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2001-10-11 | 10:05 a.m.

I'm just going to write in the box for a while. I've been so good about writing in Word, saving it, then copying it and pasting it in the box... well, this morning I'm going to live dangerously and write off the cuff.

Yesterday afternoon I had all the kids in the car to go to soccer practice when my key broke off in the ignition. Now that its seven years of---oh, hell, what do they call that? the thing that makes me really mad?---anyway, now that that thing has expired, our car has become like something you would drive in Toontown. Things are constantly breaking or falling off. It doesn't quite make buffoonish honking sounds as you go down the street, but almost.

It would probably be easier to just become a clown family once and for all. We're so close as it is, we might as well just buy the face paint.

It's not sustainability, it's .... argh. Sustained ... obsolescence. No! Planned obsolescence. That's what it's called. Planned obsolescence---when the car companies intentionally build cars to last seven years---and not a moment longer---to keep their profitability high.

Speaking of keeping your profit margin high, I believe I am going to follow through on my perpetual threat to boycott Microsoft. The next time we buy a PC, I'm not sure I want to be strong-armed into using Windows XP and have to call them for permission to put it on my notebook. I can learn to use Linux or buy a fucking Mac. You hear that, Michael Dell? You think I won't follow through on my threat, but I might just surprise you. I have always stood by Dell computers but by refusing to use AMD processors and by playing Microsoft's patsy, the company has lost my respect. Also, after looking at some of their new systems, I'm not convinced they're building them as well as they used to.

But then, who is? I remember when I was talking to that analyst, Bjork, and he was making the point that Microsoft wants people to buy a new operating system every year to maintain their profit margin. Well, gee whiz, that wouldn't be necessary if Microsoft were happy with being merely super-successful and wealthy. But no, MS wants to be the richest company of them all. RCA was content to make televisions that lasted longer than seven years. I have a Panasonic boom box that I bought when I was sixteen years old, and it still works. So why should we be conscripted into keeping Microsoft at the top of the corporate heap? It's very wrong, if you ask me. They're trying to get everybody on a cable-TV subscription model, where we all pay over and over and over again for the same shit we used to pay only once for. And the only way it will stop is if people start saying no, one at a time, and offices and corporations start saying no, one by one. If you really want to break up the Microsoft monopoly, that's the only way to do it---the government isn't going to do it for you.

Well, I guess I needed to get that off my chest. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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