February 2007 Archives

I own both a Mac and a PC. I've used a PC for about 15 years and a Mac for about 3.

If I were to confess to how many machines I actually own, the number is probably in the low twenties, with multiple Win 2k, XP and even an old 98 box somewhere, several Linux servers, a Linux laptop, an HP-UX box and a Solaris 8 server that I've never bothered to update. Got geek?

But there are only two machines I use on a daily basis, and those are a Windows XP box and a PowerBook.

And I've got some complaints about both Microsoft and Apple. I'm going to warn you, this is a really geeky rant. And it's long.

Ogden Nash wrote a book of poetry entitled I'm a Stranger Here Myself which contained Curl up and Diet, a poem about women and weight loss. I haven't seen the book in about twenty years (my parents had a copy), but I'm going to make a stab at a remembering a few lines:

Some women drink too much Some women pray too much But all women think they weigh to much

By the end of the poem, some poor women has been granted the ability to lose as much as she wants - and has lost weight to the point where she looks like the shadow of someone's 14 year old brother in the last stages of some obscure disease.

Well, my friend Gus MacDonald contracted some form of liver-blood disease about a year ago (he's healthy now - well, as healthy as he ever was, at any rate) and lost an enormous amount of weight. Maybe ten kilos.

I've been sick with some kind of flu for the last twelve days it's taken five kilos off me. I'm down to 89 kilos. I'm reminded of an old David Letterman skit from when he was a stand-up comedian: "Lose weight without diet or exercise! I figure that pretty much leaves disease."

The British government is planning on putting in place a pay as you go road tax which would replace existing fuel and road taxes.

This road tax would mean that people who used congested roads would pay more than people who lived in rural areas. The pay as you go tax would range from 2p per mile for rural roads to £1.34 on the M46 at rush hour.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this proposal and I'm broadly in favour of the idea of pay as you go road taxation - but I still signed the petition opposing the government's proposal. Inside, you'll find out why and get some perspectives from Catherine MacDonald-Keir, editor of Luxury Briefing magazine, Mark Willenbrock, an independent businessman and British expat who lives in Morocco and Jamie Young, an Internal Auditor with British Petroleum.