I have had a long colourful history with PCs, and I have always defended them. Sure they have caused me countless hours of grief, I’ve had viruses well over 20 times, and hardware-issues is my middle name; but this stuff is usually my fault if only in the smallest way.

Last year around this time I bought a computer the likes of which I have been dreaming of for three years. It’s got everything, it’s really fast, suped up and is in one of those lit-up mod cases. I got it from BuyDirectPC.com. This company is great, awesome products, even awesomer service. This computer worked great (with the exception of some hardware issues involving the RAID), for seven months – then it died.

This death took the form of many blue screens of death. Luckily no work was lost, but I had to send it in under warrantee. My MOBO and RAID drives were replaced, but when I got it back it only worked for six hours. The problem it seems is my Motherboard was incompatible with my hardware configuration. When I think of this computer I feel fairly confident that there is no other computer in the world set up this exact way. Dangit!

This issue wasn’t my fault, in fact I’m not sure whose it is. But I haven’t had my computer in over a third of a year. In the mean time I work on my mid-level laptop which chokes and crashes a couple times a day. My old faithful desktop also died this week. It’s been very hard and frustrating.

This is why I finally considered the Apple Mac Pro as a viable option for me. Why not? I’m a graphic designer. I gave it a serious look – all the things I have ever hated and used to refute this platform before are gone (except for snobbiness, but those users I think are getting a bit better).

The only thing holding me back is the pricetag. BDPC doesn’t do refunds after a year naturally, and I can’t just drop this kind of cash on a whim, so unless someone wants to buy my nightmare I guess I’m a PC guy for a couple more years anyways.

I have been called a Google Fan boy before, but it’s hard not to admire a company whose unofficial motto is “don’t be evil” (seriously). It’s also so easy to endorse a company who has personally made my life a lot easier. As a result, when I setup client sites it’s no surprise that I rely on tools like Picasa, Calendar and Mail to make my clients site flow work seamlessly. We can sometimes take this company for granted. While writing this I forgot that the behind the scenes tools making this entry possible; Blogger, YouTube and Feedburner, are all a part of this company.

Here are some examples of how Google keeps things fresh for me daily.

Email: I’ve had too many email addresses for over ten years. I have always juggled and distinguished account through various mail clients and browser apps. None can hold a candle to Google’s Gmail (somehow still called a beta). It has all your standard mail features in a fast loading Ajax shell (that somehow has back button functionality). The real kicker for me though is the use of Labels. Labels work in the same way that folders do in other mail clients, but it also allows you to view All Mail – which distinguishes all mail chronologically regardless of Labels. I wish Outlook did that. Gmail won my loyalty the first (of a million) times I accidentally left a composition – best autosave hands-down.

Calendar: I remember the first time I was asked to make a working calendar of events tool for a website. It was 2004 and I was in over my head. I researched at length various ASP and PHP tools, most which sold a single licence for over $100 – after which reams of code were to be customized and made to inegrate with a database. These products were either to costly or time consuming time after time, and as a result clients would opt for a listing of events. Now enters Google. I can have a fully functional calendar embedded in a site by an iframe that a client can easily manage. When I think of the time this saves me I can rationalize almost any amount of goofing off during work hours.

I was going to write three, but I could go on for ages and this is getting long. That’s just a small taste from a great company that is making, and forever refining a lot of tools that we use all the time without even thinking about. Nevermind that it’s supposed to be the best place to work in the world. Those stories are actually a little annoying to those of us who don’t work there.

This low-blood sugar documentary was my buddy Matt and I today on IM (Google Talk no less). Sometimes it’s hard coming back from a weekend.

Everyday I get a couple hundred spam messages. This is maddening for two reasons:

1. People are sending spam
2. Some people must actually be acting on the spam, thus making it profitable.

I recently read some interesting statistics. Spam makes up over 75% of all email sent these days. Think of the bandwidth that must take! I also read that 90% of all spam comes from EIGHT sources!

I feel like with technology what it is we should be able to find these places and put a stop to this. I would love to find the people responsible and literally bury their houses in AOL CDs and Pizza coupons. Maybe we as Internet users can band together in some kind of grass roots operation like that whole Anonymous thing.

Can you imagine a spam free world? It would be so cool if you were issued an email address at birth that you could use for your entire life. You could find childhood friends so easily. There could be directories like phone books of people’s email addresses. The only thing stopping this is spam.

If you have ever bought anything through spam please don’t admit it to me, just stop. There are other places to get your viagra, replica watches and prescription medications.

Well that covers my thoughts about general spam. I thought it only fitting to include this Weezer video which montages some of the internet memes that have filled your inbox from friend related bulk mails.