Sunday, March 23, 2008

Sticky notes on my dashboard


I have a Mac laptop. Before I go any further in this post, I want to say that I am an Apple loyalist of the highest degree and so is my entire family (including engineers and physicists, which proves Macs aren't just for "creatives" nyah nyah). A few years back I bought a Dell laptop and my aunt was so shocked, you'd think I had told her I was converting to Islam.

The odd thing is that the computer made me nauseous. Literally. I had to lay down on the floor because I thought I was going to faint or throw up. I have no idea why. An LCD screen has no flicker, so it wasn't that. Was it purely emotional?! Anyway, I spent 150 bucks by owning it for a few days, because when I returned it to Best Buy, they told me there was a restocking fee. The salesman said I had two weeks to "try it". No problems! By the way, if one writes a letter of complaint to Best Buy, you will not get a response.

Okay, I digress. I always digress.

The Mac has this thing called the "Dashboard" for those who don't have one. It has widgets on it; stuff like a google link, the weather, a calendar, a tiny dictionary link (and much more), but what I love is the virtual sticky notes. When I have a little thought, I write it on one of these, just like I used to do in the so-called real world.

But my dashboard is overflowing with the things. Perhaps one reason I've started this blog is to clean up my dashboard. Yes, indeed - it's true. I will now put my little notes on this blog for everyone (all two of you, probably) to read.

Here's an example, which is apropos of nothing I've written about thus far:
I was taught in grammar school that our language was "superior". not so. different. chinese language shaped and was shaped by taoism/buddhism. difficult to understand in our concrete language.
language limits thought: slang and illiteracy limit thought, undoubtedly but we as a society do not want to admit this. it appears elitist


Now I can go and remove that sticky note. More to come.

3 comments:

Country Mouse said...

I was confused by this part of your post:
"A few years back I bought a Dell laptop and my aunt was so shocked, you'd think I had told her I WAS CONVERTING TO ISLAM."
Did I assume a meaning you didn't intend? Am I making any sense by seeing this as an unfair slam - something you wouldn't normally infer?

Julie H. Rose said...

I meant nothing negative about the religion nor was it a slam. I was even going to add "and coming out as a lesbian". . .

These are just stereotypes of things most people in this country would probably be upset by. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Julie H. Rose said...

I gave it more thought. I don't want to offend anyone. I was thinking, "well, maybe I'll change that to admitting to murder", but no, that didn't fit. For when this happened, I DID think that felt akin to saying I was going to convert to Islam - CONVERT being the operative word here.

Mac people (including myself) are almost religious about their allegiance. So, switching feels like a betray - a conversion. That's it. It stands.