Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Steve Jobs and Michael Dell ARE IN MY HEAD!

Dell Computers and Apple Computers are trying to brainwash me. Here's how:

In the course of my self-employed Pat-Verbeek-of-Software-Testingdom, I have cause to use an eMac computer and a Dell workstation to test the various and sundry applications that clients pay me innumerable (as I explain to the auditor) dollars to test. My main workstation has a standard keyboard, with the slight rise and the stadium keying layout, where each row rises a little above it. The kind I've used since I got my first Packard Bell in 1990. The natural shape one can even remember from Commodore 64s and Apple IIs, and probably even abacuses.

But the eMac has a concave keyboard; that is, it's curved, with the tops of the keys actually turning toward your fingers like flowers to a star.

But the Dell workstation has a convex keyboard; that is, it's bowed outward, like its keys are employing centrifugal force to fling my software-destroying fingers into space.

And you might think it's nothing but some sort of Substance of Style-ing to be neat-o, but friends, I can tell you what they're doing--they're doing Pavlovian and Skinner tricks on you, and you're the dog and chicken. Apple, dog, and Dell, chicken. Pay attention!

You see, if you use one of these freak keyboards as your primary interface with the greater intelligence that is the Internet, Blogosphere, and Return to Zork, you'll grow accustomed to the unholy shape beneath your fingers. Then, when you're forced to use a different computer, that is, not a Dell or not a Macintosh, you'll think it weird, inconvenient, and slightly uncomfortable. All because you'll have to use a normal keyboard.

So forget Bill Gates; he's trying to rule the world in an honest, straightforward fashion. Dell and Jobs are conditioning you, man. Rise up! By an old keyboard at a yard sale for a buck and use it. Or you will be a lifelong ~~customer~~ lackey of one of these aforementioned diablolical geniuses.

I beg of you.

(Why, yes, another part of my s.e.P.V.S.T. lifestyle is drinking a lot of coffee, sometimes two or three pots a day. Why do you ask?)

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:52 PM