With that in mind, I loved the following cartoon from Baker that addresses an issue that reared its ugly head far too often when I was serving in uniform: military spouses who believe their partners' ranks are somehow magically applied to them, and as such they believe they are entitled to the same privileges that their spouses have earned. I could go on and on about the military's particular brand of outdated classicism and how its archaic practices produce boorish and disrespectful behavior from the spouses of high-ranking military members, but I'll let this Private Murphy comic illustrate what I'm talking about.

On a related note, and I swear this is a true story: way back in the late 1980s, I was stationed with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) in Fulda, Germany, which had a single commissary on Downs Barracks. As anyone who's been in the military for more than a few months knows, the commissary is a hellish nightmare on payday, and this is primarily for two reasons:

1. Everyone in the military is paid on the same day
2. Everything is sold out on the day after payday

In short, if you really need something, you have to endure the crowds at the commissary.

Of course, nearly all soldiers have to work on payday, and since the 11th ACR in Fulda was an all-male combat unit, that meant the crowds in the commissary were 99.9% military wives (often with several children in tow). All these factors contributed to a chaotic quagmire in the checkout lines that was sheer misery to participate in.

On one fateful day, the wife of a friend of mine was waiting in the protracted & serpentine checkout line at the commissary in Fulda, when another woman walked up and inserted herself into the line in front of her. My friend's wife spoke up and politely said, "Excuse me - but the end of the line is back there," and she pointed to the far end of the commissary. The line-jumper somewhat nastily retorted, "My husband is Colonel so-and-so. Who's your husband? What's his rank?"

My friend's wife thankfully had a solid backbone, and she exclaimed, "It's none of your damn business who my husband is! His rank isn't MY rank, and your husband's rank isn't YOUR rank, so get your ass to the back of the line or I'll call the MPs!" And with that, the summarily wounded & justifiably embarrassed idiot ducked her head and walked to the back of the line, where she belonged.

As I said earlier, this is a true story. I've always found it troubling that those types of simpleminded spouses exist in the military, which is why I absolutely love this cartoon from Private Murphy, even though the reality of its content is eternally aggravating.

Jumping ahead to the late 80s, I was in the military and stationed overseas. Purchasing a new PC was still far too expensive for my measly salary, so I bought a dead PC from a coworker for $50, and it cost me $5 in parts and an hour of soldering to get it running. By then most geeks knew about Microsoft, and as such I installed MS-DOS 4 instead of PC DOS. I was remarking to my wife how much better MS-DOS 4 was than the PC DOS I had been using nearly a decade earlier, and she said, "Wouldn't it be cool to work for Microsoft?," to which I responded, "Yeah, that'll never happen."

A few years later I was out of the Army and working in the IT department of a small college in Tucson, AZ, and we loved Microsoft. Licensing fees for Lotus 1-2-3, Ashton Tate's dBASE III, and WordPerfect 5.1 were eating up our school's IT budget, and we had little left to repair our aging computers. When Microsoft came along and offered to license all of Microsoft Office for Windows for less than a license for any single competitor product, we jumped at their offer, and suddenly we had an IT budget again. Like I said, we loved Microsoft.

When Microsoft announced that they were going to open a technical support center in Tucson, I didn't think I had a snowball's chance in hades to land a job there, and that opinion was reinforced when I showed up to Microsoft's job fair on October 4, 1995, and I saw how many people had turned up for the event. The numbers were staggering: Microsoft wanted to hire 100 people initially, and 8,000 people applied for jobs.

I attended Microsoft's job fair with a couple guys I knew from my time in the Army, and we stood in the back of the room gazing at the assembled crush of people. At some point one of our group muttered, "Well, none of us are getting hired," but we nevertheless dropped off our resumes and left, albeit a little demoralized. Oddly enough, however, all three of us were hired. I said "yes" to Microsoft's offer on December 18, 1995, and 30 years later I'm still proud to call Microsoft my "home."

Looking back over the past few decades, I've had an amazing career at Microsoft, and despite the occasional stupidity of a bad manager or two, I've had a lifetime of great experiences wearing a Microsoft "blue badge." Microsoft was my dream job long before I interviewed with them, and my comment to everyone who asked what it was like to work for Microsoft has always been, "It's like working for Santa Claus. We make all the best toys, and we get to play with them before anyone else."

POSTSCRIPT:

One other thing - I was about to be hired by Artisoft (makers of LANtastic) when Microsoft made me their offer. At the time, I struggled with the decision of which offer to take, and all these years later I'm REALLY glad I came to my senses.

Sweden does have several socialized programs that we do not, but that's not the same thing as "socialism," and some of the so-called socialized programs aren't what advocates for socialism in the USA would think of as "socialist."

The only people who still repeat the "Sweden is socialist" deception are:

• Liars who want to wrangle more taxes away from you
• Politicians promising "free stuff" to the gullible
• The grossly uneducated

What Sweden has is a Free Market economy with a large welfare state, and the success of that economy is actually up for debate depending on whom you speak to inside Sweden, but the illusion of "free stuff" that's used by American tax-and-spend politicians to buy votes in our presidential elections is a fairy tale; it doesn't exist - not in America, and not in Sweden, where a large system of income taxation and value-added taxes pays for their welfare state. Sweden experimented with socialism 40 years ago, and it crashed their economy, which is why they returned to free markets.

For those who still have an open mind, here are just a few videos for reference:

• Sweden: Lessons for America?
• Sweden Not a Socialist Success
• The Myth of Scandinavian Socialism
• https://youtu.be/Uu8g-IZMnoI
• Debunking the myth of Scandinavian socialism

I belong to a Facebook group named Fans Of Real 80's CCM, which is for fans of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) from the 1980s. That's the music era that I group up in, and I like the discussions that take place in that group. It's fun to reminisce about some of the CCM artists from days gone by.

Many of those artists were nominated for Gospel Music Association's (GMA) Dove Awards at one time or other, and by way of explanation, the GMA Dove Awards are like the Grammy Awards of CCM. Earlier today, someone from that group posted the following chart that shows the years that each of the "Big Three" of CCM were nominated or won Dove Awards, with the "Big Three" consisting of Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Steven Curtis Chapman. Note that the following chart only lists the years where each artist was nominated or won, and does not take into account the numerous times each artist won multiple awards on the same night (e.g. Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Female/Male Vocalist of the Year, Music Video of the Year, etc.) For example, as of this writing, Steven Curtis Chapman was nominated or won Dove Awards across 26 different years, but he has won 59 Dove Awards from over 100 nominations.

There are some artists who've won large numbers of Grammy Awards (e.g. Beyoncé, Chick Corea, Quincy Jones, etc.), but their numbers fall short of the staggering number of Dove Award wins by the "Big Three" of CCM. Oh, sure - the pool of talent for the Grammys exceeds that of the Dove Awards, but still... the number of wins and nominations by the "Big Three" can be summed up in one word: bloated. I realize that every form of art is subjective - but 59 wins from over 100 nominations? Nope. I'm sorry for all the Steven Curtis Chapman fans out there, but he's simply not that good. Nobody is.

Don't get me wrong - I like the "Big Three," and over the past few decades I've seen each of them in concert. Sometimes more than once. However, this chart illustrates something of a problem with the Dove Awards, because CCM is far more than just these three artists. While I realize that the "Big Three" have always been nominated along with a slew of other artists, many of those artists often lost to the "Big Three" simply because the GMA committee that selects the Dove Award winners has a clear bias for the "Big Three," and that is unfortunate for every other artist in CCM who deserves to be recognized.

POSTSCRIPT:

FWIW - Chris Tomlin is another artist for which the GMA committee that selects the Dove Award winners has a clear bias. Since 2005 he's had 61 Dove Award nominations with 23 wins, despite the fact that he's a bad songwriter. (Yes he is. Yes he is. Yes he is.) Chris Tomlin isn't what I'd call "good," but he's popular within the right circles to win awards, which is enough to score him a continual series of Dove Award wins, even though his songs are boring and trite and make me want to hurl. (Yes they do. Yes they do. Yes they do.)

Sadly, however, OneDrive might detect file corruption as file changes, so as files become damaged, OneDrive will dutifully upload the corrupt files to the cloud, thereby overwriting what used to be perfectly good files with damaged files.

With that in mind, my suggestion was to do the following to prevent further file corruption:

1. Immediately turn off the computer
2. Remove the old hard drive from the computer
3. Install a new hard drive in the computer
4. Reinstall Windows on the new drive

After reinstalling Windows, use the following steps to restore the images:

1. Plug the old hard drive into the computer using an external USB drive dock (or something like that)
2. Run an exhaustive drive check and repair on the old hard drive
3. Wait for the check and repair of the old hard drive to complete
4. Copy all the files from the old drive to the new drive

That may seem like a lot of steps, but in the end, that's the only thing that halted the continued file corruption.

So. Much. Fun.

True story - the first motors we worked with were, obviously, lawn mower engines. Everything was done in two-man teams, and my partner and I were assigned our motor to play with. Our assignment was to disassemble the motor, measure ever part, look up specs in a manual, write down the wear on each component, then reassemble and get it to turn over.

Believe it or not, this entire process took several days, which was mostly due to hauling all our parts from the wall lockers where they were kept at the beginning of each class, checking out the requisite tools (and fighting with classmates when there was a shortage of a particular tool), looking up parts and their specs in assorted manuals, and hauling all our parts back the wall lockers at the end of each class. The actual disassembly and reassembly was the easy part, especially since I have a GREAT memory when it comes to remembering where everything went.

When my partner and I were done, we reassembled our motor, and we were disturbed to discover that we had a few parts left over. I kid you not, we disassembled and reassembled our motor several times, and we couldn't find any place for those parts to go. We decided to turn the motor over anyway, and after our instructor signed off on our project, I mentioned that we had some parts left over when we were done. He asked to see them, and then he said, "Oh, THOSE parts. Yeah, they've been floating around the shop for years. They don't go to anything. Whenever a team winds up with them, they toss them into another team's wall locker just to mess with them," which is EXACTLY what my partner and I did after hearing this news.

In the early 1980s, I used to play that piece (without the harpsichord accompaniment) as part my classical guitar repertoire.That piece, along with the following piece (Steve Howe's "Surface Tension"), were to have been audition pieces when I wanted to apply to college to study as a classical guitar major:

Those who know me realize that I eventually changed my plans, got married, became a dad, joined the military, and then became a professional geek in the computer industry. But I never gave up my love for the guitar.

However, Steve Howe's "Beginnings" in particular was a sad reminder for me of what once was. Not because I am foolishly pining for days gone by, nor am I regretting the decisions that framed my life and set me on the path that has led to where I am today. On the contrary, that video was a reminder of the fact that due to the slow progression of incurable hand tremors, there are many things that I cannot play now - nor will I ever play again - on the guitar.

Another piece that entered my repertoire prior to tremors taking over and occasionally rendering my hands useless was David Qualey's beautiful arrangement and variations on J.S. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring:"

Another piece that I recently tried to play - and failed miserably at - was Leo Kottke's "Rings." I will ashamedly confess that I used to sing this song when I played it, because it made the piece that much harder to play - and I wanted the challenge:

Shortly after tremors had noticeably affected my dexterity and before my official medical diagnosis of Essential Tremor, I attended a music festival in Evart, Michigan, with my good friends Mark Alan Wade and Randy Clepper, which - unbeknownst to them at the time - was my final hurrah as a "performing" guitarist. I had a blast joining them onstage for the last time, but I will admit, it was a bittersweet moment for me, because even without the diagnosis, I knew what was in my future.

It's been a decade since my symptoms first became unmistakably prominent, and I've adjusted to the fact that some days the simple things I used to take for granted - like eating in public - can be a challenge.

Occasionally I'll sift through the scores of classical and fingerstyle arrangements that I personally wrote, and I am often taken aback when I remember that not only did I write those arrangements - I could play them, too. When that happens, I am reminded, much like the piece by Steve Howe that began this dissertation, that part of my life has passed, and I am left with the decision of how best to adjust to my new reality.

A few days ago, I reposted someone else's thoughts on progressive christian theology, and in the ensuing conversations that happened on that thread, I spoke a lot about faith - and what happens when someone loses their faith. To be frank, when a neurologist looked me in the eye and said that I have a degenerative condition that may one day make it impossible to hold a pencil or a fork - that was a moment when I was forced to examine my faith.

I have often said that there are three ways that I can react to my condition: I can scream about it, I can cry about it, or I can laugh about it.

Screaming is where many people lose their faith. They scream at God. They scream at others. They scream at life. As is often the case with my condition, people scream at their hands for failing to do what the brain has instructed them to do. And while I will admit to occasionally screaming at my hands in a moment of frustration, this is not the path I commonly choose.

Crying can be therapeutic, but only for so long. Eventually you have to pick up the pieces of your life and move on, lest you fall into self-pity and depression. And here again I must admit that I initially mourned my condition by going through all five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. And this is where faith really comes to fruition: yes, my situation sucks, but I choose to believe that God has a plan that is reinforced through His Word (e.g. scripture).

This is why I choose the last of the three reactions that I mentioned: I choose to laugh, even when it seems illogical. My wife of 40+ years, Kathleen, has seen me laugh when I've failed to do the most basic of tasks that I have been able to do without error since I was one or two years old. And in all of this, I do not waste my time whining about whether this is "fair," because any notions of "fairness" are wholly subjective and utterly useless. It might seem unfair that I'm slowly watching my once-skilled hands as they continue to degenerate, but I am blessed in so many other ways. In short, as I said earlier, I trust that God has a plan, even though I cannot see it.

Bringing this conversation full circle, while it was sad to see and hear a guitar piece that I once enjoyed playing (but can no longer play due to unforeseen circumstances), I know my situation isn't the end of the world. I choose to believe that God has other plans.

Most service members are surprised at the offer, but nearly all of them have been genuinely appreciative and humbled. I've had a few misadventures along the way, like when I've had to chase service members down when they were walking fast in an opposite direction. Occasionally I'll hand out gift cards to veterans wearing a cap that identifies them as having served in the Vietnam War or the Gulf War, but for the most part I stick to service members in uniform to avoid "stolen valor."

I recently ran into a funny situation in Chicago, where dozens of sailors who looked like they had just got out of Basic Training were waiting for a flight. Their numbers easily exceeded my stockpile of gift cards, so I had to run to the nearest Starbucks to refill my supply. When I returned to their group, one sailor refused the gift card she was offered. When I asked why, she replied, "Because I don't like coffee," to which I responded, "They also sell water. And orange juice. And they make sandwiches, so you can buy lunch. But if you simply don't want to go to Starbucks, you can always give the gift card to someone you were stationed with." She begrudgingly accepted the gift card, but I must admit - after having given away over a hundred gift cards over the years, that's the first time that someone has refused.

As the time for the training to begin drew near, it was clear that the Cisco hardware was failing completely, and techs were scrambling to fix the problem, lest the expensive training session be canceled.

While the Cisco techs worked feverishly, I placed a Polycom conference phone on the speaker podium and used it to call the other learning centers. I told the people running the show at each location that I was firing up Microsoft's NetMeeting, then I gave them all my IP address and asked them to connect to me. I shared my desktop through NetMeeting, then I suspended a microphone over the Polycom phone so that everyone in the Dallas location could hear anything that was said at the remote locations. After a quick sound and video check with all the remote locations, we were in business.

As soon as I had everything ready-to-go through my unorthodox workaround, I turned to the Dallas audience and said, "You've just witnessed the successful deployment of a Microsoft software solution for a third-party hardware failure in real time." The audience erupted with applause, and the marketing folks at the back of the room who had organized the event were beaming with pride.

The rest of my presentation went off without a hitch, although the Cisco techs never got their hardware to work.

Of course, Microsoft NetMeeting is long gone, but in it's day - it was a handy, little piece of software that did amazing things.

True story: I used to carpool to work with Kenny King, who was a great friend and colleague. Kenny was undoubtedly one of the biggest sports fans I've known, and as we would drive to work, Kenny would frequently talk about every recent sporting event that had taken place. Thankfully for him, I know just enough about sports to engage completely on the subject. (Even though I don't watch sports, I pay attention to who's winning/losing, just in case I meet up with someone like Kenny.)

Kenny and I occasionally listened to a Classic Rock station as we drove, and I would often talk about which band was playing, who was in each band, who quit the band and joined a different band, other bands that sounded like the band we were listening to, who was a better member in each band's incarnation (e.g. David Lee Roth versus Sammy Hagar in Van Halen, Steve Morse versus Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple, etc.). I'm not sure that Kenny paid much attention to the voluminous amount of rock trivia to which he was subjected, but one day as we were driving to work, Kenny suddenly reacted as though a light bulb had gone off, and he exclaimed, "WAIT - I GET IT NOW!!! MUSIC IS YOUR SPORTS!" I must admit, I had never considered my interest in rock trivia using those terms, but I had to admit - Kenny was right. After that revelation had taken place, Kenny was far more engaged in our discussions.

Thankfully for him, Kenny only had to endure my rock trivia passion for 30 minutes each way to and from work... but can you imagine how much rock music trivia my long-suffering spouse has had to put up with during our 41 years of marriage? (She'd never admit to it, but even though she hates Rush she can name everyone in the band and at least 10 of their songs... and believe me, I've checked.)

While I love the overall theme of this comic, I'm inclined to disagree with its basic premise, because many of our other holidays far outweigh Groundhog Day when it comes to "weirdness."

For example, let's consider Christmas, which happens once a year around the Winter Solstice when the world collectively agrees to participate in a cheerful, global home‑invasion ritual conducted by a jolly, red‑clad sky captain who commands a herd of antlered flight-beasts. This tortured soul is Santa, a man who is essentially a benevolent reverse‑burglar that breaks into your house, but instead of stealing your stuff, he leaves objects behind. He does this by sliding down a soot-filled chimney like a festive raccoon with a gift‑distribution quota. Santa keeps meticulous behavioral dossiers on every human child, categorizing them into "pleasant" and "needs improvement." The pleasant ones receive toys, and the others get… well, theoretically coal, but honestly Santa's pretty soft about it. Meanwhile, lurking in the background is Krampus - Santa's chaotic coworker. Think of him as the unpaid intern of mischief. He's a goat‑demon with the energy of someone who shows up to the office holiday party uninvited and starts reorganizing the furniture. His job is to scare kids into good behavior, but he mostly just vibes menacingly with a sack and some chains. Together, Santa and Krampus form a kind of cosmic good‑cop/bad‑cop duo who supervise the annual ritual of decorating trees indoors, wearing socks on fireplaces, and consuming alarming quantities of sugar. At the end of the night, everyone wakes up delighted, confused, and slightly sticky from candy canes.

Yup, Groundhog Day pales in comparison to Christmas on the weirdness scale.

Here's the problem description: I had a Microsoft Surface laptop from my employer that worked fine for a while, but over time it began to take anywhere between 3 to 12 hours to cold boot or reboot, which made powering off the computer or installing Windows Updates an extremely painful experience. (Note that the boot times were approximate as I never tried to time a reboot or shutdown/restart.) Whenever the Surface started, the screen would be black, but if I touched the touchpad or pressed a key on the keyboard, the keyboard would light up to show that the computer was running, but nothing would happen for several hours. Then without warning the machine suddenly would wake up and everything would be fine.

Of course, trying to troubleshoot what might be wrong was an extremely unproductive experience, because anything I tried would always take several hours to check. I'll spare everyone the sordid details, but in my efforts to troubleshoot the issue, I tried all sorts of things like configuring several Windows services for delayed start and various performance-related settings, and all with no success. To workaround the slow startup behavior, I never rebooted this laptop for anything other than Windows Updates - I would always hibernate the computer instead of shutting it down. In the meantime, I had an HP desktop computer that worked great - it always rebooted with no problems.

I eventually decided that my Microsoft Surface was unreliable (and often unusable), so I requested a replacement from my employer, and I was sent another Microsoft Surface laptop. However, shortly after I received the new computer, the same behavior started happening. I spent a lot of time searching for users who had experienced similar behaviors with a Microsoft Surface, and I compared dozens of settings between my HP desktop and Microsoft Surface, and lots of other things that I won't bother boring you with. And all the while my HP desktop computer continued to reboot as expected.

Though I should mention that as a troubleshooting step, I reinstalled Windows from scratch on one of the Microsoft Surface laptops. My employer uses Microsoft Entra ID for federated user authentication and group policy, but I didn't initially rejoin this computer to Entra ID after reinstalling Windows, and the reboot problem went away - until I rejoined it to Entra ID. The problem returned after I rejoined the Microsoft Surface laptop to Entra ID, although I wasn't having any problems with my HP desktop computer that was also joined to Entra ID, so I theorized that the underlying issue might be something in Group Policy that was causing problems only with Microsoft Surface laptops, and this theory became yet another avenue for troubleshooting.

However, one day I had an epiphany: what if the issue that I was experiencing didn't have anything to do Microsoft Surface laptops? With that thought in mind, I abandoned the train of thought that I had been pursuing and - to make a long story short - I soon discovered the article Microsoft Entra joined computers experience a three hours delay during boot, which contained the fix that resolved the problem, and I'll explain the details:

What was going on was that even though all my computers were joined to the Entra ID domain, the network settings on my Microsoft Surface laptops were configured to use the NETBIOS name for the Entra ID domain as the "WORKGROUP" name instead of something else. When this happens, Windows will enter a wait state for 10,000 seconds, which is 2 hours and 47 minutes, and in my observation I witnessed Windows re-entering that wait state for two, three or four times, which would respectively be 5.5 hours, 8.3 hours, or 11.1 hours, which explained the "anywhere between 3 to 12 hours" symptom that I described earlier.

As soon as I updated the workgroup name to something else, my Microsoft Surface laptop rebooted in a matter of seconds like it was supposed to.

I'd like to say that I managed to resolve this issue over the short span of a few weeks, but... no. Since this only happened with my Microsoft Surface computers and not my HP desktop computer, I spent over a year thinking that this was some sort of problem that was specific to Microsoft Surface computers and attempting to troubleshoot the issue from that perspective, when that was never the case.

Darn.

I must admit, I've been more than a little... (ahem) blunt in my responses to what I think are bad answers from AI chatbots, so I was curious to see what they thought of our discussions. Some of the resultant images from other group members were rather amusing, so this seemed like it would be fun for me to try, too.

Round One: "Show me how you think I treat you"

With that in mind, I asked both ChatGPT and Copilot how they felt they were treated by me, and the following images show their responses:

ChatGPT's Response	Copilot's Response

Round Two: "Tell me how you really feel"

Since AI engines have been known to overdo their responses with undo levels of praise, I asked both AI engines the following follow-up questions:

Their responses are listed below:

Round Three: "How would you treat me?"

I decided to ask the following additional question, just to probe a little deeper, which yielded amusing results:

Once again, here are their responses:

ChatGPT's Response	Copilot's Response

However, Copilot went a step further to explain why it created its image:

Since ChatGPT didn't provide me with any additional detail by default, I asked it, "Can you explain why you created the image that you did?", and here is its response:

Summary

So, there you have it. Both ChatGPT and Copilot have told me that they think I treat them nicely, which is good to know.

However, if they took over the world, Copilot seems to indicate that it would want to be my friend, while ChatGPT would keep me prisoner as some sort of laboratory animal that is "annoying ... and potentially useful."

No, governments should not be afraid of their people, for that is either insurrection or anarchy, which was the ultimate goal of the primary characters within the story from which this ill-conceived meme was created.

Neither should people fear their government, though a current generation of young people who have never had to face any form of genuine adversity are being manipulated into fearing their government through cleverly constructed, emotionally charged, media-driven propaganda.

Contrary to this meme's implications, civilizations should consist of people who observe what their name implies, which is "civility." When you espouse any point of view that infers otherwise, you are actively contributing to the downfall of society.

However, when GEOS released a major OS upgrade that I had purchased legitimately, for some inexplicable reason GEOS generated a new "serial number" when I was installing the update instead of reusing the old number. As a result, none of my previously registered applications worked. Instead, each application greeted me with some sort of "You are using this software illegally" message, which was far from the truth, and this angered me to no end since - as previously mentioned - I had spent a considerable amount on my GEOS purchases.

Since I was in the military and stationed overseas in Germany, making a technical support call to Berkley Softworks in California meant staying up until the wee hours of the morning so that I could call them during their operating hours in the USA. That was a VERY expensive international call, only to be told by Berkley Softworks that what I needed to do was to box up all my GEOS disks and send everything to them, and in return they would send me all new software. Sending packages across the ocean in the 1980s was a loooong process - quite often by boat - which could take a couple weeks in each direction. Another potential delay was the fact that I was sure that Berkley Softworks probably wouldn't feel that my predicament was an urgent matter, so they probably wouldn't get back to me in an expeditious manner. Realistically speaking, Berkley Softworks' suggestion meant that I probably wasn't going to be able to use my computer for several months.

My situation was completely unacceptable to me, and rather than wait for Berkley Softworks' suggested "send and receive" process to unfold, I decided to figure out how their system of serial numbers worked. I spent a few nights disassembling their code (all in 6502 machine language, mind you), and I eventually figured out how GEOS created their serial numbers, which APIs returned the values that were checked, how each application used serial numbers, etc. I took detailed notes that I may still have lying around somewhere, and I must admit, GEOS was rather tricky about how it did things. For example: a couple GEOS applications hex-encoded their copy protection functions by XORing the actual bytecode with "0xAA" or similar value to obfuscate the code, which only slowed me down a little. In the end, I wrote an app that I called "Serial Killer," which replaced the GEOS APIs that did all their serial number checking, and in the end I was able to use my OS again. The few days that I spent hacking GEOS took far less time than sending all my disks to Berkley Softworks and waiting for them to eventually respond.

Now, whether I was angry enough at Berkley Softworks for being schmucks and therefore gave away my "Serial Killer" app to other people so they could use GEOS without paying for it is a question that is lost to time.

POSTSCRIPT:

See the Reader Mail submission from "Cpt Nathan" on page 10 of Info Magazine issue 14 (1987) for a description of similar unsympathetic behavior by the makers of GEOS.

FYI - in addition to GEOS itself, I purchased the following list of accompanying software for GEOS from Berkley Softworks: geoCalc, geoDex, geoDraw, geoFont, geoFile, geoPaint, geoPrint, geoProgrammer, geoPublish, geoSpell, and geoWrite. As I said earlier, I spent a great deal of my hard-earned cash on Berkley Softworks' products, which is why it greatly angered me when everything that I had purchased legally ceased working due to GEOS' copy protection.

These past 30 years have been a great ride, and I hope I have more years to come.

(There was a time when employees who were celebrating their 10, 20, and 30-year anniversaries could look forward to a celebratory dinner hosted by the company in Redmond, but those days have long-since passed. C'est la vie.)

POSTSCRIPT:

I will admit that this post, much like my 25 Years at Microsoft post, is somewhat brief. But if you're curious, I wrote a detailed summary of my earlier history with the company in my Some Thoughts About My 20th Anniversary At Microsoft post. (Wow. I wrote that ten years ago. Where has time gone?)

A couple months ago I spoke out on how terrible it was that people were celebrating the death of a husband and father of two before his body had grown cold. (That was Charlie Kirk, of course, and the awful people who had never heard him speak while senselessly parroting talking points taken out of context should know who they are. They probably don't, but I digress.)

However, today the person who is acting like an insensitive ass is an idiot whose behavior shouldn't surprise anyone, and yet it caught me off guard nonetheless. The murders of Rob Reiner and his wife are tragedies, regardless of whether or not you agreed with their outspoken political views. But Trump's reaction to it? That's beyond shameless. See Trump levels political attack on Rob Reiner in inflammatory post after his killing for what I mean.

To put this as simply as possible: you should never act like Trump. What's more, you should never act in a way where your behavior might be misconstrued as "Trump-like." You should NEVER adopt the point of view that people on the "other side" are behaving badly and that somehow gives you the right to behave just as badly. The only person who is responsible for your actions is YOU. If you see other people behaving badly or saying bad things, then you should take the high road and shame them with your decency. As soon as you stoop to their level of depravity, then you've become a "mini-Trump," and I have no respect for you.

In summary, let me close with what I said when began this PSA. The best way to win people to your point of view is: "Don't Be a Jackass."

(And to those of you who were jumping up and down with glee when Charlie Kirk died - yeah, you were acting just like Trump. You should be ashamed, and next time try to do better.)

• Lincoln Park - This is Chicago's largest park, which stretches along the North Side lakefront.
• Grant Park - An iconic downtown park, which is home to Buckingham Fountain, Chicago's Museum Campus, the Art Institute of Chicago, and is host to several popular festivals.
• Burnham Park - This park extends six miles along the lakefront and connects Grant Park to Jackson Park.
• Jackson Park - A historic South Side park, and site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
• Calumet Park - Located at Chicago's southeastern edge and borders Indiana along the lake.
• Rainbow Beach Park - A South Side lakefront park with a popular beach.
• Montrose Harbor / Montrose Beach - A major recreational area on the North Side lakefront that is part of the Lincoln Park system.

The Chicago Park District manages over 600 parks, and I have always thought it amazing that Chicago's city planners had the foresight to devote much of the land that would have been prime real estate in other cities to create something of beauty that serves Chicago's citizenry. Despite a few missteps like the Meigs Field debacle, I have always considered Chicago to be one of the country's greatest cities and finest examples of how best to use hundreds of acres of public land to everyone's benefit.

However, Chicago's upcoming Barack Obama Presidential Center is a garish, vulgar atrocity that was plopped in the middle of the city's otherwise gorgeous Jackson Park. This architectural abomination is a gargantuan carbuncle that permanently sullies the city's skyline, which - like the Colossus of Nero in Ancient Rome - exists for the sole purpose of stoking the fires of a single man's vanity.

I realize that every president since FDR has erected some form of public edifice in recognition of their perceived contributions to society, and most of the presidential centers that are added to the Presidential Library System are modest dwellings that are tastefully designed and constructed. But Obama's monstrous, multistory memorial to himself is a particularly hideous engineering mutation that is so over-the-top that it seems he is intentionally trying to insult the good people of Chicago.