Geek Dreams
Today, an older lady and gentleman came into Microservices. You may know them, in fact; they're the couple that stands each friday opposite Johnson hall in protest of the war. Anyway, the woman wanted to see if she could upgrade her very old email programme on her very old Mac laptop to SSL compatible logins, as the University now requires. Well, the laptop was very cute, but it was ANCIENT. Running OS 7.5 and without enough memory to even run a browser. Needless to say, she wasn't going to be able to upgrade to Eudora 5.1 and even if she could, her computer didn't have the functionality to use SSL. So we dinked around with it a bit, postulated about installing Outlook, hooked it up to the ethernet via FriendlyNet adapter, thought about hooking up a scsi-adapter drive to it, and then decided it was a ridiculous hassle that probably wouldn't work on on obscenely outdated piece of equipement. So, not for lack of trying, we gave them our best suggestion, which was to purchase a low-end 12 inch iBook at an educational discount from the UO bookstore.

They came back not an hour later with a 12 inch iBook. I mean. Wow. This never happens. I wish I could just go out and buy a new computer like that. Sheesh. Why doesn't everyone do that when we tell them? It was such a JOY to help them set it up, just thinking that there was one less person in the world using a piece of shit to do their computing on. That's one less person to come to us when their machine fails and their lose everything. I can't tell you how many times I've seen that. It makes me weep.

Geek dreams do come true.