I don't want to stir up any trouble. I really don't. I am here to be as helpful as possible for people who are trying to make purchasing decisions about the technology they are going to acquire during this holiday season. Not only that, but I was perusing social media during lunch and lo and behold, I saw the decades old debate about the suitability of Apple computers and computers running Windows, raging on the same as ever. I thought folks were over this, but evidently, they are not.

I started using personal computers in 1993. My first computer was an IBM 486 with Windows 3.1 installed. Over the next six years, I went from a novice to someone working in the support industry. The first time I received a call from a person who owned a Macintosh computer and wanted my assistance, I was incredulous. I couldn't believe that someone spent their money on something so expensive and so incompatible with everything with which I was familiar. In 2000, I was hired by a local school system, issued an Apple laptop, and immediately put to work servicing thousands of Apple computers across 21 schools. Within six months, my ability to configure and maintain Macs surpassed what I had learned in six years as a Windows user. Because I had to support both platforms, my knowledge of Windows and how to maintain it has never faltered. Although I haven't purchased a Windows machine for personal use in over a quarter of a century, I have been issued a few at work and touched literally thousands of them in my job.

For a while, purchasing a Mac was a considerable investment when compared to obtaining an entry-level PC. I will admit to buying inexpensive Dell laptops for my daughters when they were in college. My mother, on the other hand, who is more financially secure, is the one person I recommended buying a Mac. The Dell PC she previously had during the early part of the 21st century was repeatedly infected with different forms of malware and hard for her to maintain. Since she entered the Apple ecosystem with an iPhone, an iMac, and an iPad, she's had very little problems, and like many users, has actually moved away from a desktop machine to using only handheld devices. Some tech snobs think that Apple locks you into their ecosystem by tying the devices together, but I can assure you that most regular people appreciate rather than resent that feature.

These days, you can get an entry-level MacBook Air or a Mac Mini for under a thousand dollars, and the days of them being prohibitively expensive are over. Most people find that an entry-level PC purchased at Best Buy or Walmart will disintegrate within three or four years, whereas most Macs last up to a decade before they need to be replaced. Sometimes people that have never used anything but Windows will accuse Max of not being user-friendly, but the problem there lies with the user and not with the device. For 20 years, I watched five-year-old kindergarteners sit down at iMacs in a computer lab and begin to do things immediately. One little known fact is that low-end computers purchased in big box stores do not have the same components that other computers made by the same manufacturer enjoy. Period. There is definitely a trend towards awarding parts contracts to the lowest bidders, and certainly not to the ones who provide the most quality outside the gaming machines that some PC users purchase. Apple computers, on the other hand, enjoy the same quality components regardless of where they are sold.

There are still people who believe that Macs are only good for graphic designers and creators. These same people believe that you must purchase a Windows machine to get real work done. I have news for them. I work at a small private university in the IT department. My job consists primarily of supporting Windows users and maintaining the computers on the university network. I use various Microsoft tools to do this. All of my IT related work is done on an iMac. If I need to use Windows, I simply log in via a virtual machine on the network to get access to the tools I need. The big graphics companies like Adobe have long made versions of their software for both Mac and PCs. Most of the time, outside specialized enterprise applications, users can get their work done regardless of the platform that they are on. Our university requires every student to purchase a computer, but we do not specify whether they must buy a Microsoft product or an Apple product.

I am long past considering the type of computer one uses as criteria for evaluating their worthiness as a human being. It's just a machine. People who are fighting religious wars over computing platforms need to get a life. They are stuck in another decade. Having said that, I don't see a compelling reason to use Windows outside the specialty enterprise applications I mentioned earlier or just because one is familiar with the platform. I think a legitimate argument can be made for the superiority of Apple's operating systems and the apps that run on them by most knowledgeable people.

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More than a decade ago, a discovered a fun little app called Quotebook the app was deprecated within a couple of years of my discovery. By some miracle, it has continued to work. I have transferred from phone to phone and continued to use it for its intended purpose, collecting quotes from news stories, books and memes. As a backup, I also use individual text files named after the speaker/writer. Once that folder contained over 500 individuals. I created a GitHub repository to make it easy to share with others. Available as a ZIP archive or as single files you can find it here.

I prefer finding my quotes organically rather than harvesting tons of them at a time, but I will occasionally go looking for a quote on a specific topic. A good place to do that is here -

Quote Topics - BrainyQuote

If you use IFTTT, you can get quotes emailed to you daily. I've been doing it for years. The day's choice goes out shortly after midnight, so it's always waiting for me when I wake up. You can get the same service with a free account.

Email me a famous quote every day - IFTTT

There are a few other quotes collecting apps available for iOS and Mac. I've tried them all.

Quotes: Capture and Share Quotes

Thoughts: Quote Manager

Quotemarks

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When I began to publish my writing online a year ago, I had no idea whether I would make it a habit or whether people would read anything I wrote. I hoped they would, but I had very little idea however all of this works. Blogging challenges were a mystery to me. My knowledge about how the whole community of personal bloggers from various platforms coalesces within social media circles was scant. The more I wrote and the more consistently I shared, the more learned about the unwritten expectations I would begin to place on myself. I also saw the constraints other people operated under, by choice, and how they differed from mine. Instinctively, I understood that being true to myself was the most important rule to follow. The other unwritten rules of blogging are just things I intuited along the way.

To my delight, I learned that writing my own version of someone else's idea is totally fine, as long as I give them a shout-out for the inspiration. Having someone do the reverse for me is high praise. Any time I've written something and then been able to read someone else's experiences in the same set of circumstances, it's been enjoyable. I end up feeling a particular closeness to the writer. I like it best when there are other significant differences in our lives, so I can see that my feelings of being unique aren't particularly valid. People tend to be more alike than they are different, in my experience. I wrote a post on what it was like to attend 13 schools over a 12-year period, only to read accounts from an English-Canadian woman a couple of years older than me who had done something similar. I also discovered a fellow who lives a continent away who is similar to me in many other ways besides our schooling history. Taking inspiration from others writing is a way of relating in a more deep and connected way than social media could ever offer.

Another ethical issue I and others have to deal with is the prevalence of AI writing tools and easily accessible they are. Things like grammar and spell checkers have been around for decades, but tools that can create an entire post from a mere prompt are new. I don't see myself letting some company's plagiarism machine create something that I would stick my name to. I don't have a problem having my spelling, grammar and punctuation checked by a computer because I'm used to that. Using a service that significantly changes my words, the tone and the structure just seems dishonest. There is a place for that in business, that being a cold and heartless environment. Blogging should have a soul. It should have a heart, and it should have an ethical code that the text you put under your byline is real and created by a human.

On the honesty scale, I'd say I come in around 90% to 95% honest. Sometimes one has to stretch the truth a bit to protect the innocent or make a story worth telling. My style of writing is autobiographical. There are times when I just can't remember the exact order of events, where I was living or who I was married to (just kidding). I do the best I can. I aim to be entertaining and interesting, not to please a professional fact-checker. Of course, there are some things about which I always try to be scrupulously honest. When I write about sobriety and recovery, you can take it to the bank. If I convey a particularly funny story about something that happened while I was in the army, there may be a detail or two where I take a literary license. Most of military life is dull and boring, so if something sounds interesting, it's probably just in the way I'm writing it.

I also tend to stick to just the facts when I write tech related posts. I want nothing more than to help someone find a real solution to a software issue. I'd feel horrible if I misled them about an app's suitability for a task, or if I wasn't diligent about pointing out a show stopping flaw. To the regular people in the world, a detailed explanation of menus, buttons, submenus and other user interface trivia is pure textual sleeping pills. For my fellow nerds and software geeks, it's vital information.

At some point, my goal is to have more time to write more polished and detailed work, to spend more time fine-tuning what I put out there for folks to read. I want to work through more than one draft, like what I envision a real writer does, Meanwhile, I will continue to be a happy hack making stuff that's good enough to share even if it won't win any rewards.

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This year's Thanksgiving has a special flavor. My son, who lives far away in Austin, Texas, is here for a visit. I still live in the house where he grew up, and he enjoys these nostalgic returns. After we got home from the airport yesterday, he went for a run. He came home to report that he'd passed the homes of old friends, the middle school he attended, and various spots where he's committed various teenage sins in his wayward youth.

A little later, we went to the train station to pick up his daughter, our granddaughter, who was traveling to meet us from Virginia, where she attends school. We all went out for a sushi feast before coming home to hang out, telling stories, and making each other laugh.

I get up early, and as I sit here writing, I have that wonderful protective parental feeling that reminds me of my younger days when I'd wait for the kids to get up so I could make them breakfast and start the day. Later on, we will all be traveling across town to attend the annual family gathering at the remnants of my uncle's farm, where I lived during my high school years. My daughter and two of our other grandchildren will be there, along with other relatives ranging in age from nearly 80 down to a six-year-old.

Luckily, no one will talk politics in mixed company. If the coast is clear, the progressive wing of the family may console each other under our breaths, but no one will be wearing a MAGA hat or thanking the Good Lord for the election of Donald Trump. We will be asked to give reports on anyone who is missing. One of the best parts of these rare family conclaves is the chance to catch up on family news.

Wonder Woman is sitting across from me, already beginning our holiday shopping. With five children and 13 grandchildren, she has a lot of gifts to buy. I send her ideas and give her feedback, but all the real work, including wrapping the gifts when they get here, falls to her. My Black Friday shopping is relegated to taking advantage of software sales, a relatively selfish pursuit that I thoroughly enjoy. I probably won't be getting many new apps this year because, quite frankly, I have so many already that it's hard to even find things on sale that I don't already have installed!

I make a gratitude list every day as part of my journaling practice. It helps me stay in tune with how fortunate I am in so many ways. Since last Thanksgiving, a lot has happened that has given me new reasons to be thankful. After a long pause, I started blogging again, giving myself a creative outlet that is enjoyable and therapeutic. I've enjoyed a marked resurgence in my interest in technology and married that to my writing to produce content that's been viewed over 400,000 times by people all around the world.

If you are reading this, know that I appreciate you. Thanks for being interested in my world. Feel free to leave a comment or to reach out on social media. Have a happy Thanksgiving, whether you live in the US or not. Let's make a better world in the year ahead.

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AMA - Finding comfort in the familiar things in life and having new adventures - which way do you lean?

Growing up as I did, where my family moved frequently and I was always changing schools, left me with a craving for stability and, well, sameness as an adult. I get a good deal of comfort out of living in the same house for decades now. I was glad to keep the same job in the same building for 20 years before retiring. On the other hand, traveling and seeing new things is a special treat. My favorite part of my months-long honeymoon was sleeping in a different place every night. I like both things.

In my job, most people are very unenthusiastic about having their computer updated, or god forbid, being issued a new one. When it comes to technology, the average person definitely prefers the familiar and comfortable over anything else. Not me. I'm always ready for new features, bug fixes, and extra security. Of course, since it's my profession, I'm more confident that I can fix any problems that pop up. Most of my career has been spent in education, where you would think people would be all about learning something new and expanding their horizons. You would be wrong if you thought that. Our ongoing controversy at work is around asking users to change the wireless network they use. That's it. Just select a different one from the list of what is available, type in your user name and password, and move on. Do I need to tell you how many meetings and conversations have already happened around this?

Lots of decisions come down to something familiar vs. something new. Take going out to eat, for instance. Wonder Woman and I have a handful of tried-and-true locally owned restaurants which we frequent. When I see a new place featured in the newspaper, I immediately think of checking it out if it looks like something we'd fancy. We like international cuisine and we need gluten-free options. Yet, when it's the end of a long work day and we've decided that cooking is too much of a hassle, we almost always head to one of the places where we've been 100 times before. It's not called comfort food for nothing.

I drive a 2005 Toyota Camry. It is a twenty-year-old hand-me-down from my mother, who literally drove it to church on Sundays. It has well over 200,000 miles. The paint is stained from being parked under an oak tree, and there are various scrapes and dents on every side of it. I've put exactly zero thought into getting a replacement for it. I haven't had a car payment since the Bush administration, and that thought horrifies me. I only drive it a couple of times a week to work and back anyway. Wonder Woman has a new Subaru Outback with all the bells and whistles, Apple Car Play, heated steering wheel, automatically adjusting mirrors and seats, a backup camera, the whole deal. I love to drive it and do so every chance I get. It is indeed a balancing act.

There are a few areas where I lean one way or another. I'm not much on rewatching movies or TV shows if I have already seen them, but I will re-read a book without hesitation. On my computer, I've used some of the same apps for many, many years, such as PathFinder (20 years), Evernote(15 years), and Launchbar(17 years) - all of which I ditched last year for replacements that I am now quite happy with. For other things, like email, I'm still using the same thing, the Gmail web interface that I have used since 2005.

They say that without newness, memories don't get created, and life just sort of blends into a big blob. I believe that, so I do seek out new adventures. But I also relish in the comfort of the familiar. I expect most people are the same in that regard.

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Some of the best advice I ever received was an admonition against burning bridges. An old co-worker told me that when I was getting ready to leave a job at which I was unhappy. The immature side of me wanted to leave in a blaze of glory, letting everyone know what I thought of them and the place that employed them. Somehow I'd convinced myself that my opinion was important and that all those people needed my approval to be happy - none of which was actually true. You may have seen someone do exactly what I contemplated. It's always icky and transparent and never looks good.

Sometimes people start burning their bridges when they are getting ready to leave a group as a way of self-protection. They don't want the separation to hurt so they begin to withdraw and cut off relationships. That's understandable. But I try to avoid doing it as best I can. Sometimes in our lives a certain group dynamic only exists for a short while under a certain set of circumstances that can never be recaptured - political campaigns, social movements, even some educational opportunities are like that. Just because the magic of the moment is gone doesn't mean that the people involved in it are no longer valuable, not because of what they can do for you, but just because people and relationships have an intangible worth that we honor when we continue to respect them.

In the current political environment in the US, I am very much of the mind to avoid people who like and support the president-elect. Their values and mine are obviously tremendously different. At a fundamental level, I just don't understand what makes them tick, nor do I have a desire to. But, I'm not seeking out every conservative I know to let them know that Lou Plummer thinks they are a bad person. There are ways to avoid people without purposefully alienating them. This in no way means that I'll silently nod my head when someone begins to spout off about how wonderful DT is, it just means that I don't feel the need to tell anyone off preemptively.

When someone decides that ending a relationship with me on a negative note is the thing to do, it makes me wonder what they hope to gain. It doesn't happen very often, and usually when it does, it's part of a mass casualty event when a disgruntled co-worker exits, but occasionally it's personal. It reeks of immaturity and poor judgement. I do the best I can not to take it personally. Some people are just built that way, I suppose. In reality, telling someone off, getting the last word, and making a dramatic exit only kind of feel good and only in the moment. That action is usually followed by a big let down and moments of self-doubt.

It's like my Mama (and probably yours too) used to say. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything. It’s not trite. It's true in most contexts. Exceptions can be made for calling out injustice and bigotry.

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