The Mulligan

Switching over is a-whole-nother thing. I know that’s not a word but I wanted to draw attention to how low my enthusiasm to do this when I have a newer, more familiar laptop just sitting here. It’s taunting me. When I lift the screen on that refurbed PC, it’s like it’s flashing me an unkind finger gesture. And right in my face too.

I seriously thought about hiring someone to do it for me. Like, then, I could just pretend I’m using Libra at work but secretly keep using my Mac. Just kidding. But really, would that be an HR violation? I’m just asking — it’s not for me, but for a friend. Would it be “wrong” to raise money for open source and sell it to universities, but keep using a Mac and Excel? I mean, none of those CEO’s at Big Tobacco ever smoked. And that didn’t make them bad people, just good businessmen. Right? Anybody with me?

All my passwords are in here. I don’t even know them. The machine just generated them for me and now secretly spits them in there whenever I push this fingerprint button. Then, immediately after that, they all just magically appear in my phone too. Seamlessly, by the power of monopoly, be my life made easy. How am I going to do that with this DELL? It doesn’t even have a fingerprint thingamajig! Does that mean I’ll have to go back to using my old passwords — the ones I can remember? Well let me just tell you, SNUGGLES_1971 is not nearly as secure as xil_1j3T#ja!e8K. So, maybe that’s a good excuse. Security? Right! Right?

I made a spreadsheet this week. It was beautiful. It’s got colors, bells and whistles. Like Firefox, the movie with Clint Eastwood where he flies a “thought-guided” fighter jet, I was in there moving stuff around with my mind. I looked like Jackson Pollock with a bucket of paint (except he was drunk - but that’s how much fun I was having). The catch? (“Gasp!”) I created this Mona Lisa, or some might say Sistine Chapel, on Excel.

Already that stupid Amazon Spreadsheet tool from Google. Whatever they call it. The one on the Internet. It confounds me because it’s not an external application. None of the keystrokes ever do what they should. I’m always doing things wrong. Then I can’t unwind them. When it wants to make me really mad, I cannot find the stuff I cannot do with keystrokes because they are hidden on an unfamiliar menu. And, it just keeps going — it’s like watching angry monkeys abuse typewriters rather than beautiful Jackson Pollock. The Excedrin Headache starts bumping. Urge to hammer-fist keyboard rising. Normally I would just grab all those rows with the keyboard and move them, but now I have to drag the cursor. Really? Urge to hammer-fist keyboard rising again. OK, now I will take a break — an Excel break! Then I can just copy and paste it over. That’s not cheating. And I’m not asking, I’m telling you. It’s not cheating. Period. End of story.

It’s only going to get worse when I switch to Libra. I just know it. But next week I won’t have anything else to talk about so I’ll have to take the plunge. Because I've used my mulligan about procrastinating today. And that’s that. But, I’ll just leave you with this thought: this is why people hire housekeepers. They could do it themselves, but they just don’t want to. So next week, while I’m using a DELL to learn not-Excel, you can go just ahead and clean your own bathroom. Got it?