Do things in the outside world remind you of your Mac? I mean even the littlest things, be it the shape of something or the font of a publication or just a word which is somehow related you your Mac. Can these things get you started on the subject of your Mac? You're likely to say to your friend "I wonder if Big Macs are RISC...and Whoppers are CISC." You're afraid that headaches would lower your benchmark score and you wish you could upgrade your RAM before a test. If so, then you're a Mac Junkie, just like me. This column is meant to satiate this deeply-rooted desire of ours to incorporate everything in the world into Mac terms.
We are the exact opposite of people who use laymans terms to explain computers to others. We explain the rest of the world in computer lingo. We are the anti-layman. Oh by the way, my disk drive is bigger than your disk drive.
Are You One Of Us?
• For instance, have you considered asking the cashier at McDonalds if you get a bigger L2 cache with your Big Mac Extra Value Meal if you Super Size?
• Do you consider yourself bilingual if you can code in both C++ and Java?
• Do you look at the newly-released computer games for great movies that you've just seen so that you can kill all of the evil characters?
• Do you look at the newly-released computer games for the movies that sucked so that you can kill all of the characters?
• Do you wish that you could pause the real world? You know, save the real world and go back later and fix it or click the "undo" menu function so that you can fix the last mistake you made?
If you answered yes to a majority of these questions, we now know that it's time to use your skills to bring others down into the abyss with us.
What you can do
• Mention speed limits in Megahertz. Soon enough, your friends will too.
• Ask your professor if you can bring a friend to the test for you since your brain can't be upgraded to the minimum requirements for the class.
• Ask your optomitrist if more VRAM will improve your vision and increase the refresh rates or if you need to buy new glasses anyway.
• Consider gamma correction as a viable solution to your inability to see when walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
• Another option for seeing better at night would be to turn up the brightness from the video options menu. This helps you see the monsters in the shadows. Now if only we had super nail guns just lying around in the real world, we could have some real fun.
• Complain that you hate Super Big Gulps from 7-11 because they don't fit in your car's cup holder. "Those damn 7-11 guys need to stop being so proprietary! They should adhere to the industry standards!" Follow this up by mentioning that 7-11 has too small a market share in the auto industry cup holder market and that they'll go out of business in a few fiscal quarters.
• Say things like "The picture on the TV is kinda fuzzy. Should I reboot it?" and "What kind of download rates do those toasters get with rye bread."
• Attempt to become ambidextrous in an attempt to improve your multitasking.
• Invite friends to bond by playing role playing games in which each person gets to act out a different part of the CPU's task library.
• Form Dilbert discussion groups to focus on whether your Mac gets upset when you don't read the comic out loud to him (or her).
• Make your friends wash their hands before using your Mac because "He can smell the PC on you."
• Inquire with your family doctor on the costs of surgically installing a SCSI port on your waist so that you can use the same peripherals that your Mac uses.
Conclusion
After you've completed all of these tasks, in all likelyhood, it will be time to download the October issue of Apple Wizards and you will have safely made it through another month! Keep up the good work and remember that you only need one more fix, until next time.
