I’ve been an IBM/Windows user my whole life, but back in January, when I needed a new laptop, I bought a Macintosh. This was simply the next step in a gradual withdrawal from Vader’s realm; I had switched from Explorer and Outlook a year earlier. Part of this was practical -- we used Macs at the school where I was teaching, and I wanted to be able to read my email and have the same bookmarks – but mostly it was the result of an indefinable disaffection with Windows. And when the second versions of Parallels was released, so that in a desperate moment I could run my favorite Windows programs, I jumped.Surprisingly, with the exception of Microsoft Access, I found that there wasn’t a single program I needed to bring over from Windows. I got Fetch for FTP and switched over to BBEdit (a wonderful editor), but I use the Mac version of everything else – Office, Dreamweaver, Flash, Firefox, Perl, etc. I’m still learning things about the Mac and Unix (obviously), but I found the transition far less painful than I expected. Mostly I just need to remember to press the Apple key instead of the Ctrl-key. On those rare occasions when I need Explorer or Access, I use my old Dell.
At the beginning of this month, as it happened, Vader pulled me back. I accepted a full-time job working with SQL Server, C# and Visual Basic. I’m an old fan of Visual Basic – ten years ago, nothing beat it for rapid prototyping – and I was eager to learn C#. What I expect to find is that it combines the speed of VB with the hard edges of C.
So. I will be writing less. Up through December, in addition to the database job, I will still be teaching. When I do return to the blog, in addition to C#, here’s what I’ll be writing about.
I finished the time tracking software. I’ve been using it every day now for about a month and I find it very helpful for finding out where my day goes, but it also taught me a lot about JavaScript and PHP. I have some complaints.
I finished version two of my Google math gadget. With the right idea, I think there may be a minor business in gadget making.
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