Sunday, October 23, 2011

Not using Windows for a while = pure bliss

Pure bliss = $8/hour = a good way to go broke

About a year and a half ago, I quit my job. It wasn't a bad job, but I was ready to not work in an office, not use a computer which was supremely outdated* (yeah, non-profits) and not deal with Windows on a daily basis. I took off to work in the mountains (for the Appalachian Mountain Club) where the use of a computer required putting a laptop on a frame pack, hoping to not break it (best idea: surround it in a down comforter and shove the whole thing in a brew bucket), carry it several miles (say, 4 miles and 3500 feet) uphill and still have very little (if any) internet on the mountaintop. So, not a lot of screen time, and not a lot of fails.

Oh, yeah, and I have a Mac. This summer I treated myself to a new MacBook Air (it's dreamy, and weighs less than 3 pounds) and I even bought a new version of Office—Microsoft's most functional product (it's a low bar). Still, Office '11 works pretty well, is slightly more intuitive than old versions (again, a low bar) and has better cross-compatibility with Windows versions than previous. (Of course, one would think MSFT would be able to actually make them completely compatible. But, no!)

In any case, I'm out of the mountains now and looking for a job. Like, maybe, a "real" job, one where you sit at a desk and use computers. Even computers with Windows. I'm willing to do so, if for no other reason than that I am running out of fodder for this blog. Oh, and a paycheck. Benefits would be nice too. I picked the perfect economy for this, right?

So, you can find my CV on my personal website, check out my other websites (tsastatus.net, birkieguide.com) and if you have any ideas, email me at ari dot ofsevit at gmail.
You can even follow me at twitter.com/ofsevit.

Thanks! I hope I can find some broken Windows crap to blog about soon.

* Apparently, my replacement made it about a week before demanding a new computer—which I was about to do when I quit and figured it wouldn't be worth it to waste my breath. It got to the point of taking minutes to open Word. Of course, it was a 2003 machine in 2010.