If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

I have finally made my Mac vs. PC decision that I was ruminating about earlier (thanks to all of you who contributed your advice). Drum roll please...

A Mac. I listened to the majority, and ultimately, my brother-in-law's enthusiasm for all things Mac convinced me in the end. I am hopeful that I will make the adjustment smoothly and painlessly. The MacBooks just seem so modern, reliable, and design-friendly. I am ready for the change.

However, as I added things to my shopping cart, it seemed like more and more unexpected costs kept popping up. For example: I was advised to purchase extra GBs of memory for $100. And if I am buying more memory, I might as well just get the faster processor for another $100. And if I don't want my laptop to get scratched, I should buy a cover which runs at 50 bucks. And if I spend that on just the cover, I ought to buy AppleCare to protect the machine itself which amounts to no small sum of $350. Sigh. It's the classic lesson that I learned in elementary school: If you give a mouse a cookie, he will ask for a glass of milk.

And then he'll ask for a straw. And then a napkin. Followed by a mirror, scissors, a broom, and well, you get the point. (You've got to the read the book by Laura Joffe Numeroff. It is a childhood classic). The point is that soon the mouse will be living with you and asking for cookies all the time. There is no end to the chain of requests, events, or costs resulting from a seemingly isolated incident. All things in the known world are attached to strings.

For all I know, my new MacBook could be a marionette. I'll own one of everything the Apple Store sells by next week.

Dominoes

I remember setting up dominoes as a kid when I was home sick from school. I remember having lines of them crossing under the table, over books, around obstacles, spiraling, straight, curved, expanding, shrinking, even loop-de-looping. Man, it was frustrating when they would fall over before you were ready. When your pinky toe accidentally hit the one on the end and they all fell over before another human being could appreciate you actually did set up 987 dominoes across the entire kitchen. I miss those times. I set up a few on my grandparents table just for old times sake. It's good to be a kid again.

You Sunk My Battleship

I had a strange urge to play Battleship this week. You know, that Milton Bradley game you played when you were nine. I don't know why I had to play this game after years and years. And I don't know why I remembered it existed. It was strange.

In the classic Battleship, you arrange your naval war ships in a grid and try to take out your opponent's ships before they take out yours. When your ship is full of red plastic you make a hideous bombing noise and say, "You sunk my battleship."

Wikipedia's history of the game is actually interesting. Excerpt:

In The Dillinger Days, historian John Toland writes that prisoners in solitary confinement in the Indiana State Penitentiary played a version of Battleship during the 1920s, marking squares on their cell floors and calling out attacks from cell to cell. "For years the more obtuse guards wondered what was being plotted when they heard men calling: 'B-7.' 'Miss.' 'C-8.' 'Destroyer sunk!'"

If you have the unexplained desire to play too and can't challege or um, bribe someone into playing a game with you, you can always use the not as fun computer version.