his best friend to the curb. Instead he glared at me, as if to accuse me of having bewitched the man.

I have not owned an Apple product since buying an Apple IIe back in the 80s. I don't see one in my future, either. Chances are if I ever got bitten by the creative bug, I'd buy PC software and be done with it. Ron, on the other hand, not only has never used an Apple product, he hates the company with a cold white hatred he usually reserves for talk of the Liberal Party, Quebec, or the 1981 National Energy Program.

I love the man, but he does have a knuckle dragging Neanderthal side.

Because we don't actually fight in our house--at least not in public--Ron spent the next 10 or 15 minutes glaring at me and muttering. B finished his beer and ran out. No one spent the night on the couch, and there were no visits to lawyers today. In fact, the only follow up at all was when Ron told me that after nine years of marriage, I am still a complete mystery.

That's a good thing, right?